"Mr. SIMMS", (as we always called him), was a negro who, from about 1880 to 1895 rented the Hildrup farm next below my fathers farm in S. Danby, Tompkins county, New York. One evening in 1884, I was down visiting him, as I often did, and at my request he told me about his escape from slavery. I took the following notes of his story at the time -- Arthur Charles HOWLAND
Three farms - Chestnut Hill, Eagles’ Rest just below this, and a third farm near Alexandria, VA. The owner was Mrs. MASON (she was a PRICE). These farms formerly owned by an Englishman named CHAPHAM, who was humane, believed in treating slaves like men. Didn’t whip, etc. On this account the slaves on the Chestnut Hill farm would talk back at the overseer and wouldn’t submit quietly to being ill-treated. When CHAPHAM died, he left the three farms and the slaves to a distant relative, Mrs. MASON, who lived in Alexandria and whose husband was a lawyer there.
The three farms were looked after by an overseer. The slaves of Chestnut Hill, when whipped by the overseer, would fight back and sometimes whip the overseer. “Very troublesome.” The slaves wouldn't submit to harshness, having had a taste of good treatment under CHAPHAM’s mild rule. Many of the slaves at Chestnut Hill had already run away so that only seven were finally left on the farm, and man slaves were brought up from Eagle’s Rest at various times to help work the upper farm.
During the winter of 1857-8, the overseer was overheard by an Englishman to say that he would well of “that breed o’dogs” down South when he got through with the spring’s work. The Englishman reported this to the slaves. So the seven Chestnut Hill negros made up their minds to run away to Canada.
It was the custom in those parts to grant the slaves Easter Sunday and Easter Monday as holidays. Since the time SIMMS could remember they had also been given the next day, Tuesday, as a holiday. But in 1856 the overseer, in announcing, according to custom, on the Saturday before Easter, the work of the coming week, ordered the slaves to go back to work on Tuesday. Instead of appearing on that morning, however, they waited until the next day, Wednesday, before reporting for work. But the next year, 1857, they came back on Tuesday according to orders. “That breed of dogs,” as the overseer called the seven slaves on the Chestnut Hill farm (of whom SIMMS, about 20 years old was the youngest) decided however, to run away when the next Easter holiday came around.
Accordingly, they started out on the Saturday night before Easter, April 3, 1858. The overseer paid no attention to them until Tuesday morining, April 6th, and then concluded they were taking that day for an extra holiday as they had done once before. So their escape was not discovered until Wednesday morning, April 7th, and thus they had four nights of travel before pursuit started. On Wednesday they were advertised as fugitives.
On Saturday night the seven slaves started out after dark from Chestnut Hill (which was 50 miles northwest of Alexandria and 20 miles from Leesburg, the county seat) and followed the course of the Kiptocton (?) mountains. Their ridges run north and south, and hold their course. SIMMS had known of ignorant slaves running away who became bewildered and unwittingly wandered back to their starting place. It was the worst fate possible for a slave to attempt to run away and be recaptured. He was then nearly killed.
The fugitives crossed the Potomac at the Point of Rocks and followed the Short Hills north, avoiding the roads and tramping through the briars, gullies and almost impassible ways. They traveled only at night, lying up in the woods during the day. Tuesday night they crossed the line into Pennsylvania and passed through Chambersburg.
The next morning one of the group stopped to fix his shoes. The rolling nature of the road soon hid him from sight. His absence was not noted at first, but it was not safe to go back, and after a while they made up their minds that he had been captured and the rest of them pushed on.
On Wednesday afternoon, they arrived at Carlisle. Here they separated, two going around Carlisle to the west, two others (one of whom was SIMMS) to the southeast, and the remaining two straight through the city, intending to stop there with a former acquaintance named Joe. These last two were not heard of again, but the other four met on the farther side of Carlisle and reached Harrisburg. Here they met some men on the street early in the morning who cried “Them’s runaway niggers, sure as Hell!” The fugitives took to their heels and got away.
At Harrisburg their provisions gave out. They moved up the Susquehanna River a ways, nearly starving on their way and then struck across country to Pottsville, occasionally begging food at poor huts. In a village two miles outside of Pottsville, (Port Carbon?) they rested a day and then went over the mountains to Wilkes-Barre.
By this time SIMMS was completely tired out and had to crawl on his hands and knees to relieve his feet. They had come upon cold weather just after leaving Harrisburg - saw snow - cold and rainy - wet through - still walked on. From Wilkes-Barre they came on Abington(?) (Avondale(?). Reached _________(?) and pushed on leaving one companion at Abington (?). They finally came to Montrose.
Here SIMMS stayed for two weeks, working for a negro named Warren. Received $4.00 in wages. Then went on to Binghamton where his two companions had preceeded him. But these had already gone on before he got there by “Undergound Railway” to Syracuse, where they had friends and where they decided to remain instead of going on to Canada.
In Binghamton, SIMMS met a negro names Thomas, a distant relative who had run away from Chestnut Hill before Simms was born. Thomas had a brother who was a preacher in Ithaca and took SIMMS there. In Ithaca he got work and never got any nearer to Canada than once, when he made a business trip to Cayuga Bridge at the north end of Cayuga Lake.
The two men left at Carlisle, and the one lost near Chambersburg, finally reached Canada. Of the whole party that ran way from Chestnut Hill, only three remained alive in 1885 - one in Canada; another, Thomas JACKSON, works in Esty’s Tannery in Ithaca; and William SIMMS in South Danby.
Addenda:
Mr. SIMMS settled down in Ithaca in 1858 and remained there for some sixteen years. He was a hard worker and for much of the time had a steady job in Esty’s Tannery at good wages. He married a very pleasant colored woman in Ithaca of whom, in later years, we were very fond. Then they moved to the Hildrup place. My little sister Mary and I used often to run away and call on her, partly because we liked her and partly because whe always gave us cookies and other good things to eat.
After about sixteen years in Ithaca, SIMMS and his wife had saved enough money to buy a team of horses, a lumber wagon and farming tools such as a plow, a harrow and other things.
About 1874 SIMMS rented on shares a farm on Snyder Hill in the southwest corner of the town of Danby. Then, about 1880, he rented the Hildrup farm just below our place, which had been unoccupied for some time.
He was a good farmer, in some ways quite in advance of his white neighbors, especially in the use of fertilizers for his crops. He made the fertilizer himself. Whenever he heard of the death of any domestic animal within a radius of ten miles, he used to drive there and bring the carcass home. There he would boil it up in a big iron kettle, and when he had reduced the material to a thick broth, would mix this with wood ashes and scatter this on his ploughed land. The result was good crops even though the land was poor soil.
He attended our church (S. Danby M.E. Church) and subscribed regularly to help pay the preacher’s salary. He was well liked by all the neighbors and was treated on a basis of perfect equality. Mr. and Mrs. SIMMS were the only negros I ever saw until I went away to school.
Transcribers Note: Arthur Charles HOWLAND was 15 years old when he interviewed Mr. SIMMS. He retained these notes and later wrote this piece as part of his recollections of growing up in S. Danby. A.C. HOWLAND was born 24 Dec 1869 in S. Danby. He attended Cornell University and graduated 1893. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1897 in History.
Thank you Roger Howland for sharing this information!
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