Ellen and William Craft

Ellen crossed the boundaries of race, class, and gender by passing as a white planter with William posing as her servant.

Ellen Craft was born in 1826 in Clinton, Georgia, to Maria, a mixed-race enslaved woman, and her wealthy planter slaveholder, Major James Smith.

William was born in Macon, where he met his future wife at the age of 16 when his first enslaver sold him to settle gambling debts.

On December 21, they boarded a steamship for Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania, where they arrived early on the morning of Christmas Day.

Historians have noted other enslaved women who posed as men to escape, such as Clarissa Davis of Virginia, who dressed as a man and took a New England-bound ship to freedom; Mary Millburn, who also sailed as a male passenger; and Maria Weems from the District of Columbia, who as a young woman of fifteen, dressed as a man and escaped.

They moved to the well-established free black community on the north side of Beacon Hill in Boston,[4] where they were married in a Christian ceremony.

Because society generally disapproved of women speaking to public audiences of mixed gender at the time, Ellen typically stood on the stage while William told their story.

Willis H. Hughes and John Knight traveled north from Macon intending to capture William and Ellen Craft; upon arriving in Boston, they were met with resistance on the part of both white and black Bostonians.

She said: So I write these few lines merely to say that the statement is entirely unfounded, for I have never had the slightest inclination whatever of returning to bondage; and God forbid that I should ever be so false to liberty as to prefer slavery in its stead.

Though, had it been to the contrary, my feelings in regard to this would have been just the same, for I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent.

For most of their time in England, the Craft family lived in Hammersmith[20] although they did lecture elsewhere, such as Swansea possibly via an introduction from Jessie Donaldson, an anti-slavery abolitionist.

"[22] After the American Civil War ended, Ellen located her mother, Maria, in Georgia; she paid for her passage to England, where they were reunited.

[1] In 1868, after the American Civil War and passage of constitutional amendments granting emancipation, citizenship, and rights to freedmen, the Crafts returned with three of their children to the United States.

Although the Crafts attempted to keep the farm running, dropping cotton prices and post-Reconstruction era violence contributed to its failure.

[4] In 1890, the Crafts moved to Charleston, South Carolina to live with their daughter Ellen, who was married to a doctor named William D. Crum.

It offers examples of racial passing, cross-dressing, and middle-class "performance" in a society in which each of these boundaries was thought to be distinct and stable.

[19] While published initially with only William's name as author, twentieth-century and more recent scholarship has re-evaluated Ellen's likely contribution, noting the inclusion of material about Sally Miller and other female fugitives.

[4] Their escape, particularly Ellen's disguise, which played on many layers of appearance and identity, showed the interlocking nature of race, gender, and class.

Sarah Brusky says that, in the way that she used wrappings to "muffle" herself during the escape to avoid conversation, Ellen is presented in the book through the filter of William's perspective.

[19] Historians and readers cannot evaluate how much Ellen contributed to recounting their story, but audiences appreciated seeing the young woman who had been so daring.

[23] Since they appeared for ten years, as William recounted their escape, they could respond to audiences' reactions to Ellen in person and to hearing of her actions.

[19] In February 2024, Washington Post writer Bryan Greene established through DNA evidence that Ellen Craft was a blood relative of the Healy family, which included several siblings once enslaved in Jones County, Georgia, who later distinguished themselves as leaders in the Catholic Church and other endeavors.