Categotry Archives: Slavery

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Ex-Slaves in Buckingham

Categories: Abolitionists, Black History, Buckingham, Bucks County, Quakerism, Racism, Slavery

The graves of Jane Barnes and her daughter Lucy Lloyd at Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church in Buckingham.

On April 18, 1923, Sarah H. Gilbert presented a paper before the Buckingham Women’s Club on the subject of the former-slaves who once lived in Buckingham, which was one of the most active Underground Railroad hubs in Bucks County, and where many fugitives decided to permanently settle. During the peak years of Underground Railroad activity the black population of Buckingham more than doubled, increasing from seventy-seven black residents on the 1830 Census to 172 black residents in 1850. Many of them settled in the vicinity of Buckingham Mountain, very close to Gilbert’s home. Other people who were liberated by the Civil War also moved to Buckingham afterwards, joining the native-born African Americans and former Underground Railroad fugitives already living there.

Sarah H. Gilbert was born in 1858 and grew up in a Quaker family in Holicong, where her father owned the tannery. William H. Johnson, one of the most active Underground Railroad conductors in the county and a leader in the abolitionist movement, lived a short walk from her house on Holicong Road. Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church was a little further down the road, about a mile from Gilbert’s home. While she was only two years old when the outbreak of the Civil War put an end to the predation of slave hunters and effectively secured the status of local fugitives, she grew up among both abolitionists and former slaves, some of whom lived with and worked for her family. She and her friends and family were intimately acquainted with the ex-slaves of Buckingham, making her an almost uniquely valuable source on the matter.

I first came across this paper while reviewing a draft of Patricia Mervine and Joseph Coleman’s book Slavery, Friends, and Freedom in Bucks County in 2024. As someone who has been researching Bucks County’s African American history for well over a decade—with a drive that might be characterized as obsessive—I immediately recognized it as a remarkable document from the excerpts that they quoted, and pulled the original from the vault to learn more. Sure enough, it proved to be one of the most valuable sources on the subject, and I am thankful to Pat and Joe for pointing me to a document that had somehow eluded me until then.

I immediately transcribed it to share it with the world, but I didn’t want to scoop them by publishing it before their book came out so I am just getting around to posting it now. In the same manuscript collection, I also found and transcribed an earlier paper Gilbert had written about one former slave named Charles Sellers, which was partially adapted for “Ex-Slaves in Buckingham.” That dates to 1876, when she was a student at Millersville State Teachers’ College, and seems like it may have been written as a school assignment (the title “A Biography” on the verso of the packet of loose leaf pages suggests the prompt). Both transcriptions are included below.

“Ex-Slaves in Buckingham” is remarkable for a few reasons. Most importantly, it is one of the only detailed accounts of the Underground Railroad in Bucks County that is based on first-hand knowledge of people who knew the former fugitives and Underground Railroad conductors. It speaks to former slaves’ lives, their personalities, their paths to freedom, and how they adapted to their new status as free people. The only comparable document I’ve come across is Edward H. Magill’s “When Men Were Sold, Reminiscences of the Underground Railroad in Bucks County and its Managers,” which provides more detail about the mechanics of the Underground Railroad but focuses less on the fugitives themselves. Until I found Gilbert’s paper, many of the people mentioned within it were little more than names that I had found on census records, tax lists, or headstones at Mount Gilead, but knew almost nothing about.

One of the most immediately exciting elements was that she confirmed the evidence I had already gathered indicating that the famous Underground Railroad fugitive Benjamin “Big Ben” Jones owned property on the west end of Buckingham Mountain. Back in 2016 I found an unrecorded deed for a small plot of land in the black community that was located there, which he had purchased from another black family. This strongly suggested that it was him, but with a name as common as Benjamin Jones I couldn’t be sure, and there was a white Benjamin Jones living in Buckingham at that time. Gilbert reports that Jones “had been living peacefully somewhere around the end of the mountain for some time when his old master unexpectedly came up from the South to reclaim him.” He first purchased the land in 1838, sold it to another black family in 1839, and bought it back in 1842, two years before his capture by slave hunters. The time period and location in Gilbert’s account match the property records, confirming that it was in fact the Benjamin Jones. I plan to write more on that in the future after doing some additional research.

