Local building a key piece of Underground Railroad

Please consider the 19th century anti-slavery vigor that electrified up to 200 listeners via moving speeches of the country’s greatest liberators in the hallowed Abolition Hall in Plymouth Meeting — from the foremost black leader and ex-slave Frederick Douglass to the brilliant Quaker preacher Lucretia Mott of nearby Cheltenham and the legendary William Lloyd Garrison of Boston, Mass.

Their sanctified voices echoed around the country during the mid-1800s and as the Civil War (from 1861 to 1865) raged to abolish slavery and save the American Republic, which makes opposition to a plan to maximize the historical relevance of Abolition Hall and related buildings, as well as land, baffling and shortsighted, to say the least.

Buttressed by the heart of local abolitionists — many of them free blacks and white Quakers — such nationally acclaimed antislavery warriors supported one of the most impressive routes of the Underground Railroad led by the likes of Abolition Hall’s builder, George Corson, who abhorred the slavery that was so familiar to such nearby Norristown African Americans as Daniel Ross, a very courageous and close associate of Corson’s.

“A Quaker limemaker, quarrier, and agent of the Underground Railroad, George Corson … was a well connected conductor” of the system that ushered slaves to freedom throughout the north and into Canada, often utilizing the many acres of land and nearby structures adjacent to Abolition Hall, including his own residence.

“He was a founder of the Plymouth Meeting AntiSlavery Society” who was “aided by his wife, orator Martha Maulsby Corson …,” notes Mary Ellen Snodgrass’ book, “The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations.”

Bravely, in a landmark case, “[o]n August 29, 1855, George Corson” helped to escort with other abolitionists “Jane Johnson to a Philadelphia federal courtroom to testify on behalf of Passmore Williamson, a Quaker attorney found guilty of [heroically] abducting Johnson from her master, North Carolina planter John Hill Wheeler.”

With the assistance of the “father of the Underground Railroad,” William Still of Philadelphia, Johnson was ushered to freedom with the help of locals who probably included the likes of Daniel Ross of Norristown.

“The history of the Underground Railroad in Montgomery County … cannot be told without mentioning Dan Ross, an African American Underground Railroad agent who was connected with the Quaker Corson family of Plymouth Meeting,” wrote the acclaimed historian Charles Blockson, an African-American native of Norristown, where Ross “lived in a spacious two-and-a-half-story frame house at Green and Jacoby Streets,” in his 2001 book, “African Americans in Pennsylvania: Above Ground and Underground.”

Blockson added, “Agent Dr. Hiram Corson stated: ‘When fugitives had reached Norristown, they were rested and cared for; the Abolition members notified of the fact. The next step was to send for ‘Old Dan’ to have his counsel. They were generally taken to his home and kept until arrangements were made to forward the fugitives to Canada.’”

Remarkably, according to census records, by 1870, Ross is living in a Norristown home worth an amazing $5,000 with a personal estate value of $300, outstanding accomplishments for an African American during the late 1800s who risked his liberty and life harboring runaways.

“There should be a portrait of Daniel Ross, and a history of his labors during twenty or more years,” declared Robert R. Corson, a relative of George Corson’s, about the illustrious black man, in William Still’s epic book, “The Underground Railroad,” the indispensable Bible of that laudatory escape system.

“Hundreds were entertained in his humble home … He must not be left out” or, as I see it, pushed aside in history.

And nor should his freedom-fighting comrades, as well as the buildings and Plymouth Meeting land that are so sacred in American history while being so instrumental in abolishing the horrors of slavery and mending the Union.

Commendably, during a series of public hearings, local advocacy groups, including Philly’s the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition (ATAC), have pushed to “preserve the Corson Estate and its attendant historic structures — including Abolition Hall, the neighboring Hovenden House [where George Corson’s son-in-law, artist Thomas Hovenden, painted freedom fighter John Brown going to the gallows], and a barn that once gave refuge to escaped slaves — as a proposed 67-townhouse development edges closer to being built on the land,” noted Norristown’s newspaper, The Times Herald, a sister publication of the Times Herald & Public Spirit.

The groups, modern freedom fighters in my book, want to make sure that the historically significant structures and land are not relegated to obscurity or worse but receive long-lasting exposure and recognition as expressed during a June 14 public hearing at a Whitemarsh Township supervisors meeting that will be followed up on Aug. 16.

It’s time for the developer, township and all concerned to join hands and move forward with better preserving and celebrating this vital history in the spirit of what Frederick Douglass once declared in an 1855 speech, “I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.”