FROM THE ARCHIVES:

A TICKET FOR THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

By Charlotte Jackson, Archival Consultant to the Bowne House

The Bowne House Archives in Flushing, Queens contains the personal papers of nine generations of the Bowne and Parsons families who occupied Bowne House for nearly three centuries. Bowne House was built in 1661 by John Bowne, an English Quaker known for his brave defense of religious liberty in the face of persecution. The home has witnessed many eras in American history, from the fall of Dutch New Netherland to the end of World War II. Throughout this time, Bowne’s descendants preserved the structure, its contents, and the legacy of their forebears. Some of the family documents they saved include letters John Bowne sent from prison, a Revolutionary-era Quaker petition to the British Army, and evidence of the family’s participation in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.

 One of the most intriguing discoveries we have made in the Bowne House Archives is the document shown below: a letter of introduction carried by a fugitive on the Underground Railroad. Discovered by chance in 2016 during a research project on the Parsons Nursery, this note supplied the first documentary evidence to confirm the long-rumored status of Bowne House as a stop on the Underground Railroad. If the writer was a “conductor,” its bearer a “passenger,” and the house a “station,” you might say that this letter is a rare example of a “ticket.”

Letter, S.S. Jocelyn to William Parsons, Sept. 28th 1850

This remarkable note is addressed to William Parsons, Esq. at Flushing and signed by the sender himself in a shaky hand- so shaky, in fact, that the document was mistakenly labeled “L.I. Jocelyn” when the Museum inventoried the collection in the 1980s.  Thus, the all-too-evident “injury in [his] arm by way of railroad accident” led to a case of mistaken identity. Jocelyn, or more likely his daughter, then folded the letter four times to fit discretely in a pocket, its contents obscured to the casual glance. In fact, when re-folded to its original dimensions, it is about the size of an actual train ticket. The unobtrusive document with its semi-legible signature went unnoticed by researchers for decades, until a project on the Parsons family and their horticulture business led us to take a closer look at any paper bearing their name. 

As soon as the text came to light, questions loomed: Who was this Jocelyn, and for that matter who was William Parsons?  An even greater mystery: who was the unnamed “colored brother,” the bearer of the letter, and what was his story?

We soon determined “L.I. Jocelyn” was a faulty transcription of “S.S. Jocelyn”- short for Simeon Smith Jocelyn (1799-1879), shown in this undated photograph. Although hardly a household name today, in his time Jocelyn was a prominent abolitionist and social reformer, closely allied to William Lloyd Garrison and the brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan.

Jocelyn originally hailed from New Haven, where as a youth he trained as an engraver. However, he abandoned that trade to study Divinity at Yale, becoming a Congregationalist minister and a vocal anti-slavery campaigner. He founded several schools for New Haven’s Black residents, as well as New Haven’s first Black church, where he served as minister while training the Black parishioners who eventually replaced him in that role.  He also financed the construction of Trowbridge Square, a racially integrated affordable housing development.  Jocelyn’s vision of founding a “Black Yale” in New Haven for emancipated slaves foundered when he proposed this lofty goal at a town meeting just weeks after Nat Turner’s rebellion; his proposal was resoundingly defeated by a vote of 700 to 4, and his home was later stormed by a stone-throwing mob. This incident contributed to his ultimate relocation from New Haven to New York City.

Jocelyn is best known for his role in the Amistad Affair, an episode dramatized in the eponymous Stephen Spielberg movie. Although only Lewis Tappan appears as a named character in the film, the Amistad Committee was co-founded by Tappan, Jocelyn and a third partner, Joshua Leavitt. The Committee was instrumental in lobbying and fundraising on behalf of the fifty-three imprisoned Africans who had rebelled and killed the captain of the slave ship Amistad, then commandeered the vessel until it was intercepted by the U.S. Navy. The Committee also arranged for John Quincy Adams to defend the captives before the Supreme Court, where they were exonerated. Simeon’s brother Nathaniel, also an engraver by trade and a fellow conductor on the Underground Railroad, painted this iconic portrait of the captives’ leader Sengbeh Pieh, known as “Cinqué,” on a commission from the Black abolitionist Robert Purvis. The image circulated widely, and reportedly inspired Madison Washington’s own successful rebellion aboard the slaver Creole.

