Identifier: historyofundergr00smed_0 (find matches)
Title: History of the Underground railroad in Chester and the neighboring counties of Pennsylvania
Year: 1883 (1880s)
Authors: Smedley, R. C. (Robert Clemens), 1832-1883
Subjects: Underground Railroad African Americans
Publisher: Lancaster, Pa., Office of the Journal
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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art of the work in that town. In later times when public sentiment was growingstrong in favor of emancipation, very many, evenamong public officials, were hearty sympathizers andsilent helpers. The positions which they held, depend-ing upon public suffrage or popular favor, made itpolitic for them to enjoin secrecy when bestowing aid,and to make their sentiments known to but few, even ofthe well known and trusted abolitionists. DR. JACOB L. PAXSON.(Born June 17th, 1812.) As public sentiment in Norristown was inimical tothe anti-slavery cause mntil the exigencies of the timesand the acknowledged justness of universal libertythroughout the country made it popular, the harboringof fugitives in that place was particularly hazardous.Yet among those who dared to do it, who was openlyknown to do it, and who built a secret apartment in hishouse for that especial purpose which it was almostimpossible to discover, was Dr. Jacob L. Paxson. In-dependent and fearless, he did his own thinking, kept
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DR. JACOB L. PAXSON. UNDERGROUND ^ATLROAD. 223 his own counsel, took his own course, and concealed,fed, and forwarded hundreds that even the anti-slaverypeople knew nothing of He kept a horse and wagon,and took them himself to William Jackson, Quakertown,Jonathan McGill, Solebury, and William H. Johnson,Buckingham, all in Bucks county. He entertainedabolition speakers after the passage of the penal slavelaw, when they were refused admittance to the hotels. One evening when Garrison, Burleigh and severalothers were at his place, Samuel Jamison who owned alarge manufacturing establishment adjoining, came inand informed him of a conversation he had just over-heard in a small assemblage of men, concerning a plotwhich was being laid to burn his house if he did notdismiss his guests. Tell them to burn it, said Paxson, and scatter theashes to the four winds: Im a free man. A few days after the Christiana riot, Parker, Pinkneyand Johnson, an account of whom is given in the de-scription of the

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