Underground Railroad in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

[2] As a result, African Americans made their way to Harrisburg from farms in and around Dauphin County, Pennsylvania and from Virginia and Maryland.

[2] Beginning in 1817, churches and schools were established in the area by Black men and women, sometimes with financial help from white residents.

Proposals were initiated that would have required free Black men, women and children to register with the city and a citizens' patrol was formed to monitor and harass people of color.

Despite the rising tension, there were nine hundred free Black men, women and children living in the Harrisburg area by 1850; by 1860, the population had grown to roughly 1800.

[1] Roads, canals, ferries and a robust railroad system made it easy to move people to and through the area on routes north to New York or east to Lancaster and Philadelphia.

[4] Shelter was found in homes of free African Americans, including the house of schoolteacher Joseph Bustill and physician William Jones.

Tanner's Alley, at Walnut and Commonwealth streets,[1] became a center of Underground Railroad activity, as did the Wesley Union African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which was a station on the UGRR.

[5] The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a root cause of this danger[5] because it allowed slave catchers to legally enter free states, where they were then empowered to obtain assistance from law enforcement in abducting Black men, women and children and transporting them south for new periods of enslavement, regardless of how long and how settled they had been in a free state.