The "Members Of The Underground Railroad: John W. Jones" Story

It was an ordinary day.  The Underground Railroad in the United States was a system that existed in the Northern states before the Civil War by which escaped slaves from Southern states were secretly helped by sympathetic Northerners, in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Acts, to reach places of safety in the North or in Canada.  Lancaster County was known as a stop of that railroad as I have written about the past few days.  One of my favorite early Lancasterians, Thadeus Stevens, was not only a member of Congress, but a member of the Underground Railroad.  Another such person was John W. Jones.  But, what makes Mr. Jones so special was the fact that he was once a slave.  The story of his escape to freedom began one evening in late June of 1844 when this 26-year-old slave told his mother that he was leaving to attend a party.  

John W. Jones

He was living near Leesburg, Virginia and was part of a family of slaves.  Jones slipped outside, grabbed a pistol and met with four other enslaved men who crept through the Virginia woods, toward the north.  The men dodged slave catchers in Maryland and finally crossed into Pennsylvania.  They followed one of the major routes along the Underground Railroad and passed through Harrisburg and Williamsport, finally resting in a barn near the New York border.  The others slept while he kept guard with a shotgun.  He understood the situation and took it upon himself to protect the others.  Finally, when the barn's owner, Nathaniel Smith, found them, he invited them into his home.  His wife Sarah served the group hot biscuits and butter and cared for them until they had gained their strength back.  On July 5, 1844, Jones crossed a toll bridge into Elmira, New York with less than $2 in his pocket.  He decided to stay in Elmira where he eventually became a conductor on the Underground Railroad.  Living in the North wasn't always easy for him.  He could not vote and was denied an education at local schools.  A local judge took a liking to him and helped him study at an all-woman's seminary, exchanging janitorial work for reading and writing lessons.  He joined a church with abolitionist leanings and became its sexton, maintaining its cemetery.  In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was created giving financial incentives to report runaway slaves.  Jones became vocal about his part of the Underground Railroad and published a message in the newspaper about colored citizens protecting themselves against slave catchers.  The Elmira Underground Railroad was the only stop between Philadelphia and Ontario.  During the next nine years he aided in the escape of about 800 runaway slaves.  These same railroad tracks brought Confederate soldiers to Elmira's new prisoner of war camp.   Prisoners in Elmira were considered part of the camp known as "Hellmira."  

The Elmira, New York Prisoner Of War Camp

The camp had no hospital or medical staff and about 25% of the prisoners died from disease.  Supposedly 2,973 Confed- erate prisoners left Elmira in a coffin.  And, the job of burying them belonged to the town's sexton, John W. Jones.  Each person who died was buried in an individual grave, not enmasse as in other prison cemeteries.  His record keeping was also meticulous which led to Woodlawn Cemetery becoming a "National Cemetery" in 1877.  He had a crew of 12 who dug each grave and buried each body, treating it as if that person had been a member of his own church.  He also kept detailed records of each soldier and created improvised dog tags that he placed on the dead soldiers.  This was a man who had escaped slavery and took great effort to bury those who might have killed him had they had the chance.  One big plus for John was that he got $2.50 for each soldier he buried and after burying 3000 Confederate dead, he had become one of the 10 richest African-Americans in the state of New York.  So, he bought himself a 12 acre farm where he built a house using wooden scraps from the old Elmira prison camp.  That home is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  For the rest of his life he continued to work as a sexton and usher at his church.  When he died he was buried in the same cemetery he had worked in for years.  For nearly two decades after his death, fresh flowers appeared on his grave from time to time.  Finally the flowers stopped arriving and it was at that point that it was determined that the flowers were put there by a woman named Sarah Smith.  The same Sarah Smith who, 56 years earlier, had invited John W. Jones and his friend into her home for butter, biscuits and a good night's rest.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.