Tanner’s Alley, from South Street looking towards Walnut Street, 1904. Credit: Historic Harrisburg Association.
Harrisburg’s location as the closest northern capital to the Mason-Dixon line—and the numerous roads, canals, ferries and railroads that converged here—led to its importance as a hub for the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War.
As early as 1836, Harrisburg formed an antislavery society to demand the immediate emancipation of all slaves held in captivity. The next year, a statewide antislavery convention was held in the city.
By 1850, the year that the notorious Fugitive Slave Act was passed, the free black population of Harrisburg was around 900. A decade later, it would nearly double, likely a testament to escaped slaves who chose to remain in the city. For those runaways who made it to Harrisburg—and due to the heinous nature of the fugitive slave law, which required local authorities to assist in recapturing slaves—runaways often were forced to go on further.
From Harrisburg, routes led east to Lancaster and Philadelphia, as well as north to Sunbury, Williamsport, Elmira and Rochester, N.Y. In Harrisburg, there were various houses and churches throughout the city that were likely used as hiding spots.
An especially well-known location was the area near Commonwealth and Walnut streets, an African-American community then known as Tanner’s Alley. Here, several houses, including those of free blacks Joseph Bustill and William Jones, were stops on the journey northward. Bustill was a schoolteacher, and Jones was a doctor and a merchant, both men highly active in the anti-slavery movement.
According to one source, Bustill wrote several letters to William Still of Philadelphia informing him of the operations of Harrisburg’s Fugitive Slave Society. Bustill, however, was very careful to always refer to “passengers” on the railroad metaphorically, one time mentioning the passage of “four large and two small hams” traveling to Philadelphia.
Bustill, Jones and Tanner’s Alley are three of the more familiar names associated with the Underground Railroad in Harrisburg, but secrecy was what made the railroad a success. Many families, businesses, farms, churches and organizations, some known, and some that will forever remain unknown, formed the web of the Underground Railroad throughout the Keystone State—with the city of Harrisburg as the nexus.
Jason Wilson is an historian for the Capitol Preservation Committee.
