Daniel Kaufman: Fined and Unbowed

From eighteen thirty-five to eighteen forty-seven, Daniel Kaufman operated one of the Underground Railroad's quiet stations in central Pennsylvania. Freedom seekers passing through this area found food and transportation from Kaufman, and shelter in his barn and the dense woods nearby. In eighteen forty-seven a Maryland enslaver sued him, and five years later a court handed down a ruling that drew attention far beyond Pennsylvania: a four-thousand-dollar fine, an enormous sum.

Kaufman paid it and kept his convictions. He had already laid out the village of Boiling Springs in eighteen forty-five, and he later built his home on Front Street here. His story is a reminder that the Underground Railroad was not just a network of famous names but of ordinary people who quietly risked everything in the decades before the Civil War.