By 1850, Jocelyn had resettled in New York, where he lived with his wife and six children in Williamsburgh (today a neighborhood in Brooklyn, spelled without the “h.”) There he presided over the First Congregational Church, while also serving as President of the anti-slavery American Missionary Society. Williamsburgh boasted a sizeable population of free people of color with multiple Black congregations who, like the free Black community in Flushing, formed a critical nexus in the Underground Railroad. At this time Jocelyn also served as vice-president of the New York State Vigilance Committee, which functioned as the primary command and control center for the Underground Railroad in New York City. His role with the Vigilance Committee took on particular urgency after the Fugitive Slave Law was enacted on September 18th of that year.

The bill allowed Southern slave owners and their agents to pursue runaways within the borders of free states. Worse, it required the citizens of free states to cooperate in their capture and re-enslavement, making it a federal crime to hide or assist any fugitive. Violators were subject to a jail sentence of up to six months and a fine of $1,000 (roughly equivalent to over $36,000 today). The rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury were suspended for suspected fugitives, who could be seized on the strength of an affidavit from the slaveholder. Mere days after the passage of the bill, a free resident of Williamsburgh named James Hamlet was abducted off the streets of Manhattan and imprisoned in Baltimore, as reported in this abolitionist pamphlet. Churchgoers of the community raised the funds to purchase Hamlet’s freedom. However, it was clear that even freeborn or legally manumitted Black citizens could no longer feel secure in public spaces. Meanwhile, bounty hunters saw their chance and descended on the state, prompting the posting of warning signs like the broadside below. This incident formed the backdrop to Jocelyn’s letter, which is dated September 28, 1850, just ten days after the Fugitive Slave Act was signed.

As for the letter’s recipient, Bowne family genealogies reveal that William Bowne Parsons (1823 - 1856) was the younger brother of Samuel Bowne Parsons and Robert Bowne Parsons, who between them ran the Parsons and Kissena Nurseries in Flushing and made groundbreaking contributions to the field of horticulture. They all were sons of the Quaker minister Samuel Parsons and his wife Mary Bowne Parsons, who was a great-great-granddaughter of John Bowne and one of the heirs to the Bowne House. The Parsons family were known for their abolitionist sympathies. As Clerk of the New York Friends’ Meeting, Samuel Parsons issued and distributed their anti-slavery tracts under his signature, while also fundraising for the cause and promoting boycotts of goods produced with slave labor. Correspondence from our collection and other repositories reveals that the elder Parsons and his sons associated with a circle of New York abolitionists including Lewis Tappan, Gerrit Smith, and William Harned, as well as English activists such as J.J. Gurney. The young Samuel Bowne Parsons accompanied Gurney on an expedition to observe life in the newly emancipated West Indies, while Robert Bowne Parsons befriended Henry Ward Beecher of the Plymouth Church and raised money for the Underground Railroad at the behest of Charles B. Ray of the New York Vigilance Committee.

Family tradition and local legend have long maintained that both Samuel Bowne Parsons and Robert Bowne Parsons were not just abolitionists, but active conductors on the Underground Railroad. Samuel Bowne Parsons’ obituary in the New York Tribune states, “It was his boast that he helped more slaves escape to freedom than any man in Queens County.’’ Robert Bowne Parsons’ obituary, also published in the Tribune, contains a similar claim: “...before the Civil War no fugitive slave who sought his assistance was turned away from his door.” However, such second-hand accounts appeared decades later, following the death of the rumored participants. Moreover, both Samuel and Robert Bowne Parsons married and established their own households in the years before the Civil War, leaving Bowne House in the hands of their unmarried aunts and siblings. Without knowing the dates and particulars of their activities, their role as conductors would not necessarily make Bowne House itself a “station.” However, census records substantiate that Robert Bowne Parsons was a resident of Bowne House in 1850, the year of the letter.

