John Hunn | |
---|---|
Personal details | |
Born | Kent County, Delaware, US | June 25, 1818
Died | July 6, 1894 76) Camden, Delaware, US | (aged
Spouse | Mary Jenkins Swallow |
Residence(s) | Camden, Delaware, US |
John Hunn (June 25, 1818 – July 6, 1894) was an American farmer and abolitionist who was a "station master" of the Underground Railroad in Delaware, the southernmost stationmaster and responsible for slaves escaping up the Delmarva Peninsula. [1]
Hunn was born June 25, 1818, on Wildcat Manor near Lebanon, Delaware at the mouth of Tidbury branch in Kent County, Delaware [2] He was the son of Ezekiel Hunn (1774-1821) and the former Hannah Alston. His father was an abolitionist and a member of Religious Society of Friends or Quakers, but died (as did his wife) when this John Hunn was a boy. The young orphan and his siblings were raised by relatives, and his sister later convinced him to become a minister. [3] His half brother Ezekiel Hunn Jr. would be apprenticed to Philadelphia Quaker merchant Townsend Sharpless, whose daughter he would marry and who would later donate some papers to Swarthmore College. [4]
Meanwhile, John Hunn decided to marry Mary Swallow, who was not a Quaker, and was accordingly expelled from his Camden, Delaware, meeting, although the Quakers relented and Mary converted to the faith, so they were allowed to transfer their membership to another meeting near their farm, "Happy Valley," near Middletown, Kent County, Delaware. [3] Their marriage survived until her death, and they had several children, as well as became stalwarts of the Appoquinimink meeting. Among their children was John, later the Governor of Delaware. After Mary's death, John Hunn remarried, to Anne Jenkins.
Assisted by his relative John Alston and Daniel Corbit of the rural area encompassing Middletown, in Kent County and Odessa in New Castle County, Delaware, as well as by Thomas Garrett and others in Wilmington further north in New Castle County, Hunn was responsible for a portion of the Underground Railroad network that transported thousands of escapees up the Delmarva Peninsula to Wilmington and thence to Pennsylvania and freedom. [5]
In December 1845 he helped freedman Samuel Hawkins escape with his enslaved family of seven (owned by 2 masters) from slavery in Maryland. Although the slavecatchers caught the family on Hunn's farm, the local sheriff noticed a defect in the paperwork, and early in 1846 Delaware Supreme Court justice James Booth Jr. freed them based on a writ of habeas corpus sought by a fellow abolitionist (and lawyer) James Wales, and Thomas Garrett quickly called a coach to take them across the border into Pennsylvania. The displeased slaveholders then sued Hunn and Garrett for violating the Fugitive Slave Act in the U.S. District Court in the New Castle Court House. After a trial presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney and District Judge Willard Hall, both Hunn and Garrett were convicted and fined heavily. [6] [7] Prosecutor James Bayard reportedly told Hunn the fines would not be imposed if he would promise not to continue his efforts to aid fugitives escaping from slavery, but Hunn "vowed never to withhold a helping hand from the down-trodden in their hour of distress." [8] His land holdings and all his possessions were sold at sheriff’s sale in mid-1848. Although his family was left utterly destitute, Hunn continued his efforts to abolish slavery.
Following this eviction, he lived for a time with relatives in Magnolia in Kent County. During the Civil War, Hunn could not serve in the military because of his faith, but afterward moved with his family to the Sea Islands of South Carolina to work with the Freedmen's Bureau in Port Royal, South Carolina, and as a customs officer in Beaufort, South Carolina. [9] [10]
Hunn died July 6, 1894, at Camden in Kent County, where he was living with his son John Hunn Jr. (who had moved back to Delaware in 1876 and later became Delaware's governor) and is buried at the Camden Friends Meetinghouse.
Because of his modesty, or to protect others from possible retaliation as interracial tensions remained high, on his deathbed, this Hunn asked his son John to burn his papers, although some were retained by other correspondents, including William Still in Philadelphia, who published an account of some of Hunn's activities. [3] [11] The ancestral Hunn home, Wildcat Manor, is now part of a mostly-nature park ("Hunn Park") administered by Kent County Parks and Recreation. [12] [13] A loop of the federal Underground Railroad historic trail in Delaware visits sites associated with Hunn and his father (who assisted Harriet Tubman). [1] Delaware has erected a historical marker honoring Hunn in Camden near his grave site. [14]
Peter Spencer (1782–1843) was an American freedman who in 1813 founded the Union Church of Africans in Wilmington, Delaware. The denomination is now known as the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection, or A.U.M.P. Church for short. Born into slavery in 1782 in Kent County, Maryland, Spencer was freed after his master died, by the terms of his will.
