Eusebius Barnard: The Underground Railroad Farm

Eusebius Barnard was raised as a Quaker on this Chester County land, and though he later joined the Progressive Friends, a reform movement that pushed the Society of Friends toward more direct action, his values remained rooted in that tradition. Barnard held that faith required more than belief. His farm here became a station on the Underground Railroad, a place where freedom seekers could rest, hide, and prepare for the next leg of their journey north.

He and his family took genuine risks, sheltering people escaping enslavement and then personally escorting them to the next safe location along the network. He was a founding member of the Longwood Progressive Meeting, one of the most active abolitionist communities in southeastern Pennsylvania. Barnard lived from eighteen oh two to eighteen sixty-five, dying about two months before the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery nationwide.