Patrick and Abraham: Freedom Seekers on the Underground Railroad

In February of eighteen thirty-seven, two brothers named Patrick and Abraham slipped away from a farm in Bath, Virginia, and began walking north toward freedom. Bounty hunters were close behind, and the brothers were wounded during the pursuit before they crossed into Pennsylvania.

What kept them moving was a network of people willing to take risks. Both Black and white abolitionists sheltered them as they made their way through the state. Here in Johnstown, a farmer named William Slick hid them on his property, which served as a regular stop on the Underground Railroad.

The brothers were eventually taken into custody in Johnstown, but the legal system could not hold them. They escaped without trial and without recapture, and they vanished into freedom. Their story, documented on this marker, tells the full arc: the flight, the wound, the helpers, the near-capture, and the escape. Both men made it.