The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

10. Valley Line to Hartford

C H A P T E R 10 VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD BESIDES the vessels that brought fleeing slaves to landings at New Haven, New London, and other saltwater ports, not a few river steamers, transporting with their cargo those same stowaways, sailed up the Connecticut River. In its great river, flowing 400 twisting miles from its source in New Hampshire to the Sound at Old Saybrook, the state possessed a central waterway which from earliest times had been a major artery of traffic. Almost every town along the Connecticut, from its mouth to the head of navigation, was a center of boat-building and a port for fishermen, river boats, or even ocean-going vessels. Old Saybrook, Middletown, and Hartford were important centers of overseas shipping. Old Lyme, it is said, "once knew a time when every dwelling housed a captain 's family." * Many times the boats that sailed these inland waters carried more than merely legal cargo and freeborn passengers . Abolitionist shipowners like Jesse G. Baldwin of Middletown found room on their craft for any fugitive that needed it.2 The steamers that after 1824 regularly plied the route from New York to Hartford, carrying Southern cotton to Connecticut's mills, also brought 138 The Underground Railroad in Connecticut Southern runaways to Connecticut's freer air. James Lindsey Smith and the fugitive Charles were only two of those who made part of their journey to freedom in this way. When the river steamers were first used to transport refugees, and whether the plan was instigated by Hartford 's Underground workers or by those in New York, remain uncertain; but as Smith's narrative shows, the runaway wasdirected to the river steamer and had his fare paid by agents in Manhattan. Despite the importance of water-borne traffic, it is probable that most fugitives who followed the valley line did so by going along the river's banks. Old Lyme, on the eastern side near the stream's mouth, was an Underground Railroad center of "great activity." 3 How many of its handsome old houses,many of them dating from the eighteenth century and occupied by the families of seafaring men, were actual stations is undetermined. The Moses Noyes house, on the west side of Lyme Street, was one of them;4 it is logical to suppose that there were others. The agents in this locality sent some of their guests eastward in the direction of New London, but others went upstream along the Connecticut River, at this pointflowing from northwest to southeast. The precise route of those riverside travelers who followed the east bank remains a matter of conjecture. Certain homes in East Haddam apparently afforded them protection and rest; details are lacking, but there is sufficient reason to believe that the descendants of Captain James Green, who owned the Blacksmith Arms at East Haddam Landing, furnished one of these havens.5 The foremost shipbuilders in Middlesex County were to be found in East Haddam; Gideon Higgins and George E. and William H. Goodspeed were most prominentamong them. Higgins, it is said, was not only a master designer VALLEY LINE TO HARTFORD 139 of ships but also a devout abolitionist, "a radical," and "uncompromising in his convictions." Making his home at Chapman's Landing, where the Goodspeed Opera House now stands, he no doubt performed many acts of charity for the nearly famished stowaways who stepped into his parlor from the gangway.6 Though the Goodspeeds were not described as having Higgins' proclivities, yet from one of the vessels they constructed, the Hero, a fugitive slave made a hairbreadth escape from his owner:7 Among the colored men employed upon the Hero, was a fugitive slave. His 'master,' wishing to use the new law to arrest him,took passagein the Hero, thinking to catch the man upon reaching Hartford. But at East Haddam, the hunted man felt moved in spirit to go ashore and examine the country. When the boat reached Hartford, the hunters could not find him. They sought diligently, but in vain. Whether this slave, having baffled his pursuers, received the humane assistance of Gideon Higgins, or through his own courage and ingenuity fell into the company of friends at the Blacksmith Arms on Main Street, is not a matter of record. Nor is there any clue as to what accommodationsexisted for him in the long reach from that point to Glastonbury. The latter...