William Parker (abolitionist)

William Parker (1821 – April 14, 1891) was an American former slave who escaped from Maryland to Pennsylvania, where he became an abolitionist and anti-slavery activist in Christiana.

Edward Gorsuch, a Maryland slaveowner who owned four slaves who had fled over the state border to Parker's farm, was killed and other white men in the party to capture the fugitives were wounded.

Upon Gorsuch's death, Parker fled the area, traveling by the Underground Railroad to Rochester, New York, where he met with Frederick Douglass.

William Parker was born into slavery on Roedown Plantation in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to Louisa Simms, an enslaved woman.

In his memoir and slave narrative, The Freedman's Story,[4] Parker later wrote that he learned how to fight as a young boy to gain a spot by the warmth of the fire.

[5] After being inspired by speeches by William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, Parker encouraged the formation of a mutual protection society of members from the black community.

They developed an intelligence network to send alerts so that their neighbors would know when slave catchers were about; they would quickly spring into action to retrieve any captives before they could be taken back across state lines.

Both sides were resolute in their determination to prevail: Parker convinced of the immorality of slavery, and Gorsuch confident in the law and his right to own slaves.

[7][1] He, his wife Eliza, and their three children eventually settled in a black community in Buxton, Ontario, where they purchased a 50-acre (200,000 m2) lot of land.

Shortly thereafter he became the Kent County correspondent for the North Star, Frederick Douglass's newspaper published in Rochester, New York.

Parker was also elected to and wrote many communications for the Court of Arbitration (the governing body of the Buxton settlement, a self-governed community).