How William and Ellen Craft escaped slavery in disguise

William and Ellen Craft escaped from slavery in Georgia by hiding in plain sight: Ellen, who had lighter skin, traveled as a sickly young white planter, and William as the enslaved man attending him. Four days after leaving Macon, in December 1848, they reached Philadelphia and freedom. The National Park Service tells their story through a story map for the Boston African American National Historic Site, which describes Boston as a hub for freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.

Two lives in Macon

William Craft was born in 1824 and grew up enslaved with his parents and siblings. His enslaver apprenticed him to a cabinet maker so he would become more valuable as a skilled worker, and sold his parents and siblings, separating the family. Ellen Craft, born in 1826, was the child of a white slaveholder and an enslaved mother. Because her father was her owner, William described her as appearing “almost white,” which angered her father’s wife, since people often mistook Ellen for a member of the family.

The two met in Macon years before they married. They talked of escaping so they could marry as free people, but saw escape from Georgia as nearly impossible. William wrote that they resolved to get their owners’ consent, marry and make themselves as comfortable as they could, while keeping their eyes fixed on the hope of liberty.

The plan

Around December 18–20, 1848, William thought of having Ellen pose as an invalid gentleman and his master, with himself attending as the servant. Ellen doubted she could pull it off but agreed. William bought the pieces of the disguise from different parts of town.

• She carried her right arm in a sling, so someone else could sign for her, since she could not read or write.
• She tied a handkerchief under her chin and over her head as if she had a toothache, to hide her “beardless face.”
• She limped, used a cane and wore green spectacles to suggest poor sight.
• She pretended to be hard of hearing to avoid conversation.

The story fit the trip: a sick planter heading to Philadelphia for his health, with his enslaved man to care for him. Both also got a few days off before the holidays, William from the cabinet maker and Ellen from her mistress, to buy time before anyone looked for them.

Four days north

Ellen and William traveled 200 miles by train from Macon to Savannah. Credit: Library of Congress.

The Crafts bought tickets at the Charleston Custom House, shown in an 1865 photograph. Credit: Library of Congress.

The Crafts likely followed this 1848 train route north from Wilmington to Washington, D.C. Credit: Library of Congress.

Boston

In Philadelphia an abolitionist boarding-house keeper, surprised to find Ellen in disguise, gathered other abolitionists to help. They advised the Crafts to go on to Boston, where public opinion was so set against slavery and kidnapping that taking a fugitive from the state was almost impossible. First the Crafts rested for about three weeks at the home of abolitionist Barkley Ivens and his family, whose daughters taught them to read; by the time they left, the Crafts could write their names.

Census records say “Barclay Ivens” lived in Falls Township, and William Craft adds that he lived on the Delaware River; one of the two “B. Ivins” on this map may have been the abolitionist the Crafts stayed with. Credit: Library of Congress.

In Boston, William worked as a cabinet maker and Ellen as a seamstress, and they lived in Lewis and Harriet Hayden’s boarding house, where other fugitives and city residents also lodged. They told their story at anti-slavery meetings in Boston and across New England, often alongside William Lloyd Garrison, Samuel May, Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. William Still wrote that the story of their escape “was heralded broadcast over the country.”

The 1850 census record lists William and Ellen Craft (lines 9 and 10) at the Haydens’ boarding house. Credit: United States Census Bureau.

The slave catchers

The Fugitive Slave Law of September 1850 left even the bravest abolitionists fearing that no fugitive was safe. On October 25, 1850, Judge Woodbury issued a warrant for the Crafts’ arrest after two men from Macon, Willis Hughes and John Knight, applied for it. Boston’s abolitionists answered with placards announcing the men and describing them, and crowds gathered outside their hotel and the courthouse. Members of the Boston Vigilance Committee, led by Reverend Theodore Parker, met the pair and advised them to leave; they refused. Police arrested them a few times on charges of slander against William and of threatening to kidnap the couple, but they posted bail each time.

Meanwhile the Crafts hid in several places. Ellen was taken first to the home of George and Susan Hillard, then by Dr. Bowditch to the Brookline house of Ellis Gray Loring, where Mary R. Carson and her aunt took her in. William armed himself at his shop on Cambridge Street, then moved to Lewis Hayden’s house. The Boston Chronotype reported that he was guarded by no fewer than two hundred of the city’s Black residents. When the wealthy J.T. Stevenson offered to buy the couple’s freedom if William would submit peaceably to arrest, William refused, saying that others who could not resist as well would then have no security. The slave catchers left Boston on November 1 without them.

England, and home to Georgia

On November 7, 1850, with Reverend Theodore Parker officiating, William and Ellen remarried “according to the laws of a free State,” and then left for England. They went by way of Portland, Maine; St. John’s, New Brunswick; and Windsor and Halifax, Nova Scotia, where a broken-down coach made them miss their steamer by two hours. The Halifax inn where they first stayed asked them to leave and no other inn would take them, so a Black family, Reverend Cannady and his wife, hosted them until a friend from Boston, Francis Jackson, helped arrange tickets to Liverpool.

Halifax was the Crafts’ last stop before England. Credit: Library of Congress.

In England they had five children, attended Ockham School in Surrey as learners and teachers of carpentry and sewing, and kept speaking against slavery, sometimes with William Wells Brown. In June 1851 they went with Brown to the Great Exhibition, walking arm in arm with their British anti-slavery friends. In 1860 they published Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, their account of the escape and of the attempt to capture them in Boston.

After almost twenty years in England the Crafts returned to Georgia and founded the Woodville Co-operative Farm School in 1873 to educate and employ newly emancipated men and women. Funders accused William of spending the school’s money on himself, and he sued them for libel in 1878; the suit failed and cost him friends. With little financial support and low cotton prices, they gave up the farm and moved to Charleston to live with their daughter’s family. Ellen died in 1891 and William in 1900.

Sources

• National Park Service, Boston African American National Historic Site, “‘A Desperate Leap for Liberty’: The Escape of William and Ellen Craft,” https://www.nps.gov/articles/-a-desperate-leap-for-liberty-the-escape-of-william-and-ellen-craft.htm; rewritten in hubnx's own words.