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New Jersey’s Underground Railroad

Presented by Rick Geffken

Historian Rick Geffken will present on the topic of the Underground railroad in New Jersey.

Enslaved people had been running away to freedom since before the United States was even a country. It was the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, however, that incentivized bounty hunters to find the escapees and return them to their Southern masters for handsome monetary reward.

The term ‘underground railroad’ came about in the early 1830s when the ‘owner’ of Tice Davids, a man who escaped from Kentucky to freedom in Ohio, blamed the ‘underground railroad’ for his loss. After that, railroad jargon was adopted to describe the people and the stops involved in shepherding the enslaved to freedom. Private homes, African Methodist Episcopal churches, and schoolhouses, all operated by “stationmasters”, served as hiding places for the freedom seekers. The sites frequently contained secret rooms, compartments, and crawl spaces where the fugitives could eat, rest, and hide when necessary.

Montgomery has no documented sites on the Underground railroad although nearby municipalities of
Princeton and Hopewell do.

The Van Harlingen Historical Society and the Somerset County Library System is proud to host this unique program in collaboration. 

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