Early Escape Route

The opening of the rail line to Aquia in 1842 created an opportunity for enslaved people seeking freedom. In 1848, William and Ellen Craft of Georgia began a dangerous escape in which Ellen, born to an enslaved mother and a white father, disguised herself as a white man seeking medical treatment in the North while William acted as her body servant. Traveling by train, carriage, and steamship from Georgia to Philadelphia, they passed through Aquia Landing without challenge and reached freedom on Christmas Day 1848. Three months later, Henry "Box" Brown, an enslaved man in Richmond, packed himself into a wooden box to be mailed north. By wagon, train, and steamboat, sometimes upside down, he traveled for 27 hours through Aquia Landing undetected before the box was delivered in Philadelphia, where he emerged free.

Virginia · United States