Gilbert’s papers are also remarkable for how blatantly racist they are, particularly her biography of Charles Sellers. Her physical description of him is especially noxious, comparing him to “a great mastiff, or a well-kept draught-horse,” and saying, “His broad, flat nose suggests the Knickerbocker theory of that feature of his race, that when God made the black man, so pleased was he with the result of his labors that he laid his hand upon him, but too soon, thus flattening his nose.” She also goes to great lengths to belittle his struggle to gain literacy as an adult, to a point that it seems cruel. In “Ex-Slaves in Buckingham” she uses a vile racial epithet, allegedly quoting a former slave. Throughout both papers she takes a paternalistic attitude, treating her subjects as quaint and “picturesque,” and using the diminutive forms of their names (Billy, Tommy, etc.), a disrespectful practice with a long tradition. Despite her own obvious racial bias, she takes aim at racial prejudice in the closing paragraphs, hoping that Buckingham “may be kept remote from the sinister influences that tend to set the two races at enmity.” The lack of self-awareness is striking.

While I am not surprised by the paternalistic attitude, I did not expect this level of racism from a highly educated Quaker writing in 1923, who grew up in a community that was generally quite friendly towards African Americans. I guess perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. In the context of a deeply racist culture, even the relatively enlightened can still hold abhorrent views. My own great-grandfather was on the board of trustees at George School, and my grandfather told me about the time he came home from a meeting absolutely furious because they had debated whether or not to admit their first black student. He couldn’t believe that as Quakers, who were supposed to believe in radical equality, his fellow board members thought that rejecting applicants due to their race was even a possibility. That was in the early 1940s, twenty years after Gilbert presented her paper.

Sarah H. Gilbert – Ex-Slaves in BuckinghamDownload
Sarah H. Gilbert – Charles Sellers BiographyDownload

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Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church: Timeline and Documentary Evidence

Categories: Black History, Bucks County, New Hope, Racism, Slavery, Solebury

The cemetery of Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Hope, photographed in 2011.

I’ve been researching Mount Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church for well over a decade, but have yet to write a proper history of the church and the surrounding community. I’ve included it in various talks and in the Underground Railroad bus tour that I developed for the New Hope and Solebury historical societies, so many people are now aware of its existence and I am often asked for information. When Heritage Conservancy contacted me because they were making Mount Moriah one of the three focal points for their Untold Stories project (an online project that they sadly seem to have removed from their website) I put this together for them. I’ve revised it a few times since, and will likely continue to do so. In the meantime I wanted to publish this for those who are interested. As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Keep an eye on the revision date!

I would also like to acknowledge the prior researchers who have brought many sources to light, especially the late Jean B. Williams, the former pastor of the Bensalem AME Church, who donated her research collection to the Mercer Museum, which I cataloged. There are numerous sources that I culled from her research, and she was responsible for placing the cemetery on the county register of historic places in 1986. She also saved three books that were buried with the cornerstone of the 1869 church, fragments of which I’ve put on display for various educational programs at the museum. They are indeed holy relics.

Some sources also seem to have been initially identified by the former pastor of the United Methodist church in Solebury, Joseph DiPaolo. In particular, it is my impression that he provided the newspaper articles from The Lambertville Beacon that appear in Williams’ collection, although I could be wrong. With the correspondence back and forth it is hard to determine who first found what, and ultimately we’re all in this together, trying to tell the story of a forgotten community.

Mount Moriah Timeline and Documentary EvidenceDownload

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Exploring the Archives: African American History in Bucks County

Categories: Archives, Bensalem, Black History, Bristol, Bucks County, Doylestown, Falls Township, Langhorne, Maps, Methodology, Middletown, Slavery, Solebury

This virtual lecture was presented for the Mercer Museum on October 15th, 2020.

Synopsis

This presentation provides an overview of the archival resources available at the Mercer Museum Library, and shows how they can be used to research the African American history of Bucks County. It highlights interesting documents from the collection dating back to the 1680s, and demonstrates how challenging and often fragmentary evidence can be used to piece together the stories of people who have long been marginalized in the historical record.

Note: Some things have changed at the library since this presentation was recorded. Research appointments are no longer required, some of the contact info for research services has changed, and we have expanded our digitization services.

