Ann Maria Weems, Teenage Freedom-Seeker
1855
Ann Maria Weems’s family was part slave and part free. By law, even though their father was free, all six of the Weems children took on the slave status of their mother. Three of her brothers had been sold down South, but the Anti-slavery Society gave her father money to buy freedom for two of her brothers. Abolitionist attorney Jacob Bigelow had raised $1,000 to buy her mother’s freedom and $1,600 to buy one of her sister’s freedom. Ann Maria prayed she would be next, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Charles Price owned Ann Maria, and he had no intention of accepting money in exchange for her freedom. Master Price was especially fond of his teenage slave girls. Thirteen-year-old Ann Maria had reason to be afraid. Mr. Bigelow, the lawyer who had taken interest in the Weems family, had tried for two years to purchase her freedom. But even though Ann Maria’s master had been offered $700 for her, he had refused. After two years it became clear to Mr. Bigelow that Ann Maria would have to be taken on the Underground Railroad.
For six weeks Ann Maria Weems, now fifteen, slept fretfully in the corner of her master’s bedroom. How foolish she’d been to think that she was receiving a privilege when told she would be sleeping in the main house. She feared that Master and Mistress Price were suspicious she might be planning on running away. Why else would they have made her sleep on their bedroom floor? Ann Maria pulled her blanket tight around her shoulders and prayed they did not know any of the details.
Jacob Bigelow, an abolitionist attorney with connections who lived fifteen miles away in Washington, DC, had exchanged a series of letters with William Still in Philadelphia. To work out the logistics of the escape plan, Bigelow had secret meetings with agents whose true identities even he did not know. Somehow he needed to get Ann Maria to the nation’s capital, and then he could make arrangements to forward her north. Though Washington, DC, was only fifteen miles from where Ann Maria lived in Rockville, Maryland, it seemed an impossible distance to cover undetected.
Nonetheless, on Sunday night, September 23, 1855, Ann Maria was secreted away, with the assistance of two older cousins who were hoping that Mr. Bigelow might help them escape next. In early October, when it seemed safe to continue on, she arrived in Washington, DC. No one suspected that the respected lawyer Jacob Bigelow, with offices on East and Seventh Streets, and who served on the board of directors of the Washington Gas Light Company, was an agent on the Underground Railroad, running a route through Montgomery County, Maryland, to the District of Columbia.
Using the name William Penn, Bigelow wrote in code to William Still in Philadelphia about a “small package” and said “merchandize shall be delivered” to William Wright, an underground agent in York Springs, Pennsylvania.
While plans were being finalized, slave catchers came to DC looking for Ann Maria Weems. Her master, Charles Price, had offered a $500 reward for her capture, but no fifteen-year-old slave girl fitting her description could be found. Nobody, however, was looking for a fifteen-year-old boy.
Disguised as a coachman named “Joe Wright,” Ann Maria donned a boy’s black pants and white shirt, a vest, jacket, and neat bow tie. Her hair was cropped, and she wore a cap pulled down low to hide some facial freckles. Young Joe looked the perfect part of a gentleman’s coach driver. Ann Maria had been schooled as to how a carriage driver should walk, talk, and act. She was determined to follow every directive down to the minutest detail—her freedom depended upon it.
Ann Maria’s escape out of Price’s farm in Rockville had initially been hurried, but now she had nothing to do but wait. Time needed to pass in order for her master’s slave catchers to give up the chase. Only then would she be taken out of hiding and forwarded on. After six weeks of hiding Ann Maria in the nation’s capital, the storm had passed and Bigelow felt safer conducting her to the next stop.
The rendezvous with underground agents would begin right in the center of Washington, DC, where the young coachman, Joe Wright, would be hidden in plain sight. Ann Maria had been told about the white pillars and steps of one of the most famous private residences in the world, the White House, where President Franklin Pierce lived. The open fields that provided pasturage for sheep and cattle, the Treasury Building, and the wooden-domed Capitol had all been described to her. She was not to take any note of them, for gawking like a tourist would only draw unwanted attention. Joe Wright was to keep his head down as if he drove carriages to and from the District of Columbia every day.
