Read Part One HERE
In this blog I will continue to focus on a woman named Laura Smith Haviland. She lived from 1808 - 1898.
Laura, who had been involved in hiding slaves at her farm, would personally escort some slaves to Canada, where they were free. Even under the Fugitive Slave Acts, Laura maintained her operation - risking imprisonment and physical harm to herself.
Laura also worked to reunite families separated by slavery. Her work once incited a southern slave owner to put a bounty on her head after he threatened her at gunpoint. Neverthess, Laura's work continued. She travelled to the South on many occasions to aid escaped slaves. Her first trip was made in 1846, in an effort to free the children of fugitive slaves Willis and Elsie Hamilton. The children were still in the possession of their mother's former slave owner, John P. Chester. Chester had learned of the Hamilton's whereabouts and sent slave-catchers after them but they were not succesful in catching them. However, Mr Chester did not forget Laura. His family would continue to haunt her for fifteen years, pursuing her legally in court. Thankfully, the Judge who presided over her case was sympathetic towards abolitionists and delayed her case, thereby making it possible for her to evade legal punishment.
She wrote, "I would not for my right to become instrumental in returning one escaped slave to bondage, " she wrote. "I firmly believe in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, and that no human being has a right to make merchandise of others born in humbler stations, and place them on a level with horses, cattle, and sheep, knocking them off the auction-block to the highest bidder, sundering family ties, and outraging the purests and tenderest feelings of human nature."
Read Part Five HERE
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