Check the museum’s website for more information about in-person research, research services, photographic rights and reproductions, and our digitization services.

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The Forgotten “Negro Burying Ground” at Middletown Friends Meeting

Categories: Black History, Graves, Langhorne, Maps, Middletown, Quakerism, Racism, Slavery

Negro Burying Ground - Street View

Just southwest of the Middletown Friends meetinghouse lies a small burial ground purchased for the interment of African Americans 225 years ago, at a time when almost a third of the county’s black population remained enslaved. There are no headstones or any other visual indicators to distinguish this plot from the rest of the meeting’s shaded lawn, and like other Quaker meetings in the area, Middletown did not begin keeping burial records until after the Civil War. It is therefore unsurprising that this burial ground has been forgotten in the intervening centuries. The current overseer of the cemetery was unaware of its existence, and while a “Negro burying ground” is referred to in the meeting’s property records, I was not able to identify it’s specific location until I discovered the original deed for the land in the archive of the Friends Historical Library.

Throughout the colonial era, burial grounds were places of great social importance to enslaved Africans. For example, in Philadelphia the section of the Strangers’ Burial Ground (now Washington Square Park) that was set aside for blacks drew large crowds on Sundays, holidays, and fair days. During these gatherings the burial ground became an autonomous African cultural space where participants came together to perform African dances and to speak and sing in their native languages. This was not the case in rural Bucks County, where the small scale of slaveholding meant that the enslaved had few opportunities to interact with other Africans. Slaves were permitted to attend the fairs that were held twice each year Bristol, but only on the last day.

Records indicate that early Quaker settlers initially permitted the burial of Africans in their burial ground, but this was quickly curtailed. Middletown Monthly Meeting, located on the western border of Langhorne Borough, set aside a portion of their burial ground for blacks in the early 18th century, but the meeting vacillated with regard to their treatment of the African dead. Middletown Meeting segregated their burial ground in 1703, noting in their minutes, “There having been formerly some Negros Buryed in friends Burying Yard which they are not well satisfied with therefore Robert Heaton & Thomas Stackhouse are ordered to fence off that corner with as much more as they may see convenient, that friends burying place may be of itself from all others.” After the construction of a wall around the burial ground in 1734 the Friends reaffirmed their opposition to sharing their burial ground with African Americans, ultimately declaring in 1739, “this meeting having had the Matter under Consideration it is unanimously agreed that hereafter no Deceased Negros be Buried Within the walls of the graveyard Belonging to this meeting, & Adam Parker, Jonathan Woolston & Joseph Richardson are appointed to keep the keys of the Said Graveyard & take Care that none be Buried therein but such as they in the Meetings Behalf shall allow of.” The black residents of Bucks County would not have a dedicated burial ground again until the Society of Friends changed its stance on slavery in the late 18th century.

The acknowledgement by the Society of Friends that participation in the slave system violated their religious teachings also sparked a broader concern about the economic and spiritual well-being of African Americans. After Philadelphia Yearly Meeting banned slave ownership in 1776, they also added the treatment of free blacks to the list of religious queries that their constituent meetings were expected to address. Bucks County Quakers responded by appointing committees to meet with black families, holding meetings for worship for blacks, and eventually purchasing a small plot of land adjacent to Middletown Meeting as a “Negro burying ground” in 1791. This parcel measured sixteen and a half feet wide by 136 feet long, large enough for perhaps a few dozen burials. While the section allocated for blacks in 1703 was almost certainly meant to be used for the burial of slaves owned by members of the meeting, this small lot was purchased for the use of the free black community.

