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History takes the driver's seat

Auto tour tracks the path to the Christiana Riot.

Aug 30, 2009 00:05 EST

Christiana

By JON RUTTER, Staff Writer

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The public is invited to follow a trail of escaped slaves and Underground Railroad derring-do Saturday, Sept. 12, during the Christiana Riot Tour.

The self-guided auto tour links a dozen southern Lancaster County sites associated with the tumultuous 1851 episode often called the shot that launched the Civil War — 10 years before Fort Sumter.

Visitors may spend all day, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., or pick and choose the sites they wish to explore, said Darlene Colon, who will portray Lydia Hamilton Smith, confidante of abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens.

The tour will be held rain or shine and is a fundraiser for the Christiana Historical Society.

Tickets cost $10 — students, kindergarten through grade 12, get in free — and may be picked up along with a map and guide at the Christiana Borough Hall, 10 W. Slocum Ave.

A tour CD may be purchased for a fee and played as a guide while driving.

At the borough hall, visitors can watch a 40-minute documentary about the riot, which erupted when Maryland farmer Edward Gorsuch arrived in Christiana and tried to reclaim four escaped slaves harbored by a black man, William Parker.

Gorsuch was killed in the ensuing fight but the rioters, defended in court by Stevens, were freed.

Colon said tour participants can see artifacts from that time, such as the wooden door shot through by U.S. Marines at the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atglen.

Re-enactors from The Pennsylvania Past Players will be stationed at some of the sites portraying abolitionists such as Stevens, William Goodridge and Harriet Smith, said Nancy Plumley, who helped organize the auto tour with her husband, Gary.

Descendants of freedom fighters Ezekiel Thompson and Elijah Lewis will join "Treason at Christiana" author Bud Rettew in interpreting history.

The tour offers a chance for families related to Parker and other riot participants to trace their genealogy, said Colon, who has an ancestor who took part in the Christiana Riot.

"We're still looking for descendants and new information," she said.

Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.

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The Christiana Riot, or, more accurately, the Christiana Resistance, is a story of the defence of liberty as compelling and momentous as the story of Lexington and Concord. That the participants were then charged with "Treason" highlights the absurd dilemma in which African-Americans found themselves. They were property until they defended their rights, at which point they became insurrectionists under the Fugitive Slave Law.

QUOTE

"If they fought for freedom, they were beasts; if they did not fight, they were born slaves. If they cowered on the plantations, they loved slavery; if they ran away, they were lazy loafers. If they sang they were silly; if they scowled, they were impudent."

W.E.B. DuBois

Another interesting piece of this story is that John Wilkes Booth was a close friend and schoolmate of Edward Gorsuch's son Thomas. In later years Booth was to write that his friend Thomas was deprived of a father who had been killed up north by "ni**er abolitionists". How important this event was to putting Booth on the path to Ford's Theater is something we will never know.

notveryhow

The violent resistance that took place at William Parker's farmhouse occurred on the eleventh of September, and it so severly shook the region and the nation that it can be thought of as America's first "Nine-Eleven." A sudden and irrational fear that free African American residents of northern communities would suddenly rise up in a violent insurrection gripped many communities. In Harrisburg in the wake of the violence, the borough experienced a near public panic when a rumor that four freedom seekers who passed through town earlier were actually "rioters" escaping from Christiana. The borough sheriff arrested them in a small town north of Harrisburg and brought them into Harrisburg, but the county judge saw through the hysteria and released the men, only to see them promptly re-arrested by Federal Fugitive Slave Commissioner Richard McAllister, who returned them to bondage in the south.

Southern anger over the Christiana Resistance and the refusal of the jury to convict any of those involved in the resistance had possible violent consequences a few months later when Chester County farmer Joseph Miller and some friends went to Baltimore to rescue a free born African American employee who had been kidnapped from his farm. They were keenly aware of the threat, made in the wake of the Christiana Trial by a member of Gorsuch's party, "of hanging the first Abolitionist that they should catch in Maryland." Despite the danger, Miller unwisely left the safety of his group, and never rejoined them. His body was later found, hanging from a tree in a nearby town.

The importance of the Christiana Resistance on local and national history can not be overstated. --George Nagle, Afrolumens Project editor

gnagle

QUOTE (gnagle @ Aug 30 2009, 01:09 PM)

Your website is wonderful. I have a bit of amateur interest in local history. When I have time I will delve more deeply into your material. Thank you.

Anyone interested;

http://www.afrolumens.org/index.htm

notveryhow

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