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(Lancaster Sunday News, March 22, 1961)

'Underground Railroad' Stop Holds Pre-Civil War Proof

Old Home Near Bird-in-Hand Has Book With Its Story As
"Station And Posters That Escaped Slaves Brought"

    In this year of the Civil War Centennial's beginning, there will be much said about the "Underground Railroad" which spirited slaves out of the South to freedom.
    Almost every old farmhouse with a root cellar is solemnly proclaimed these days as a station on the underground, the authority being usually handed-down tradition. Few places have documented proof of their use in combating the "peculiar institution" of slavery in the year before the war.
    There are some, however, with more than tradition to support their claims. One is the well-known Brubaker Brothers duck farm near Bird-in-Hand. The old homestead there is pictured in a rare book, "History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania." It was written by R.C. Smedley, M.D., who on his deathbed asked that it be edited by Robert Purvis and Marianna Gibbons. They had it published at the office of the Lancaster Journal in 1883. A rebound copy has been preserved at the Brubaker farm.

GRANT FROM PENNS     Beech Dale Farm, as it was christened when it was obtained as a 1,000-acre grant from the Penns, has been handed down by family inheritance from its beginnings. The old house, of stone and brick and frame additions, looks today much as it did when sketched for the engraving in the 1883 book. The Brubaker brothers, J. Harold and Clarence N., live in the "new" house,' which contains many family mementos including a half-century old photograph of C.N. Brubaker driving a six-horse team loaded with limestone used in the construction of the house.
    Framed on the walls are several fliers issued offering rewards for escaped slaves. One of these, dated 1844, bears the notation, "The boys brought this themselves," and the initials D.G.
    That would be Daniel Gibbons, a hero of 54 Dr. Smedley's book, Daniel, though a peaceable Quaker, was quite at home in the lion's den of abolitionism. It was a family tradition. Dr. Smedley recounts how Daniel's father James, born near Goshen in Chester County in 1734, took his bride in 1756 into the "far wilds" of Lancaster County. As early as 1789, sitting as a magistrate in Wilmington, James Gibbons had a Negro brought before him by a party of kidnappers. Then they tried to "carry their case through bluster' James told them that "if they did not behave themselves he would commit them," and freed the captive. In the flowery language of the day, the doctor thus describes Daniel and his wife.
    Daniel Gibbons was a man of large firmness, independence of mind, clearness of perception, discreet philanthropy, conscientious, affectionate in his family, and a devout member of the Society of Friends, in which he was an elder for twenty-five years prior to his death. SOLD LIKE CATTLE     "His wife, Hannah, was eminently endowed with fine intellectual abilities, quick perception, excellent judgment, affectionate and amiable in disposition, fond of home and its endearments, and hence an honest sympathizer with the poor slaves whose homes and homeloves were so often severed by their being sold as cattle in the mart. She was also a sincere Christian and a consistent member of the Society of Friends. in which she, like her husband, was an elder during the last twenty-five years of her life. Thus were they adapted by nature to fulfill the life- mission in which Providence had called them to labor conjointly.
    Just how devoted the couple was to the cause is shown by the fact that what they were doing was dangerous, as well as illegal. Not only were slaveowners entitled to come in and, with the aid of a U.S. Marshall, search for their "property." They could also count on the cooperation of people north of the MasonDixon Line who had no compunctions about returning an escaped slave to his master and collecting the bounty offered. This might amount to several hundred dollars.
    Once Daniel is reported to have come upon a Lancaster constable skulking through his woods with a rifle. Inquiring whether he'd shot anything, Daniel informed him that he might possibly find some quail or sparrows, but, "Thee won't find any blackbirds." Both 55 knew what he meant, and the constable went elsewhere.
    Hannah herself cared for one poor fugitive who developed smallpox.
    The book notes that Daniel assisted fugitives from the time he attained manhood until his death in 1853 a period of 56 years. He is believed to have helped some 1,000 fugitives. Of these, only one or two were taken from his house, such was his ability at concealment. In pursuit of one of them, a man named Abraham Boston who came to him in about 1818 and was kidnapped after being at the farm for some time, Daniel traveled to Baltimore but was unable to find him. A disability of the feet and legs ordinarily kept him from traveling much, but didn't affect the agility of mind by which he customarily outwitted his adversaries.