John Wales was an American lawyer and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a member of the Whig Party who served as U.S. Senator from Delaware.
Thomas Garrett was an American abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad movement before the American Civil War. He helped more than 2,500 African Americans escape slavery.
John Hunn was an American businessman and politician from Camden, Delaware. The first governor elected after a reform of Delaware's state constitution and a compromise candidate, Hunn served from 1901 until 1905 and became the first of a multi-decade string of elected Republican Delaware governors.
Preston Lea was an American businessman and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a member of the Republican Party who served as Governor of Delaware.
Caleb Prew Bennett was an American soldier and politician from Wilmington, in New Castle County, Delaware. He was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and a member of the Democratic Party who served as Governor of Delaware.
Samuel D. Burris was a member of the Underground Railroad. He had a family, who he moved to Philadelphia for safety and traveled into Maryland and Delaware to guide freedom seekers north along the Underground Railroad to Pennsylvania.
The 92nd Delaware General Assembly was a meeting of the legislative branch of the state government, consisting of the Delaware Senate and the Delaware House of Representatives. Elections were held the first Tuesday after November 1 and terms began in Dover on the first Tuesday in January. This date was January 6, 1903, which was two weeks before the beginning of the third administrative year of Governor John Hunn and Philip Cannon as Lieutenant Governor.
The 100th Delaware General Assembly was a meeting of the legislative branch of the state government, consisting of the Delaware Senate and the Delaware House of Representatives. Elections were held the first Tuesday after November 1 and terms began in Dover on the first Tuesday in January. This date was January 7, 1919, which was two weeks before the beginning of the third administrative year of Governor John G. Townsend, Jr. and Colen Ferguson as Lieutenant Governor.
Camden Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house located on Delaware Route 10 in Camden, Kent County, Delaware. It was built in 1805, and was still in operation as a Quaker meeting house when it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. A modern Camden Friends Meeting and Social Hall has been built behind the historic building, which now serves the meeting, and was designed to be energy-efficient and architecturally respectful of the historic building.
Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse, also known as the Odessa Friends Meetinghouse, is a very small but historic Quaker meetinghouse on Main Street in Odessa, Delaware. It was built in 1785 by David Wilson and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Members of the meeting, including John Hunn and his cousin John Alston, were active in the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman may have hid in the meetinghouse. Measuring about 20 feet (6.1 m) by 22 feet (6.7 m), it may be the smallest brick house of worship in the United States.
Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 4th and West Streets in Wilmington, Delaware in the Quaker Hill neighborhood. The meeting is still active with a membership of about 400 and is part of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. It was built in 1815–1817 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
Great Geneva is a historic home located near Camden, Kent County, Delaware. It was built in about 1765, and is a 2+1⁄2-story, brick, hall-and-parlor plan dwelling with a small frame kitchen wing. The layout is an adaptation of the Resurrection Manor plan. It is associated with the prominent Hunn family and the local Quaker community. The house was an important station on the Underground Railroad.
William Brinkley was a conductor on the Underground Railroad who helped more than 100 people achieve freedom by traveling from Camden, Delaware past the "notoriously dangerous" towns of Dover and Smyrna north to Blackbird and sometimes as far as Wilmington, which was also very dangerous for runaway enslaved people. Some of his key rescues include the Tilly Escape of 1856, the Dover Eight in the spring of 1857, and the rescue of 28 people, more than half of which were children, from Dorchester County, Maryland. He had a number of pathways that he would take to various destinations, aided by his brother Nathaniel and Abraham Gibbs, other conductors on the railroad.
Emeline and Samuel Hawkins were a couple from Queen Anne's County, Maryland who had six children together and ran away from Emeline and her children's slaveholders in 1845, with the assistance of Samuel Burris, a conductor on the Underground Railroad. They made it through a winter snowstorm to John Hunn's farm, where they were captured and placed in the New Castle jail. Thomas Garrett interceded and as a result the Hawkins were freed and they settled in Byberry, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two slaveholders, Charles Glanding and Elizabeth Turner, claimed to own Emeline and her six children. Glanding and Turner initiated lawsuits against Hunn and Garrett. Found guilty by a jury primarily made up of slaveholders, Hunn and Garrett were financially devastated by the fines levied against them.
Isaac S. Flint was an Underground Railroad station master, lecturer, farmer, and a teacher. He saved Samuel D. Burris, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, from being sold into slavery after having been caught helping runaway enslaved people.
Isaac Mendenhall was an American farmer, abolitionist, and station master on the Underground Railroad in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Isaac and Dinah Mendenhall aided several hundred fugitives to escape to freedom. Prosperous farmers, they lived at the estate of Oakdale, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972. A Pennsylvania state historical marker was dedicated in their honor on November 10, 2018.