The "Members Of The Underground Railroad: Ezekiel & Eliza Baptiste!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about a husband and wife who were part of the Underground Railroad in the mid-19th century.  Ezekiel and Eliza Baptiste lived on a farm in Newberry Township which is located in northern York County, Pennsylvania; about 25 miles from my home in Lancaster.  They had a two-story sandstone farmhouse with an addition in the back.  

The Baptiste farm in York County, Pennsylvania

Their outbuildings were kept in good condition as was their large barn.  The farm at one time had been overworked and played-out.  It was infertile, dilapidated and just about worthless.  It soon became a showplace of farming acumen.  And, what made it very different was that the family that lived in it was black.  Few black families owned farmland at that time in history.  The Baptiste's welcomed visitors, entertained them and showed off the lush results of their toil and that of their equally hard-working children.  They even had a white farmhand who lived in a small cabin on the property.  Ezekiel's grandfather had been a slave in Maryland, but saved enough money to buy his freedom and then saved enough to buy the freedom of the woman that he married.  Ezekiel hated the injustice around him so he began assisting runaway slaves in their quest for freedom.

Image of Harriet Tubman

He worked with two Quakers as well as a black businessman and Underground conductor who lived in downtown York, Pennsylvania.  At one point he and Eliza met Harriet Tubman who had escaped from Dorchester County on Maryland's Eastern Shore.  They became friends as he helped her with freeing other slaves.  Then in 1875 the couple sold the farm for $4,500, a very respectable sum for that time in history.  They moved to the Mechanicsburg area of Pennsylvania.  Eliza died in 1878 and is buried in a free black graveyard known as Lincoln Cemetery. Ezekiel died five years later in 1893.  Another great couple who despised slavery and worked as Underground Railroad conductors.  South-eastern Pennsylvania is rich in farming heritage and many of those farms were stops on the Underground Railroad for those escaping the awful and dreaded background of slavery.  It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to be a slave.  Movies, newspaper articles and even novels written about slavery can tell the story of slavery, but experiencing slavery first-hand is something that most of us have never had to endure.  Only after reading and visiting locations associated with the Underground Railroad, as it was called, has it made me appreciate those who were conductors on that railroad and risked their lives to provide an exit from slavery to those whose lives were consumed with the evil of slavery.  These conductors were heroes and the epitome of sainthood.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.