William Still (Horton, 2004)

Although the legend of the Underground Railroad is filled with unsubstantiated folklore about stations where fugitives were sheltered and conductors who risked life and property to usher runaways to safety, Still’s role as one of the most effective workers for freedom is indisputable. From the offices of the abolition society and from his home at 832 South Street, Still coordinated the activities that made Philadelphia one of the nation’s strongholds of abolition. He was also one of the Underground Railroad’s most significant historians, maintaining meticulous records of the 649 fugitives who were sheltered in the city prior to the Civil War and the end of slavery. These records contained dates, names, and details of fugitives and those who assisted them, as well as routes and locations of safe houses throughout the East. They also provided information on abolition agents and collaborators in the slave South. Had these records fallen into the wrong hands, they would have endangered many lives and might well have caused the destruction of the movement. Acutely aware of their importance, Still was always careful to hide these documents. At one point he concealed them in a building in an old cemetery and did not unearth them until well after the Civil War, when slavery had been abolished. In 1872 he published his records, along with the personal stories and the correspondence of hundreds of runaways, in The Underground Railroad, a collection that modern historians of slavery and antislavery have found invaluable.