Henry Box Brown

Born into slavery about 1815 at The Hermitage Plantation near here, Henry Brown was working in Richmond by 1830. On 23 Mar. 1849, he mailed himself in a three-foot-long box to Philadelphia and freedom. Brown became a spokesperson for the abolitionist movement and a symbol of the Underground Railroad. With Charles Stearns, he published the Narrative of Henry Box Brown and exhibited a moving panorama, “The Mirror of Slavery.” Forced to leave the country in Oct. 1850 after the Fugitive Slave Act because of the threat of reenslavement, he moved to Great Britain, where he toured as an entertainer. He returned to the United States in 1875 and died sometime after 1889.

Virginia · United States