Thomas Garrett: Two Thousand Seven Hundred Freedom Seekers

Thomas Garrett was born near here in seventeen eighty-nine, and he became one of the most consequential figures in American abolitionism. A devout Quaker, Garrett moved to Wilmington, Delaware in eighteen twenty-two, where he turned his home into a station on the Underground Railroad. He worked in close partnership with Harriet Tubman and the Philadelphia agent William Still, sending freedom seekers north to his brothers' farms in this area.

When he was caught and convicted, the court fined him so heavily it wiped out everything he owned. He was nearly sixty years old, standing in the courtroom with nothing left, and he told the judge that if anyone knew of a person in need, send them to Thomas Garrett. By his own count he went on to aid about two thousand seven hundred people seeking freedom before the Civil War ended.