The Underground Railroad

The house of Samuel B. Chase and Elizabeth Buffum Chase, once located across the street, played an important role in the antislavery movement of the eighteen-forties and eighteen-fifties as a secret refuge for fleeing slaves and a stop on the underground railroad. The Chaces, fiercely independent Quakers and active abolitionists, lived there from about 1847 to 1857 after coming to Valley Falls from Fall River in 1839, when Samuel's father purchased the Valley Falls textile mill on the Blackstone River. Using their social and economic prominence, they took leading roles in antislavery work despite the risk of ostracism in communities such as Valley Falls, where economic ties to the South created strong sympathies for slavery. Their home served not only as a station for fugitives, especially those traveling by ship from the South to New England, but also as a gathering place for prominent reformers lecturing in the Blackstone Valley on abolition and other moral issues. A common route brought fugitives first to New Bedford, then to the Fall River home of Elizabeth Buffum Chase's sister, then to Valley Falls, where the Chaces helped them begin the journey to Vermont by securing a seat on the Providence-Worcester Railroad, after which Vermont abolitionists directed them onward to Canada.

Valley Falls, Rhode Island · United States