A FRIEND.
About twenty miles from the line that divides Maryland and Pennsylvania, there stands, in the latter State, a retired farm-house, which was erected more than fifty years ago by Samuel Wilson, a Quaker of Quakers.
His was a character so rare in its quaintness and its nobility, that it might serve as a theme for a pen more practised and more skilful than the one that now essays to portray it.
Samuel Wilson was by nature romantic. When comparatively young, he made a pedestrian tour to the Falls of Niagara, stopping upon his return journey, and hiring with a farmer to recruit his exhausted funds; and when he had passed his grand climacteric, the enthusiasm of his friendship for the young, fair, and virtuous, still showed the poetic side of his character.
Veneration induced him to cherish the relics of his ancestry,—not only the genealogical tree, which traced the Wilsons back to the time of William Penn, and the marriage certificates of his father and grandfather, according to the regular order of the Society of Friends; but such more humble and familiar heirlooms as the tall eight-day clock, and the high bookcase upon a desk and chest of drawers, that had been his father’s, as well asthe strong kitchen-chairs and extremely heavy fire-irons of his grandfather.
To this day there stands beside the Wilson farm-house a stone taken from one of the buildings erected by Samuel’s father, and preserved as an heirloom. Upon it the great-grandchildren read nearly the following inscription:
“James Wilson, ejus manus scripsit. [His hand wrote.] Deborah Wilson, 5 mo. 23d, 1757.”
Samuel Wilson, having been trained from his earliest years to that plainness of speech in which the Discipline requires that Friends bring up those under their care, not only discarded in speaking the simple titles in use in common conversation, but did not himself desire to be addressed as Mr. Wilson.
A colored woman, the wife of one of his tenants, said that he refused to answer her when she thus spoke to him.
A pleasant euphemism was generally employed by these people in addressing him. He and his wife were “Uncle Samuel” and “Aunt Anna” to their numerous dependents.
The apparel of Samuel and Anna was of the strict pattern of their own religious sect. To employ a figure of speech, it was the “wedding-garment,” without which, at that time and place, they would not have become elders in their society, and thus been entitled to sit with ministers, etc., upon the rising seats that faced the rest of the meeting.
But the plainness of Uncle Samuel was not limited to the fashion of his own garments. When Aunt Anna had made for her son a suit of domestic cloth, dyed brownwith the hulls of the black walnut, and had arrayed him in his new clothes, of which the trousers were made roomy behind,—or, as the humorist says, “baggy in the reverse,”—she looked upon him with maternal pride and fondness, and exclaimed, “There’s my son!”
For this ejaculation she was not only reproved at the time by her husband, but in after-years, whenever he heard her, as he thought, thus fostering in the mind of their dear and only child pride in external appearance, he repeated the expression, “There’s my son!” which saying conveyed a volume of reproof.
From this and other circumstances of the kind, it may be supposed that Friend Wilson was a cold or bitter ascetic. But he possessed a vein of humor, and could be gently and pleasantly rallied when he seemed to run into extremes. But, though his intellect was good, the moral sentiments predominated in his character. His head was lofty and arched. His wants were very few; he possessed an ample competence, and he had no ambition to enter upon the fatiguing chase after riches. He disliked acquisitive men as much as the latter despised him. “I want so little for myself,” he said, “I think that I might be allowed to give something away.”
Sometimes—but rarely—a little abruptness was seen in his behavior. He had the manners of a gentleman by birth,—tender and true, open to melting charity, thinking humbly of himself, and respecting others.
The vein of humor to which I have alluded prompted the reply which he made on a certain occasion to a mechanic or laboring man employed in his own family. In this section of Lancaster County the farming population is composed principally of a laborious and in some respectsa humble-minded people, who sit at table and eat with their hired people of both sexes.
