George DeBaptiste
George DeBaptiste (c. 1815 – February 22, 1875) was a prominent African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad in southern Indiana and Detroit, Michigan.
In 1840, he served as valet and then White House steward for US President William Henry Harrison, who was from that state.
During this period, he purchased a lake steamboat for carrying fugitives across the Detroit River to Amherstburg, Ontario.
During the American Civil War, DeBaptiste helped recruit black soldiers from Michigan for the Union Army.
After the wars he continued to work for African-American civil rights, helping gain admission of black children to Detroit public schools.
In his mid-teens he married Marie Lucinda Lee, a slave, and purchased her freedom with his earnings as a free black person.
It described him as, "a mulatto boy, about five feet seven and a half inches high, and about twenty years of age, who was born free."
DeBaptiste's network of supporters included Dr. Samuel Tibbetts in Madison and William Beard, a Quaker, in Salem, Indiana in Washington County.
[2] In February 1840, DeBaptiste, abolitionist Seymour Finney from New York, and William Lambert arranged the noted rescue of Robert Cromwell from a Detroit courthouse, where he was being tried under fugitive slave law after being recaptured by his master.
[7] DeBaptiste became his valet during his campaign and, after Harrison was elected president, he appointed the young man as White House steward.
Slavery supporters in the area demanded his arrest for his failure to pay a $500 bond required by the state from free African-Americans until Judge Stephen C. Stevens declared that law unconstitutional.
[2] Repeatedly attacked in Madison for his anti-slavery work, as southern Ohio had slavery supporters, DeBaptist was forced to leave town.
[9] At age 34, in 1846, DeBaptiste moved to Detroit where he continued to work as a barber and also sold clothes at Robert Banks' store.
His former comrade William Lambert had also moved to Detroit, and the two men began to work closely together.
[13] In 1848, DeBaptiste took work as steward on the steamship Arrow, which traveled on the Great Lakes between Sandusky, Ohio and Detroit.
Tasked with serving the warrant, the sheriff of Detroit wrote to the committee: "Knowing the caste and character of DeBaptiste my first impression on receiving the summons was that if Senator Mason knew the facts he would not desire the summons to be served, even if I should find DeBaptiste here...
