The Underground Railroad

After northern states began abolishing slavery during the Revolutionary era, fugitives from throughout southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina began escaping by ship from the Norfolk waterfront. Many succeeded, with luck and determination, in gaining the aid of black crewmen aboard vessels bound north. George Latimer and Shadrach Minkins, two of the South’s most famous Underground Railroad fugitives, escaped from Norfolk, most likely by sea. Some ship captains were known to local Underground Railroad agents as sympathetic to fugitives or willing to transport them secretly for a price. During the 1850s, when local sentiment against the Underground Railroad was at its highest, Captain William D. Bayliss of the Keziah and Captain Alfred Fountain of the City of Richmond bravely carried runaways from Norfolk. The City of Richmond docked at John Higgins’ wharf east of the Berkley Bridge, and Higgins had formerly owned Shadrach Minkins. The City of Norfolk was placed on the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom in 2004.

Norfolk, Virginia · United States