Thomas Garrett to Samuel Rhoads, March 13, 1857

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Record Data

Source citation:

William Still, The Underground Rail Road (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872), 73-74.

Author:

Garrett, Thomas

Recipient:

Rhoads, Samuel

Type:

Letter

Date Certainty:

Exact

Transcriber:

Sayo Ayodele

Transcription date:

06/25/2007

Transcription

The following text is presented here in complete form, as true to the original written document as possible. Spelling and other typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.

WILMINGTON, 3d mo. 13th, 1857.

DEAR COUSIN, SAMUEL RHOADS:-I have a letter this day from an agent of the Underground Rail Road, near Dover, in this state, saying I must be on the look out for six brothers and two sisters, they were decoyed and betrayed, he says by a colored man named Thomas Otwell, who pretended to be their friend, and sent a white scamp ahead to wait for them at Dover till they arrived; they were arrested and put in Jail there, with Tom's assistance, and some officers. On third day morning about four o'clock, they broke jail; six of them are secreted in the neighborhood, and the writer has not known what became of the other two. The six were to start last night for this place. I bear that their owners have persons stationed at several places on the road watching. I fear they will be taken. If they could lay quiet for ten days or two weeks, they might then get up safe. I shall have two men sent this evening some four or five miles below to keep them away from this town, and send them (if found to Chester County). Thee may show this to Still and McKim, and oblige thy cousin,

THOMAS GARRETT.

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