the way of Mrs. Griffing. She drove me away, but called out, “Take that road,” and pointed to it. Further on I met Harrison Smith, who had a load of wood which he said was for Deacon Read, the man I was looking for.
I reached Deep River at last, weary and frightened. I called at Deacon Read’s, told him my circumstances and gave him my name as Daniel Fisher. All this was in secret. The good deacon immediately told me that I must nevermore be known as Daniel Fisher, but must take the name of “William Winters,” the name which I have borne to this day. He furthermore told me that I must thereafter wear a wig at all times and in all places. After that I worked at different times for Ambrose Webb and Judge Warner in Chester, and for Deacon Stevens in Deep River, getting along very nicely, though always afraid of being taken by day or by night and carried again to the South.
In spite of Winters’ anxiety, he was relatively secure in Deep River. In those years it was “a sort of out-of-the-way location and all Abolitionist,” which made it “a pretty safe refuge for runaway slaves.”4 It was largely self-contained and self-supporting; there was no Valley Railroad, no Shore Line; even the steamers, recently introduced on the river, ran at inconvenient hours. “The first colored man there,” a native wrote in later years, “was Billy Winters, a real Christian man, a runaway slave… . We boys flocked to see him carry up from the brook a large tub of water on his head without spilling any. Deacon Read took Billy to his home, and he always sat at meals with the family.”5
This domestic arrangement was quite in line with Deacon Read’s reputation as a “very generous and public spirited” man who had a significant role in the growth of a “thoroughly democratic village,”6 where the word “servant” was never used. Read, in fact, was for years an active stationmaster on the Underground Railroad, like Judge Ely Warner and his son Jonathan in Chester. In such an atmosphere, Uncle Billy Winters lived a life that was apparently happy enough. He was a great favorite among the village’s children, and with their help taught himself to read, going about among them with a spelling book and asking them what was this word or that.7 The street on which he lived is known to this day as Winters Avenue.
If the Underground Railroad operated adequately for William Winters in 1828, it ran even more smoothly ten years later when James Lindsey Smith journeyed over its tracks from Philadelphia north. But he had many fears and difficulties before he reached that entry port of freedom. Smith was born in Virginia, where he passed his early years as a slave. In boyhood he suffered a serious injury when a timber was dropped on his knee; through his master’s indifference he did not receive proper treatment, with the result that he was lamed for life.8
In spite of this handicap, Smith made a break for freedom in 1838, along with two other slaves, Lorenzo and Zip. At their suggestion, he joined them in commandeering a boat on the Cone River, by which they meant to escape to Maryland and beyond. It was quite calm as they started on a Sunday, but once out in the bay they found a good wind. With sails set, they made brisk time as they headed up Chesapeake Bay, and on the Tuesday night they landed near Frenchtown, Maryland. “We there hauled the boat up as best we could, and fastened her,” wrote James in after years, “then took our bundles and started on foot. Zip, who had been a sailor from a boy, knew the country and understood where to go. He was afraid to go through Frenchtown, so we took a circuitous route, until we came to the road that leads from Frenchtown to New Castle. Here I became so exhausted that I was obliged to rest; we went into the woods, which were near-by, and laid down on the ground and slept for an hour or so, then we started for New Castle.”
As they walked on, however, James found it difficult to keep up with his companions, who occasionally had to stop and wait until he caught up with them. Finally Zip said, “Lindsey, we shall have to leave you for our enemies are after us, and if we wait for you we shall all be taken; so it would be better for one to be taken than all three.” Then, telling James the roads he should follow, they went off and left him behind. James was in despair:
When I lost sight of them, I sat down by the road-side and wept, prayed, and wished myself back where I first started. I thought it was all over with me forever; I thought one while I would turn back as far as Frenchtown, and give myself up to be captured; then I thought that would not do; a voice spoke to me, “not to make a fool of myself, you have got so far from home (about two hundred and fifty miles), keep on towards freedom, and if you are taken, let it be headed towards freedom.” I then took fresh courage and pressed my way onward towards the north with anxious heart.
Going on in the darkness, James toward morning was following a railroad track through a cut in a high hill. Here he had a terrifying experience:
I heard a rumbling sound that seemed to me like thunder; it was very dark, and I was afraid that we were to have a storm; but this rumbling kept on and did not cease as thunder does, until at last my hair on my head began to rise; I thought the world was coming to an end. I flew around and asked myself, “What is it?” At last it came so near to me it seemed as if I could feel the earth shake from under me, till at last the engine came around the curve. I got sight of the fire and the smoke; said I, “It’s the devil, it’s the devil!” It was the first engine I had ever seen or heard of; I did not know there was anything of the kind in the world, and being in the night, made it seem a great deal worse than it was; I thought my last days had come; I shook from head to foot as the monster came rushing on towards me. The bank was very steep near where I was standing; a voice says to me, “Fly up the bank”; I made a desperate effort, and by the aid of the bushes and trees which I grasped, I reached the top of the bank, where there was a fence; I rolled over the fence and fell to the ground, and the last words I remember saying were, that “the devil is about to burn me up, farewell! farewell!”
How long he lay there James did not know, but when he came to himself the “devil” had vanished. Despite his fright, he resumed his journey, shaking and trembling. Soon after sunrise he heard the rumbling sound again, and the “devil” came rushing toward him once more. As the infernal machine charged by, James could see through the coach windows the souls whom the fiend was carrying to hell. They were all white; not a colored face among them. As the train thundered out of sight, James pressed on in relief, for it was obvious that the devil was not interested in him even though in his former home he had been “a great hand to abuse the old gentleman.”
By this time he was famished, and despite a close search of the ground he could find nothing fit to eat. At length he came to a farmhouse, where he screwed up his courage to ask for food despite his fear that he might well be turned over to slave-catchers. However, the farm people accepted without question his statement that he was going to visit friends in Philadelphia. For twenty-five cents they gave him a hearty breakfast, and he went on, feeling like a new man.
By noon he reached New Castle, where he ran into Lorenzo and Zip once more. Together, they went to the waterfront, where they learned that a boat made the short run to Philadelphia twice daily. When the afternoon sailing was ready to leave, all three went aboard. James said:
How we ever passed through New Castle as we did without being detected is more than I can tell, for it was one of the worst slave towns in the country, and the law was such that no steamboat, or anything else, could take a colored person to Philadelphia without first proving his or her freedom. What makes it so astonishing to me is, that we walked aboard right in sight of everybody, and no one spoke a word to us. We went to the captain’s office and bought our tickets, without a word being said to us.
At Philadelphia the three parted on the dock. Lorenzo and Zip took a ship to Europe; James walked into the city, not knowing where he was going. Coming to a shoe store, he went in and asked the white proprietor for work as a shoemaker. The man told him No, but suggested that he might find work at another shoeshop up the street, whose owner was a colored man named Simpson.
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