Given their prominence and known sympathies, it is curious that the first—and so far only—primary source to substantiate Bowne House’s place names neither Samuel nor Robert, but rather their obscure younger brother William, a man who left so little mark on the family history that his own niece believed him to have died in 1839. According to a brief history written by Bertha Parsons, the niece in question, he was one of the original beneficiaries of the Parsons Nursery business. Samuel Parsons the elder started the business in 1838 to provide a livelihood for Robert and William, his two youngest sons, believing that a rural occupation would shield them from the temptations of city life. Her account describes a division of labor: William worked what remained of the family farm, while Robert took charge of the specialty horticulture. Around 1840 Samuel Bowne Parsons joined Robert in the Nursery. William presumably kept farming, as the 1850 Census still lists his occupation as “horticulturist.” In 1851, William married Mary F. Leggett. Some sources claim that he “married out,” a Quaker term for choosing a non-Quaker mate, which typically led to separation from the Meeting. In 1856, at the age of 33, William Bowne Parsons died in Brattleboro, Vermont, reportedly of dysentery. There is no record of what took him to Vermont, or how he contracted dysentery. He and Mary left no children who might have kept his memory alive.

Nonetheless, William was the one whom Reverend Jocelyn called upon when he had a “strong case” in hand. One explanation may be that Samuel and Robert often traveled for business, collecting plant specimens from all over the world for the Parsons Nursery. Robert likely instructed Jocelyn and the rest of the Vigilance Committee to rely upon his trusted brother during his absences. Judging from the formality of address in the letter, Jocelyn was not personally acquainted with William. However, it seems likely that the two had corresponded before, as Jocelyn feels the need to explain why the penmanship differs from his usual hand. He must have held William’s judgment and integrity in high regard, to entrust him with a case where “great care and caution is required.” A line from Samuel Bowne Parson’s handwritten memoir offers one final insight into the man: “My brother William…had a very lovable character, and his death was a great trial.”

Taken together, the letter and the 1850 Federal Census places the Bowne House, not just the Bowne family, squarely on the Underground Railroad map. In that year- the year of the letter- William B. Parsons, aged 27, and Robert B. Parsons, aged 29, both resided at the Bowne House. They lived with their two elderly aunts, Ann and Eliza Bowne, and their unmarried sisters, Mary and Jane Parsons. Other occupants include live-in servants: Sarah Smith, 37, and Fanny Hunter, 17, both described as “mulatto,” and Robert McKenney, an Irish laborer aged 21. Although the 1850 Census does not list street addresses, we know that the above-mentioned Ann and Eliza Bowne had inherited the Bowne House jointly with their mother and sisters, and lived there for the rest of their lives. By mid-century the household contained not only single women of mature age, but also their young, still unmarried nephews and nieces.

While the letter proves that William was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, the Census proves that he was a resident of Bowne House at the date of the letter, and his “passengers” would have been sent to that address. It also hints at the likely involvement of the Bowne and Parsons women, which so far has gone unmentioned. It would have been nearly impossible for Robert and William Parsons to house fugitives without their knowledge and consent, and possibly their active involvement- for instance, if someone arrived while the men were out at work. The female family members were certainly sympathetic to the cause: Ann and Eliza Bowne were co-founders and longtime members of the Flushing Female Association, which built and ran a school for poor, primarily Black residents of Flushing before any public schools existed. The Association was established in 1814 in the parlor of the Bowne House and held its meetings there for many years. Their niece, Mary B. Parsons, became a long-term member as well. The women may have been inspired in these efforts by their uncle (or great-uncle) Robert Bowne, a founding member of the Manumission Society and a Trustee of the famous African Free School in Manhattan. Finally, it is possible that another historically unsung group—the family servants—were also involved, particularly the two women of mixed race, who could have acted as liaisons to helpers in Flushing’s free population of color.

