Western Vermont
Our coverage of the Champlain Line of the UGRR would be incomplete if we did not include Western Vermont. The terrain of the Green Mountain state along Lake Champlain was easy to traverse, and there was an early rail line connecting Albany and Troy to Rutland, Burlington, and St. Albans, Vermont. Plattsburgh and Albany were not connected by rail until after the Civil War. Many freedom seekers who went to Vermont from Albany, Troy and Boston, were forwarded across Lake Champlain to New York where they continued their journey to Canada West.
St. Albans
UGRR stationmaster Lawrence Brainerd, who employed Mr. Boggs
Jeremiah C. Boggs
When Jeremiah C. Boggs arrived in St. Albans in 1843, businessman Lawrence Brainerd, who had a general store, welcomed him into his home and gave him a job. Boggs had been forwarded to St. Albans from Albany, New York. It had taken him three weeks to reach Albany from Richmond, Virginia. The Eastern New York Anti-Slavery Society reported Boggs’s case in its annual report. Jeremiah had been sold six times. One of his masters, Joshua S. Green, had “treated him very bad.” Jeremiah had fallen asleep one night from “excessive fatigue” while watching a piece of meat cook. When the fire burned the meat, his mistress beat him with a broomstick. Then her husband struck Jeremiah with his cane and stabbed him with a dagger in his hand, his thigh and under his ribs, “all at one time, swearing in the meantime he would kill him.”..... more
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