AiRMail 6/11/24

This one is mostly true. Year is 1845. Be careful not to confuse Indiana County Pennsylvania with the state of Indiana.


​The Liberation of Anthony Hollingsworth
 
1. Wild & Precious Life
There were three. Charles Brown, nineteen years of age, was a favored house servant and the regular driver of Mrs. VanMeter’s carriage. It was Brown who got wind of the fact that the VanMeters were in some kind of financial difficulty, putting him at risk of being sold no matter how much he was in Mrs. VanM’s good graces. Jared Harris was a few years older. Claimed by the estate of one Joseph Innskeep, he’d been hired out to the VanMeters where he’d made friends with Brown. Anthony Hollingsworth was the youngest of the three, just twelve years old. Little is known of his life on the VanMeter Plantation.
 
2. This Mournable Body
The Garrett VanMeter House was situated on 368 acres of inherited farmland. VanMeters were among the earliest European settlers in North America. Dutch Protestants who’d landed in New Jersey, they made their way in 1720 to the western part of the Virginia colony. Garrett VanMeter boasted a family heritage that included commanders in both the American War for Independence and the War of 1812, as well as an ancestor killed in an attack by Native adversaries. By 1835, the plantation house completed, VanMeter descendants were well established and wealthy. Several hundred cattle roamed the property. Thirty enslaved people lived there. The unpredictable fortunes of farming being what they were, however, when the crops were short, VanMeter would feel pressure to reduce “inventory,” and might be moved to sell "even his best servants." He regretted it, but it sometimes happened.
 
3. Escape Routes
This area, in the northern reaches of Virginia, was home to country folks with decidedly independent views. Certainly, not all residents were pro-slavery, but nor was the majority population seized by abolition fever. Although determining the routes, the methods, and exact locations of Underground Railroad sites is difficult, this much we know: Many people crossed the Potomac River to Maryland, and many followed the C&O Canal towpath north toward Pennsylvania. When the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened a ticket office in Harpers Ferry in 1836, and trains moved from there east to Baltimore, with its sizeable free Black population, and west to Wheeling, across the river from free-state Ohio, a tempting means of escape to emancipation was created. Also for a time, just south of Harpers Ferry, the ferryman Joseph Blanhum escorted people from Virginia to Maryland. But this service was halted when Blanhum was arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed for his efforts in 1844, the year before the three departed the VanMeter plantation.
 
4. Everyone Is Watching
In 1845, west-central Pennsylvania’s Indiana County was a hub of abolitionist activity. It was here that Charles Brown, Jared Harris, and Anthony Hollingsworth sought assistance after absconding from the VanMeter plantation that summer. Things moved quickly. The three first made contact with James Moorehead, publisher of The Clarion, an anti-slavery newspaper. Immediately thereafter was a convening of Underground Railroad officials. Arrangements were made for Brown and Harris to shelter at a cabin in the woods. Their younger companion, Hollingsworth, was taken to a farm in a remote part of the county. Meanwhile, back in Virginia, Garrett VanMeter had hired two men to trail the three and bring them back to the plantation. Within days, VanMeter’s agents found Hollingsworth working for wages in the fields. They forcibly seized him, tied him atop a horse, and transferred him to a hotel in town to be held overnight. But even before they arrived in town, a mob was forming. Angry locals surrounded the hotel demanding Hollingsworth’s release. Indiana’s Sheriff Ralston, fearing a riot, implored abolition leaders for help. Clarion publisher James Moorehead arrived and calmed the mob by telling them that justice for the young Anthony Hollingsworth was assured if they could just remain patient until the following day. What Moorehead knew, and gave him such confidence, was that the presiding judge who would decide Hollingworth’s fate was Thomas White.
 
5. Good Immigrant
Thomas White, forty-six years old, born in England, with ties to an ancestral estate near Dublin, Ireland, was raised a Catholic but converted to Protestantism so he might marry his Episcopal sweetheart. He was a Whig, an abolitionist, and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He heard the petition for the return of fugitives as presented by VanMeter’s hired agents. Then he listened to the defense arguments, presented by volunteer counsel. Judge White asked the plaintiffs to produce a copy of the Virginia constitution, because, he said, he wanted to assure himself that slavery was permitted in that jurisdiction. The plaintiffs laughed at the absurdity of this, but when they proved unable to comply, the judge ordered Hollingsworth to be released, “to go where he pleased.”
 
6. The Road Home
“Where he pleased” was Watford, near London, Ontario. There he made a living as a barber and lived out his remaining 48 years. Anthony Bray Hollingsworth is buried in St. James Cemetery, just south of Watford. A tombstone erected by the St. James Cemetery Board celebrates his memory.
 
7. Stay with Me
There’s more to the story.