Slavery and the Underground Railroad
© Tina L. Curtis
Excerpt from her book, “Shadows of the Past.” Used by permission.
Slavery was an issue even around the Wattsburg area.
Mrs. Docia Carson, daughter of Burrill Tracy, stood with her husband against slavery. They had moved to Beaverdam following their marriage. When anti-slavery was at its peak from 1837—1840, the Presbyterian Church at Beaverdam was divided in its opinion. Those against slavery left the church, attending the Congregationalist church. The Carsons, Grays, and Smiths felt that they would only belong to a church that was outspoken against slavery.
Following the war, Dr. S.F. Chapin brought back a black man to Wattsburg to live. Sidney Dawson, who became a noted Wattsburg barber, worked through the Freedman’s Bureau to bring his mother North. She had lost many children to slavery in Virginia with Sidney being the last son left alive in 1889 when she died at Philadelphia.
The underground railroad was an organization that originated in the early part of the 1800s to help slaves escape from their masters in the South. The operation was not actually a railroad but a route which used various means to get a slave from the South to Canada. As the Civil War became a reality, the railroad was in full operation helping slaves escape to the North and then to Canada.
The underground railroad was known to operate through the Erie County area from 1840 to 1860. Proof of the operation being located in the Wattsburg area is almost non-existent except for what has been told from generation to generation. Keeping records, which few people did, was a dangerous prospect after a law was passed sending men to jail if they helped an escaped slave.
The only record in the Wattsburg area that may be used for proof of the underground railroad was the obituary of Andrew Haskell, of Lake Pleasant. Following his death on November 27, 1897, an obituary printed in the Union City Times mentioned the railroad. Andrew was known to speak out against everything he disagreed with regarding politics, temperance and slavery. He was mentioned as one of the original Abolitionists in the country giving escaped slaves a place to stay, food to eat, and safely getting them to the next underground railroad “station.”
