The Underground Railroad

Led by George Read, founder of the town’s ivory industry, Deep River became known in the nineteenth century as “all abolitionist” and a refuge for runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad. In 1828, Daniel Fisher, a 20-year-old slave who had been sold away from his family, made the perilous exodus north from South Carolina. “I reached Deep River at last, weary and frightened,” he later recalled. Read welcomed him into his home. Fisher assumed a new identity as William Winters and remained here until the 1850s, when the Fugitive Slave Law imperiled his freedom. He returned after the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in 1863, and lived until his death in 1899 on Winter Avenue, which is named for him.

Deep River Center, Connecticut · United States