The meeting did not record the burials in this lot and few details about its use remain. The only documented burial that has been identified at present is that of Cato Adams, a free black man who resided in Middletown for a number of years before moving to Bristol. The will that Adams drafted in 1810 demonstrates the burial ground’s importance to the local black community. Although Adams had a number of children and grandchildren to consider when writing his will, he set aside five pounds “for the purpose of keeping in repair the Burying ground appropriated for the interment of black people near to the meeting.” He also left his “first day clothes” to his son. The use of the Quaker term “first day” rather than “Sunday” indicates that he may have attended meeting for worship at Middletown Meeting, although like most African Americans who worshipped with Quakers in this period he was not a member of the Society and does not appear in the meeting’s records. When Adams died in 1812, Orphans’ Court records related to the settlement of his estate show that his executors paid Isaac Gray, a founding member of the independent black Methodist group the Society of Colored Methodists, to dig his grave. The small lot purchased in 1791 was apparently approaching full capacity by 1816, when Middletown Meeting bought an additional lot for the burial of African Americans at the northeast corner of their property along what is now Green Street. This parcel constitutes the northern half of Mt. Olive Cemetery, which was used by Langhorne’s black community into the 20th century. Before the establishment of Bethlehem African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1817 these burial grounds were the only public spaces in Bucks County to which African Americans could claim a collective right.

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Although evidence is scarce, at least two other African-American burial grounds were created by Quaker meetings in the region. The first was Byberry Preparative Meeting, which established a small African-American burial ground in 1780. This burial ground is now part of Benjamin Rush State Park near the border between Northeast Philadelphia and Bensalem Township, only about four and a half miles away from Middletown Meeting. Joseph C. Martindale provides a brief account of this burial ground in his book A History of the Townships of Byberry and Moreland in Philadelphia (1876):

Previous to this time the colored people who died in the townships were generally buried in the orchards belonging to their masters or in the woods; but forty or fifty had been interred in a kind of cemetery for them, on the lands lately owned by Charles Walmsley. It was located in the field fronting the mansion house, not far from Watson Comly’s line. All traces of it have long since been destroyed, and hundreds have since passed over the spot not knowing that they were treading upon the graves of the long since dead. Another of these graveyards was on the farm lately owned by Mary Hillborn, where several slaves were buried. The exact spot is not now known. Many persons by this time had had their attention drawn to the matter, and efforts were made to secure a proper place for the burial of such people. Accordingly, in this year [1780], we find that Byberry Meeting purchased a lot of Thomas Townsend for a burying place for the blacks, and the practice of burying on private grounds was discontinued. The record says that the first person buried there was “Jim,” a negro belonging to Daniel Walton.

Later, after discussing the local potter’s field where white indigents were interred, he writes:

The graveyard for colored persons… is still kept for that purpose. Some years since a portion of this yard was plowed up, and most of the “little mounds” were leveled with the earth around, so that the exact spot where many of this race were buried can no longer be seen. What a pity that man should ever be willing to disturb the resting-places of the dead in order to add to his coffers! Of late years more care has been taken of this place, and it is now kept in good order by Byberry Meeting.

The only historical map that I’ve been able to locate that shows the Byberry African Burial Ground is the “Atlas of Greater Northeast Philadelphia” in Franklin’s Proposed Real Estate Atlases of Philadelphia, Vol. 7 (1953). The small lot is not identified as a burial ground, but the property boundaries are visible:

African American Burial Grounds at Middletown Friends Meeting

More detailed maps, photographs, and other documentation are provided in Byberry Librarian Helen File’s paper on the burial ground and an archaeological study of the site performed by the US General Services Administration in 1993.

The second Quaker meeting in the area to establish an African-American burial ground was Buckingham Friends Meeting, which laid out a small section of their existing graveyard for that purpose in 1807. They report in their minutes:

We have laid out a small portion of Ground within the large Grave Yard at Buckingham to Bury Black People in, Beginning at a stone standing at the North Corner of the Old enclosure, thence N 50 [degrees] E two Perches to a Stone, thence N 40 [degrees] W to a Stone standing at the back Wall of the Yard And to be comprehended by these two lines, the Back Wall, and the Foundation of the Old Wall. The Meeting Uniting therewith, directs Burying in rows beginning at the North End…

Unfortunately the exact location of this plot is unclear, but it is probably located in the northwest section of the current burial ground. Further examination of the meeting’s property records may yield a more exact location. While the author of the Buckingham Meeting’s National Register of Historic Places nomination claims that “The African American burials here were made unnecessary within a few years” after Mount Gilead African Methodist Episcopal Church was constructed nearby in 1837, a recent archaeological survey of the site conducted by Meagan Ratini suggests that the burials may not have taken place there until the 1860s. If that is the case, the African-American burial ground at Buckingham Meeting may have been in use for half a century.