As little as we know of William Bowne Parsons, we know even less of the “colored brother” who carried this letter on his journey to freedom: neither his identity, nor the particulars of his story. We have only the tantalizing information that “his is a strong case,” and “great care and caution is required,” suggesting a dire and dramatic scenario, even by the standards of the Underground Railroad with its daring escapes and terrifying manhunts. Such a letter would naturally be short on incriminating detail about its carrier; given that it was evidence of a crime on the part of all participants, it is surprising that it was preserved at all.

As we continue our study of this fascinating document, we will draw upon resources including historical newspapers, published slave narratives, and newly digitized archives of the runaway advertisements that slave-owners placed in newspapers. Our search brings home the importance of preserving the historical record of Black America, so that its protagonists can tell their own stories to future generations in their own voices.Indeed, this “ticket to the Underground Railroad” showcases both the power and the limitations of the documentary record. In its immediacy, this dashed-off note evokes emotion that a retrospective account published in a book cannot. Holding it, the reader is aware that this same piece of paper was once folded in a freedom-seeker’s pocket, that perhaps it still bears some minute trace of the sweat from his palms, with its scent of fear or hope. Reading it at Bowne House, you can look out the window and easily imagine a man walking up the same garden path to knock on the same old Dutch door, over a century and half ago. Yet the brief text buzzes with unanswered questions, and we can only offer educated guesses or plausible scenarios. How and where was the passenger hidden once he reached Flushing? Did he stay in Bowne House itself, or in some remote outbuilding? Which path did the fugitive take on his onward journey, and who else helped him along the way? Did he make it safely to the border? We hope to address these questions in another article, as we conduct further research—and hope for more surprises awaiting discovery in the Archives.

SELECTED SOURCES

On Simeon S. Jocelyn:

Dugdale, Anthony, J. J. Fueser, and J. Celso De Castro Alves. Yale, Slavery, and Abolition. Publication. New Haven, CT: Amistad Committee, 2001. PDF at <http://www.yaleslavery.org/YSA.pdf>

McQueeney, Mary. “Simeon Jocelyn, New Haven Reformer.” Journal of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 19, no. 3 (1970): 66

 Tucker, Phillip Thomas. “Chapter 2: Emily D. West’s Birth in New Haven.” In Emily D. West and the “Yellow Rose of Texas” Myth. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2014. 34-63. (This biography of Emily D. West contains a discussion of Simeon Jocelyn’s early career in New Haven.)

 On the Underground Railroad in New York:

Driscoll, James; Wini Warren; Derek Gray; Kathleen G. Velsor; and Richard J. Hourahan. Angels of Deliverance: The Underground Railroad in Queens, Long Island, and Beyond. Edited by Wini Warren. Flushing, NY: Queens Historical Society, 1999.

 Foner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2015.

The Fugitive Slave Act :

United States Fugitive Slave Law. The Fugitive slave law. Hartford, Ct.: s.n., 185-?. Hartford, 1850. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/98101767/.

American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The Fugitive Slave Bill, its History and Unconstitutionality: with an account of the seizure and enslavement of James Hamlet, and his subsequent restoration to liberty.  Pamphlet. New York, William Harned, 61 John Street, 1850. Digitized by Haithi Trust: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiuo.ark:/13960/t9p26zx42

Cobb, Jeffrey Owen. “James Hamlet, Williamsburg Resident, First Victim of the Fugitive Slave Law.” Historic Greenpoint (blog), April 30, 2014. https://historicgreenpoint.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/james-hamlet-williamsburg-resident-first-victim-of-the-fugitive-slave-law/