The same custom was pursued by Samuel and Anna; but, as their hired people were mostly colored, they sometimes offended the prejudices or tastes of many who were not accustomed to this equality of treatment, which was maintained by several families of Friends. The white hired man to whom I have alluded, when he perceived who were seated at the table, hesitated or refused to sit down among them. As soon as Samuel was conscious of the difficulty, for which indeed his mind was not unprepared, he thus spoke aloud to his wife: “Anna, will thee set a plate at that other table for this stranger? He does not want to sit down with us.” And his request was quietly obeyed. The man who was thus set apart probably became tired of this peculiar seclusion, for he did not stay long at the Quaker homestead.
I think that Samuel was also in a humorous mood when he called that unpretending instrument, the accordion,—from which his daughter-in-law was striving one evening to draw forth musical sounds,—“Mary’s fiddle.” But, indeed, he left the house and went to call upon a neighbor, so greatly did he partake of that prejudice which was felt by most Friends against music.
The Discipline asks whether Friends are punctual to their promises; and (to quote a very different work) Fielding tells us that Squire Allworthy was not only careful to keep his greater engagements, but remembered also his promises to visit his friends.
Anna Wilson on one occasion having thoughtlessly made such a promise,—as, indeed, those in society frequently do when their friends say, “Come and see us,”—wasoften reminded of it in after-years by her husband. When he heard her lightly accepting such invitations, he would reprove her by saying in private, “When is thee going to see Benjamin Smith?”—the neighbor to whom the ancient promise was still unfulfilled.
The hospitality which the Scriptures enjoin was practised to a remarkable degree by Samuel and Anna. It has always been customary in their religious society to entertain Friends who come from a distance to attend meetings, and those travelling as preachers, etc. But the Wilson homestead was a place of rest and entertainment for many more than these. It stood not far from the great highway laid out by William Penn from Philadelphia westward, and here called the “Old Road.” Friends travelling westward in their own conveyance would stop and refresh themselves and their horses at the hospitable mansion, and would further say to their own friends, “Thee’d better stop at Samuel Wilson’s. Tell him I told thee to stop.” A further and greater extent of hospitality I shall mention hereafter.
The Discipline asks whether Friends are careful to keep those under their charge from pernicious books and from the corrupt conversation of the world; and I have heard that Samuel Wilson was grieved when his son began to go to the post-office and take out newspapers. Hitherto the principal periodical that came to the house wasThe Genius of Universal Emancipation, a little paper issued by that pioneer, Benjamin Lundy, who was born and reared in the Society of Friends. It does not appear, however, that the class of publications brought from the little village post-office to the retired farm-house were of the class usually called pernicious.They wereThe Liberator,The Emancipator, and others of the same order.
Samuel himself became interested in them, but never to the exclusion of the “Friends’ Miscellany,” a little set of volumes containing religious anecdotes of Friends. These volumes were by him highly prized and frequently read.
It has been said that he was a humorist; and perhaps he was partly jesting when he suggested that his infant granddaughter should be named Tabitha. The mother of the little one, on her part, suggested Helen.
“He-len!” the grandfather broke out in reply; “does thee know whoshewas?” thus expressing his antipathy to the character of the notorious beauty of Greece. He did not insist, however, on endowing the precious newly-born infant with that peculiar name which is by interpretation Dorcas, the name of her who, in apostolic times, was full of good works and alms-deeds.
Friend Wilson shared the Quaker disregard for the great holidays of the church. To the colored people around him, who had been brought up at the South, where Christmas is so great a festival,—where it was so great a holiday for them especially,—it must have been a sombre change to live in a family where the day passed nearly like other working-days. One of the colored men, however, who had started at the time of the great festival totake Christmas, was seen, before long, coming back; “for,” said he, “Massa Wilson don’t ’prove on’t nohow.”
Among the lesser peculiarities of Samuel Wilson was his objection to having his picture taken,—an objection,however, which is felt to this day by some strict people belonging to other religious societies, but probably on somewhat different grounds.