Arrangements were made for Ann Maria to travel with “Dr. H.” in late November. Bigelow did not know the man’s real name. On the appointed day the esteemed Jacob Bigelow, Esq., and his young coachman, Joe Wright, set out. They had decided to rendezvous with their horse and buggy in a very public place—directly in front of the White House. The city was abuzz with people going in and out of the Treasury Building and the State, War, and Navy Buildings on the brisk fall afternoon. It did not seem out of the ordinary that an unattended horse and buggy should be tied up in front of the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Dr. H. confidently climbed inside the carriage. At that moment Mr. Bigelow and the young coachman walked up. Joe Wright tipped his cap to Dr. H. while the two older gentlemen shook hands. Without further ado, the young driver unhitched the horses from the hitching post, climbed into the seat, took the reins, and drove off. Jacob Bigelow’s work was done.
The good Dr. H. took the reins when they were alone on the country roads and put his young charge at ease. They would travel together through several counties in Maryland, along the eastern Pennsylvania border, and on to Philadelphia. It would be necessary to find lodging for a night. Dr. H. told “Joe” that he would look up an old acquaintance and inquire if they could spend the evening on their first night’s journey.
Dr. H.’s friends were quite glad to see him and insisted that they accommodate him overnight. When asked why he had come this way after being absent so long, Dr. H. explained that he had not been well and determined that a good drive in the country air might be beneficial to his health.
Joe Wright listened from the kitchen as the adults visited in the parlor. Dr. H. put on all sorts of airs and talked on a variety of subjects, ever ready to agree heartily with his friends’ pro-slavery sentiments. Joe Wright knew his place and acted as he had been instructed.
At bedtime Dr. H. suggested his boy remain with him during the night, as his vertigo caused dizzy spells. The friends found the request understandable and made arrangements. In actuality Dr. H. felt safer with his charge not being out of his sight during the evening. Slave catchers may have followed them, or her disguise as a boy might be found out if she was with others. Once again Ann Maria found herself with a blanket on the floor while her “master” slept nearby.
By morning the good doctor was on his way, with his devoted coachman at the reins. At long last they arrived in the free state of Pennsylvania and reached the home of William Still in Philadelphia at 4:00 p.m. on November 25—Thanksgiving Day. The second leg of their journey complete.
William Still was expecting their arrival, but he was not at home. Dr. H. greeted Mrs. Still and told her that he was most anxious to hurry home. He stated, “I wish to leave this young lad with you a short while, and I will call and see further about him.” With no good-byes Dr. H. left and was never seen again.
Joe Wright sat nervously in the kitchen in the company of several people: Mrs. Still, a hired girl, and a female runaway slave. When William Still returned home, he was elated to see the disguised coach girl and greeted her accordingly: “I suppose you are the person that the doctor went to Washington after, are you not?” But the young coachman insisted that his name was Joe Wright from York, Pennsylvania, and that he was a servant traveling with the doctor. Still replied, “The doctor went expressly to Washington after a young girl, who was to be brought away dressed up as a boy, and I took you to be the person.”
The boy’s insistence that he was not that person perplexed William Still, who did not find out the reason for the denial until the two were alone. Ann Maria had been under strict orders not to reveal her true identity to anyone but Mr. Still. In the presence of Mrs. Still and the others, Ann Maria had been taking every precaution not to give herself away.
After several days’ rest in Philadelphia, Ann Maria, still disguised as Joe Wright, continued her journey by coach to New York City. Lewis Tappan, an elderly abolitionist in Brooklyn, paid $300 for her transport.
In New York, Reverend Freeman, a black minister, was to accompany “Joe Wright” on the remainder of the journey. The two boarded a train for a three-day ride from New York City to Canada. The long train trip was fraught with worry, as there was now a sizable reward being offered for Charles Price’s runaway slave. It wasn’t until they passed into Canada that Ann Maria felt safe.
In December of 1855, a full two months and four hundred miles from where she had started, Ann Maria Weems arrived in Chatham, Canada. The fourth and final phase of her journey took her on a twenty-mile carriage ride to the home of her aunt and uncle, the Bradleys in Dresden, where she was finally free to resume her true identity.
Ann Maria was educated forty-five minutes away at the reputable Buxton Mission School in the Elgin Settlement, a cooperative colony for refugees in Canada. By 1858 all six of the children in the Weems family had finally won their freedom. In 1861, when Ann Maria was twenty-one years old, her parents and two youngest siblings moved to Canada for nine years before returning to Washington, DC. After 1861, however, all records of Ann Maria Weems’s life are lost to time. Perhaps she permanently changed her name to ensure no trace of her could ever be found.
Ann Maria’s former master, Charles Price, had lost one of his favorite slaves, but he ensured countless others did not escape. Several years after Ann Maria’s escape, he bought a building with adjoining jail cells on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia—a slave-trading pen known as Price, Birch & Co.—which brought terror to anyone held there who awaited his or her doom.