BACK
TO: [The Underground Railroads story]
2.3.00
In Providence and Blackstone Valley, remains of the Railroad are still to be found
By
JIM SEAVOR
Journal Arts Writer
Tracking the Underground Railroad in Rhode Island is a bit like giving directions around here -- you keep referring to where something used to be. While some communities, such as Newport, still have many sites, others have seen the march of progress destroy the old buildings.
Here's a glimpse at the Blackstone Valley and Providence areas. It's a drop in the bucket, and many other communities in Rhode Island, from Westerly to East Greenwich, have locations that tradition says were stops along the way.
In the Blackstone Valley, the development of mills and mill villages destroyed sites, says Chuck Arning, a National Park Service ranger who's part of the service's Underground Railroad Initiative,
Trail to Freedom.
Among the lost sites is the Elizabeth Buffum Chace house, which
Underground Railroad in New England
says once stood at Hunt and Broad Streets in Central Falls.
Chace was an abolitionist who believed in equality. (That often was not the case. Both Newport historian Keith Stokes and Arning point out that, although abolitionists were opposed to slavery, many did not believe in the equality of the races.)
Although the Underground Railroad was not an actual railroad,
Underground Railroad in New England
, which was published by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, points out, as does Arning, that public transportation was occasionally used. The Chace house, for example, was not far from the Providence and Worcester Railroad, and runaway slaves would be put in the care of a P&W conductor who, at Worcester, would make sure they were transferred to the next link in the Underground Railroad.
The Browns' role
Among the Providence abolitionists, the Moses Brown House, which no longer exists but was once at Wayland and Humbolt Avenues on the East Side, was one of the main stops on the escape route.
Brown was a member of the Brown merchant family, which was active in the slave trade.
The Hippocrene Guide to The Underground Railroad
, by Charles L. Blockson, says that Moses Brown, and brothers John, Nicholas and Joseph, were all at one time involved. But after a slave mutiny on one of their vessels in 1765 left more than 100 dead, Moses, Nicholas and Joseph stopped taking part in the sale of human cargo, and Moses became a leader of the abolitionist movement.
Arning also is working on a theory that the Blackstone Canal Towpath was used as a route north.
His hypothesis is that free blacks who worked as teamsters and mariners in Providence would have had chances to assist slaves traveling north. The mariners would help in getting the slaves to this area and the teamsters would know the canal boat schedules. Although the slaves could not use the small ships, the flat towpath that lined the canal allowed them to cover a lot of ground.
There were a number of African-American neighborhoods in Providence in the middle 1800s. One of them, Hard Scrabble, was almost at the foot of Smith Street, between Gaspee Street and the canal; another, Snow Town, was closer to where the Marriott Hotel is now. The other was Fox Point, where the deep-water port allowed entry to African stowaways. Once in Providence, they could continue their journey north or blend into the community.
A Cumberland refuge
If time has taken many safe houses, some remain.
In Cumberland, one probable site is the Jillson, Thomas, Fiske House on Mendon Road. It's better known today as a home for HIV and AIDS patients with the apt name -- both past and present -- of House of Compassion.
Black churches played a major role in the movement. One was the Bethel A.M.E. Church, in Providence.
Founded in 1795 as the African Freedmen's Society, it was a station on the Underground Railroad and was visited by the Railroad's famed ``conductor'' Harriet Tubman. Tubman, a fugitive herself, returned to the South 19 times and helped approximately 300 slaves escape.
Currently on Rochambeau Avenue, the church was then on Meeting Street, where the Brown University medical building now stands. The church's former location is marked by a bronze plaque.