One who warmly loved and greatly respected Friend Wilson took him once to the rooms of an eminent daguerreotypist, hoping that while he engaged the venerable man in looking at the objects around the room, the artist might be able to catch a likeness. But Samuel suspected some artifice, and no picture was taken. Some time after, however, the perseverance of his friend was rewarded by obtaining an excellent oil-painting of the aged man, from whom a reluctant consent to sit for his likeness had at length been obtained. It was remarked, however, that the expression of the face in the painting was sorrowful, as if the honorable man was grieved at complying with a custom which he had long stigmatized as idolatrous,—as idolatry of the perishing body.
Although at the time of the great division in the Society of Friends Samuel Wilson had decidedly taken the part of Elias Hicks, yet was he seldom or never heard to discuss those questions of dogmatic theology which some have thought were involved in that contest.
Samuel probably held, with many others of his Society, that the highest and surest guide which man possesses here is that Light which has been said to illumine every man that comes into the world; that next in importance is a rightly inspired gospel ministry, and afterward the Scriptures of truth. One evening, when certain mechanics in his employ were resting from their labors in the old-fashioned kitchen, he fell into conversation with them on matters of religion, and shocked one of his family, as he entered the sitting-room, by a suddendeclaration of opinion. It was probably the uncommon warmth of his manner which produced this effect, quite as much as or more than the words that he spoke, which were nearly as follows: “There’s no use talking about it; the only religion in the world that’s worth anything is what makes men do what is right and leave off doing what is wrong.”
As far as was possible for one with so much fearless independence of thought and action, Samuel Wilson maintained the testimony of Friends against war. Not only did he suffer his corn to be seized in the field rather than voluntarily to pay the military taxes of the last war with Great Britain, but he went to what may appear to some a laughable extreme, in forbidding his young son’s going to the turnpike to see the grand procession which was passing near their house, escorting General Lafayette on his last visit to this country. He was not, however, alone in this. I have heard of other decided Friends who declined to swell the ovation to a man who was especially distinguished as a military hero. But we shall see hereafter that Friend Wilson met with circumstances which tried his non-resistant opinions further than they would bear.
The distinctive trait of his character, however,—that trait which made him exceptional,—was his attachment to the people of color. It was in entertaining fugitives from slavery that he showed the wide hospitality already referred to; and in this active benevolence he was excelled by few in our country. He inherited from his father this love of man; but I have imagined that the hostility to slavery was made broad and deep in his soul by removing, with the rest of his family, in hisyouth, from Pennsylvania into Delaware, and seeing the bondage which was suffered by colored people in the latter State contrasted with what he had seen in the former. Be that as it may, no sooner was he a householder than his door was ever open to those who were escaping from the South, coming by stealth and in darkness, having travelled in the slave States from the house of one free negro to another, and in Pennsylvania from Quaker to Quaker, until in later times the hostility to slavery increased in our community so far that others became agents of this underground railroad, and other routes were opened.
When the Wilson family came down in the morning, they saw around them these strange sable or yellow travellers (“strangers,” they were called in the family), who, having arrived during the night, had been received by some wakeful member of the household.
What feelings filled the hearts of the exiles! Alone, at times, having left all that they had ever loved of persons or of places, fearful, tired, foot-sore, throwing themselves upon the charity and the honor of a man unknown to them save by name and the direction which they had received to him, as one trustworthy.
Sometimes they came clothed in the undyed woollen cloth that showed so plainly to one experienced in the matter, the region of its manufacture; the heavy, strong cloth which had delighted the wearer’s heart when he received the annual Christmas suit with which his master furnished him, but which was now too peculiar and striking for him safely to wear. Women and children came too, and sometimes in considerable numbers.
When they had eaten and partaken of the necessaryrepose, they would communicate to Friend Wilson, in a secure situation, some particulars of their former history, especially the names and residences of the masters from whom they had escaped.
Some years after he had begun to entertain these strangers, Friend Wilson commenced a written record of those who came to him, and whence and from whom they had escaped. This list is estimated to have finally contained between five and six hundred names.
The next care was to bestow new titles upon the fugitives, that they might never be known by their former names to the pursuer and the betrayer.