    "When a tap was heard at the window at night," Dr. Smedley writes, "all the family knew what it meant. The fugitives were taken to the barn; and in the morning were, brought to the house separately, and each was asked his name, and what name he proposed to take, as Daniel gave them all new names, and from what part of the country he came. These questions with the answer to each were recorded in a book which gradually swelled to quite a large volume. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law he burned it.
    If the masters were not in hot pursuit, Daniel would find work for the fugitives in the neighborhood. If capture was threatening, the Negroes would he hidden in field or barn - or in corn-shocks in the autumn then taken to the Reading turnpike and hurried to the next station. Before 1827 this was the home of a Friend named Jackson in what was known a "The Forest" in Robinson Twp., Berks County. Later they were sent to Thomas Bonsall of Wagontown, Lindley Coates of Sadsbury and others. DECOYS FOILED     Decoys or pretended runaways were often sent to Daniel to try and gain secrets of the Underground Railroad route, but he always seemed to see through them. one man came to ask about buying a horse. Daniel watched him and noticed how he observed a Negro at work in the fields. When a constable arrived from Lancaster the next day, the fugitive was gone.
    One day slave hunters rapped at Daniel's front door. While he talked with them there, his wife slipped a fugitive out the back door and under an inverted rain 56 hogshead. Daniel then politely accompanied the slavers through his house. Daniel's son, Dr. Joseph Gibbons, assisted his father and succeeded him as the third generation of the family to work as a "manager" on the Underground Railroad.
    The writer dates the beginning of the system as 1904 (sic)2 and the place Columbia. The people of the town, chiefly Friends and their descendants, became indignant at some cases of kidnapping and shooting of escaped slaves and started assisting them to reach part of the country farther removed from slave territory. COLUMBIA WAS GOAL     Columbia thus became the goal of many a fugitive slave. The first case of an attempted kidnapping of an escaped slave is supposed to have been at Columbia, at the home of Gen. Thomas Boude in 1804. He bought a young slave named Stephen Smith and freed him. Later the young man's mother escaped from her owner - who lived just south of Harrisburg - and came to Boude's to work. A woman described as a "spinster" rode up one day and told Mrs. Smith to "pack her duds and come along," Gen. Boude ordered the woman to leave, and later purchased Mrs. Smith and manumitted her too.
    A Virginia planter about the same time manumitted his 56 slaves, and after two years of litigation by his heirs, the Virginia legislature and courts decreed they were free. They were all brought to Columbia in wagons.
    William Wright of Columbia sometimes dressed up escaped men slaves in women's clothes and sent them on to Daniel Gibbons.
    The Negroes of Columbia, the book records, once swooped down on a slave-catcher named Isaac Brooks, bore him through deep snow to the back part of town, stripped him and whipped him soundly with hickory withes. He didn't come back.
    Dr. Smedley reminds history that, though Columbia was the birthplace of the Underground Railroad, there were many deviations of route and personnel over a period of years.
    York and Gettysburg were the first stations over the "line." Stations were located about 10 miles part. Gettysburg sent some of its fugitives to Harrisburg, some to Columbia. The later would usually follow the "railroad" across Lancaster, Chester, Berks and Bucks counties. Smedley lists several dozen names of regulars on the line. He notes that some slaves crossed the river near Havre-de- Grace and were forwarded by Joseph Smith, Oliver Furniss and others through Lancaster County. Still more came via Wilmington. The routes branched and interlaced through this part of the country, for the confusion of pursuers.
    Dr. Smedley confirms the traditional origin of the name of the apparatus. During the early years, the trail of the fugitive was often traced as far as Columbia, then utterly lost. one pursuer opined that, "There must be an underground railroad somewhere," and the term was born. Though owners of some country homes are fond of showing off old root cellars as "part of a cave used on the Underground Railroad," it was actually mostly above- ground.
    Until they reached the first friendly "railroaders," the fugitives used just one guide - the North Star.

FOOTNOTE
1. J. Harold Brubaker lived in the "new" limestone house; Clarence N. Brubaker lived in Bird-in-Hand.
2. Date actually 1804.