Byline: Mike McAndrew Staff writer
Peter Still was born a slave in Maryland. When he was very young, his mother fled with her four children to New Jersey, but they were hunted down by slave catchers and forced back to their master's plantation.
When Still was 6 years old, his mother escaped to the North with his two sisters but had to leave Peter and his 8-year-old brother behind.
After 40 years in bondage, Peter Still bought his freedom with $500 he had saved.
Then he met Seth Concklin - a mysterious white abolitionist who lived off and on in Syracuse during the 1830s and 1840s - and a dramatic tale of courage, death, heartache and perseverance was born.
Concklin's dramatic effort to help blacks escape slavery is one of an untold number of Underground Railroad stories that have been forgotten over time.
"It's a part of history that needs to be told. It's American history, not just black history," Peter Still's great-great-nephew, William Still, of Long Island, said in a recent interview.
Concklin volunteered to travel to Alabama to help Peter Still's wife and children escape slavery.
The attempt cost him his life.
"In the long list of names who have suffered and died in the cause of freedom, not one, perhaps, could be found whose efforts to redeem a poor family of slaves were more Christlike than Seth Concklin's," wrote William Still, Peter Still's brother, in 1871.
The story of Still and Concklin was first told by Kate E.R. Pickard in 1856 in a book called "The Kidnapped and the
A slavery story
"The Kidnapped and the Ransomed: The Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife, "Vina,' After 40 Years of Slavery" can be read online at Documents of the American South, a Web site maintained by the University of North Carolina. The site's address is: http://docsouth.unc.edu/pickard/pickard.html
A 1995 edition of the book can also be borrowed from the Onondaga County Public Library and can be purchased in bookstores and on the Internet. Ransomed: The Personal Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife, "Vina,' After 40 Years of Slavery."
Pickard lived with her husband on Bennetts Corners Road in Camillus until her death in 1864 at the age of 40. Her book was published in Syracuse.
After buying his freedom in 1850, Peter Still was reunited in Philadelphia, Pa., with his mother and siblings, including William Still, who had become the stationmaster of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. But he could not enjoy his liberty because his wife, Lavinia, and his three children were still slaves in Alabama.
The Alabama slaveholder who owned his family told Still he could buy his wife and children's freedom for $5,000 - an outrageous sum. During those years, Concklin was involved in abolitionist activities in Syracuse, Philadelphia and Springfield, Ill.
Little is known about Concklin. No photo or illustration of him has surfaced. Although he resided in Syracuse, no one knows where. His name doesn't show up in the records of the 1830, 1840 or 1850 federal census of New York state.
The Rev. William Furness, of Philadelphia, included sketchy details about Concklin's life in an appendix to Pickard's book. Concklin was born in 1802 in Sandy Hill, N.Y., and spent much of his life traveling around Upstate New York. Furness notes that Concklin lived for two years with a man from Syracuse but does not identify the man.
"Once in Syracuse, and again in Rochester, he was mobbed for taking the part of black men against white rowdies, and had to run for his life, and absent himself for days till their infuriated passions had cooled," Furness wrote.
Theodosia Gilbert, a Skaneateles woman, wrote in an 1851 letter that Concklin had volunteered to try to rescue her husband, journalist William L. Chaplin, in 1850, when Chaplin was thrown in jail in Maryland for helping slaves owned by two Southern congressmen to escape.
In Philadelphia, Concklin heard of Peter Still's plight and offered to help. He promised to travel to Alabama, help Still's family escape and, using the Underground Railroad, lead them to Canada. Concklin asked for no pay for this dangerous mission - just money to cover the traveling expenses.
A secret deal was struck.
After arriving in January 1851 in South Florence, Ala., Concklin bought a rowboat and made contact with Lavinia Still. It took several weeks before she and her children could escape and meet him by the Tennessee River. They rowed the boat for seven days, traveling about 300 miles north, before docking in Indiana, a free state.
But after walking for days and being sheltered by Underground Railroad contacts, Lavinia Stills and her children were arrested in April 1851 at gunpoint by slave catchers and jailed.
Concklin, who tried to con the authorities into releasing the family by claiming he was their master, was thrown in jail, too. The slave catchers were paid a $400 reward for catching the slaves and $600 for apprehending Concklin.
The Stills and Concklin were loaded onto a boat to be shipped back to Alabama. The Stills would be slaves again. Concklin - who had told the authorities his name was John H. Miller - was to be prosecuted for violating the Fugitive Slave Act.
On May 29, 1851, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported that during the trip to Alabama, "Mr. Miller" attempted to escape and jumped into the Cumberland River "but, encumbered by his manacles and clothing, was drowned. The body was recovered and buried about a week afterwards."
Levi Coffin, an Underground Railroad stationmaster in Cincinnati, wrote to William Still about Concklin: "I seriously doubt the rumor that he had made his escape. I fear that he was sacrificed."
Acquaintances of Concklin determined that Concklin was buried - still in chains - in Smithland, Ky.
Back in Philadelphia, Peter Still was devastated. But he wouldn't give up his quest for his family's freedom. In late 1852, he began traveling around the Northeast, telling his story, to try to raise the $5,000 needed to buy his family's freedom.
One of his first stops was in Syracuse, where he visited the Rev. Samuel J. May, a Unitarian minister who organized Underground Railroad activities in Syracuse. May gave Still a donation and letters of introduction to other influential abolitionists, such as Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro.
Still traveled to Auburn and raised $50 speaking at churches. Then he went to Rochester, Boston and Portland, Maine, and through New Hampshire. In five months, he raised $950. During the next two years, he returned to Syracuse at least three more times to seek money.
As Still neared his goal, he delivered one of his final fund-raising speeches at a small Methodist church in Camillus.
"He can succeed without our aid," the Rev. E.S. Bush told the congregation. "But we cannot afford to lose this opportunity." The Camillus church chipped in $63.
On New Year's Eve 1854, after Still paid the $5,000 ransom, Lavinia Still and her children were freed, and the family was reunited.
CAPTION(S):
PHOTO
Photo courtesy of Johnson Publishing Co.
PETER STILL'Sportrait appears in "The Underground Railroad" by William Still, published by Johnson Publishing Co.
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