From what has been already said, it may be supposed that these names were not always selected for their euphony or æsthetic associations. One tall, finely-built yellow man, who trembled when he was questioned in the sitting-room, lest his conversation about his old home and the free wife whom he longed to have brought to him should be overheard in the kitchen, expressed to me his dissatisfaction with his new name—Simon. “I never knowed anybody named that,” he said. His beautiful bright wife—bright in thecoloredsense,—that is, bright-colored, or nearly white,—was secretly and safely brought to him, and nursed him through that fatal disease which made him of no value in the man-market,—the market which had been the great horror of his life. The particulars Friend Wilson collected concerning his humble charge the venerable man entered in his day-book, in a place especially assigned to them. If this record were still existing, I should, perhaps, be able to tell what name the fortunate and unfortunate Simon had been obliged torenounce. This record, however, is lost, as I shall mention hereafter. If the services of any of these fugitives were needed, within-doors or without, and the master’s pursuit was not supposed to be imminent, they were detained for a while, or perhaps became permanent residents in the neighborhood; otherwise, they were forwarded at night to Friends living nearer Philadelphia. Of these, two other families willing to receive the poor exiles lived about twelve miles farther on.
The house and farm were generally pretty well stocked with colored people, who were a wonder to the neighbors of the Wilson family; for these were in a great measure “Pennsylvania Dutch,”—a people anxious to do as much work with their own hands and by the hands of their own family as possible, in order to avoid expense. It is a remarkable circumstance that, although Samuel Wilson during thirty years or more entertained the humble strangers, and although he received so large a number, only one of them was seized upon his “plantation” and taken back to slavery. This was owing partly to the secluded situation of his house, and partly to the prudence and discretion that he exercised. “He was crafty,” it has been said.
Neither did he suffer any legal expenses, such as lawsuits, from the slaveholders who came in pursuit of their fleeing bondmen. Two friends who lived not far from him, and who prosecuted kidnappers, had their barns burned, and others, of whom he had knowledge, suffered great pecuniary loss in consequence of their assisting runaway slaves. He, however, limited his care to receiving, entertaining, and forwarding those who came to him in person, and never undertook any measures ofoffence,—any border raids, so to speak,—such as sending secretly into Maryland and Virginia for the relatives and friends of fugitives who were still living in those States as slaves. The one person of whom I have spoken, who was recaptured from the Wilson farm, was a young girl of fifteen or sixteen. Samuel and Anna were absent from home at the time, gone on a little journey, such as they frequently took, to attend their own monthly and quarterly meetings; assisting to preserve the discipline and order of the Society of Friends. The men who came in pursuit of the young girl told her that her friends, who had run away too, had concluded to go back South again; and the poor child, under these circumstances, could hardly do anything but go with the beguilers; not, however, to find the friends whom she expected.
There was also a man who was very near being taken,—a man who had “come away,” to use the brief euphemism sometimes employed in the Wilson family in speaking of fugitives from slavery. He escaped by having gone down the creek or adjacent mill-stream to set his muskrat-traps. This creek where it ran by the house was well wooded; therefore the colored man, looking up to the house, could see the white strangers without being seen himself. With what trembling did he see that they were persons whom he “knowed in Murrland,” as he expressed it! However, the friendly woods sheltered him, while Samuel at the house was talking with the slaveholder or his agents,—kidnappers, as the Wilsons called them.
The men told Samuel that they had come after a runaway nigger,—black, five feet ten inches high, lost oneof his front teeth, etc. To this description Friend Wilson listened in silence. I do not know what he would have done had he been directly questioned by them, for the different items suited him of the muskrats,—the man who had gone to the woods. But during Samuel’s continued silence they went on to say, “He’s a very ornary nigger; no dependence to be placed on him nohow.” “There is no man here,” rejoined Samuel, greatly relieved, “that answers the description.” “We’ve very good reason to think he came here,” said one; “we got word very direct; reckon he’s lyin’ around here. Hain’t there been no strange nigger here?”
“There was a colored man here, but he has gone away; I don’t know as he will ever come back again.” For, from the man’s protracted absence, he doubtless had some idea of his having seen his pursuers, and having sought shelter.
“Tell him that his master says that if he will only come back again, down to Baltimore County, he sha’n’t be whipped, nor sold, nor nuthin’, but everything shall be looked over.”
“I’ll tell him what you say,” said Samuel, “if ever I see him again; but,” he added, regaining his accustomed independence, “I’ll tell him, too, that if I was in his place I’d never go back to you again.”
The men left, and under cover of the friendly night the fugitive sought a more secure hiding place.
There was one heroic black man in whom Samuel Wilson felt an abiding interest. When Jimmy Franklin told the tale of his perilous escapes and recaptures in the States of Maryland, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida,—when he showed the shot stillremaining in his legs—shot that had been fired at him as he ran, and, working through to the front, were perceived through the skin, like warts upon his legs,—the lads of the family looking and listening had their sympathies enkindled in such a manner as could never entirely die out. One of them, in after-years, was asked:
“How does thee account for that man’s persistent love of freedom? What traits of character did he possess that would account for his doing so much more than others to escape from the far South?”
“I don’t know,” was the reply, in the freedom of familiar conversation. “What was the reason that Fulton invented his steamboat? or that Bacon wrote his System? or that Napier invented logarithms?
“This man was a genius,—a greater man in his way than those I spoke of. If he had had education, and had been placed in circumstances to draw him out, he would have been the leader in some great movement among men.”
The narrative of James Franklin was written by a dear friend of him whom I call Samuel Wilson, but is supposed to have been burned when the mob destroyed Pennsylvania Hall.
It was in relation to these fugitives that Samuel sometimes forgot for a while his strictly peaceful principles; for there were to be found among the men of color those who could be induced to betray to the pursuers their fugitive brethren, giving such information as would lead to their recapture; or, if they should escape this, to their being obliged to abandon their resting-places and to flee again for safety.
It was in talking of some such betrayer that SamuelWilson said to his colored friends, “What would you do with that man, if you had him on Mill-Creek bridge?” (a lofty structure by which the railroad crossed the adjacent stream,) thus hinting at a swift mode of punishment, and one that might possibly have been a fatal one.
Though with an unskilled pen, yet have I endeavored to describe that quiet family among whom the fugitive-slave law of 1850 fell like a blow. Samuel Wilson had ample opportunity to study its provisions and its peculiarities from the newspapers of which I have before spoken, and from the conversation which these journals called forth.
This horrible act gave the commissioner before whom the colored man was tried five dollars only if the man went free from the tribunal, but ten dollars if he was sent into slavery. Hitherto, men had suffered in assisting the fugitiveto escape; now it was made a penal offence to refuse to lend active assistance in apprehending him.
Friend Wilson had read much of fines and imprisonment, having studied the sufferings of the people called Quakers. (Even a lady of so high a standing as she who became the wife of George Fox was not exempt from many years’ imprisonment, nor from persecution at the hands of her own son.) Friend Wilson was about seventy-five years old when the fugitive-slave bill was passed. In spite of his advanced years, however, after sorrowful reflection upon it, he said to one of his household, “I have made up my mind to go to jail.”
That hospitality and charity which had so long been the rule of his life he was not now prepared to foregothrough fear of any penalties which the law would inflict upon him.
It was while suffering from the infirmities of advanced years, and from the solicitude which this abominable enactment had called forth, that Samuel destroyed the record which he had kept for so many years of the slaves that had taken refuge with him. This record was contained in about forty pages of his day-book, and these he cut out and burned. How would they now be prized had they not thus been lost!
Samuel Wilson saw, with the prophetic eye of faith and hope, what he did not live to behold in the flesh,—the abolition of slavery. His mortal remains repose beside the Quaker meeting-house where he so long ministered as an elder. No monumental stone marks that humble resting-place; but these simple lines of mine, that portray a character so rare, may serve for an affectionate memorial.