The Christiana Resistance: How Quakers and Freedom Seekers Defied Slave Catchers

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

So this poor Pownall family, these Quakers who had said, “Hey, please, no violence on our land, you know, had violence erupt onto their land, had someone die on their land, is taking care of a son that they didn’t think was going to make it through the night. At the same time, a person they truly love, William Parker, is hiding in their barn, and the entire area is surrounded by federal marshals, police officers, like anti-slavery radicals and pro-slavery radicals.

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The Christiana Resistance: How Quakers and Freedom Seekers Defied Slave Catchers

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

I’m Cristin O’keefe Aptowicz I was born and raised in Philadelphia, seventh generation Pennsylvania, fourth generation Philadelphian, and I’m a poet and historian. My forthcoming book is *The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker: A True Tale of Love, Murder, Treason, and Ordinary Folks Who Saved America. 

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Part 1 The History

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Pennsylvania was the first state to abolish slavery in 1780, while Maryland fought hard to ingrain it further into its constitution, and as abolition sort of taking over, you know, defended slavery within its borders. One of the reasons is because of William Penn, our Quaker founder, had this idea of the Great Experiment, and so he brought in immigrants from all over Europe and said, “If you’ve got a hope and a dream, if you are unhappy, if you’re being persecuted for religion, whatever that religion is, then come to Pennsylvania. 

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William Parker was born into slavery in Maryland in 1821

In 1839, at age 18, he escaped slavery and fled to Pennsylvania, where he became a leader in Black Resistance to slavery

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

William Parker escaped slavery from Maryland when he was a teenager. Came to Lancaster County. He moved onto this farm owned by the Pownall family.

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Parker rented a home on the farm of Quaker abolitionists Levi and Sarah Pownall

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Introduced himself to that community, and new people joined his mutual defense organization. And more of the sort of white Quakers became aware of him. He was a leader in black resistance against injustice. The Ballad of the Fugitive William Parker really centers three radical abolitionist groups, right? 

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Three abolitionist communities came together to fight slavery

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

The wealthy free black of Philadelphia, and then rural Quaker farmers and the Quakers who lived in the city as well, and then fugitives from slavery who lived and worked in both areas. And each of these groups had very different visions of achieving the goals that all three wanted, which was not just the abolishment of slavery that was a given, but equal rights across the board, men and women, black and white. 

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Negotiating Faith

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz 

One of the most fascinating parts of the story was how people of faith negotiated their faith in order to resist injustice and push for progress.

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Part 2 The Resistance

Nonviolence and armed resistance

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

He created a mutual defense society where, if you heard a bugle, a tin fish horn in the middle of the night or any time during the day, you would go to it and you would bring whatever weapons you had, whether that’s farm tools or guns or you know scythes, and you would help protect the person who was going to be in peril. And he lived in this Quaker society that really valued the light in every person, while some of the community certainly was nonviolent, would not participate when that bugle was sounded. Everyone in the community knew what that meant. They would sometimes hand their weapons.

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The Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

The Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850, and it really empowered enslavers and slave catchers. One of the elements of that was that a U.S. marshal could point to any person who was watching this unfold, deputize them, and force them to come in and join in reclaiming an enslaved person and bringing them back to bondage. 

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September 11, 1851 Christiana, Pennsylvania

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

This all sort of came to head in September 11, 1851, when Edward Gorsuch, a Maryland slave owner, came to the front step of William Parker and demanded four men who he saw as his property, and William Parker said, “Absolutely not. His wife goes to the window, blows the bugle, and within an hour, men and women start showing up with tools surrounding this posse of white men. And in the middle of this tense standoff, a white man appears on horseback. Another white man appears on foot, and they go, “Oh, thank God! Okay, well here’s the warrants. We’re here to arrest, and you need to help us. Now, one of the men, Elijah Lewis, he’s on my family tree, was a Quaker, and he said, “You have come to the wrong place for assistance, and just walked away, knowing that his faith would protect him in the law, but the other man, Castner Hanway, was not a Quaker. He was married to a Quaker woman, Martha, so he didn’t have that protection. And there was a sense of, is he going to, what’s what’s going to happen here? And he said, I’m not going to help you. The you know, black people have the right to defend themselves. Sarah Powall now walks across the cornfield. And to talk to Parker, they had heard about Edward Gorsuch coming to the area to reclaim these four enslaved men, and she begged him, you know, if he comes, please no violence, you know. And he told her, you know, I wish that was a choice for me, but I don’t have a country, meaning the laws for this country don’t apply to me, so the protections that you get, I don’t get. I’m considered property to this. So I wish that I could have laws and not rely on violence, but violence is my only choice. And she, you know, had to sit with that discomfort, the truth. 

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The Pownall family hid Parker and nursed the wounded slave catcher at the same time

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Sure enough, violence exploded in his front yard the next morning. Yet, when you know it was all over and the posse was scattered, and you just had injured or dying people on his front yard, he went straight to the Pownall Farm and said, “Can I borrow a wagon and bring these people to help? They’re still human beings, and I don’t want them to die on my front lawn. And indeed, the Pownall family took the son Dickinson Gorsuch and took care of him in their front parlor for weeks after, and nursed him back to health. At the exact same moment, William Parker and the two other people who were living in his house were hiding in the Pownall barn. So this poor Pownalll family, these Quakers who had said, “Hey, please, no violence on our land, you know, had violence erupt onto their land, had someone die on their land, is taking care of a son that they didn’t think was going to make it through the night. At the same time, a person they truly love, William Parker, is hiding in their barn, and the entire area is surrounded by federal marshals, police officers, like anti-slavery radicals and pro-slavery radicals.

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Part 3 The Trial

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

When the news breaks, however, federal forces come into the small town of Christiana, and just began arresting everyone. 

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Quaker women stand with the Christiana defendants

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

As a woman who grew up in Philadelphia, I heard a lot about Lucretia Mott. The first time she arrives at the trial was when they brought in the arrested black men from Christiana. Little did they know that Lucretia Mott and Harriet Forten Purvis worked together all fall to construct these men identical, beautiful suits with red, white, and blue scarfs, and they brought these black men in who were being described as demons, as you know, mad mouth, frothing, you know, radicals, and they looked gentle. And on the arm of each one of these black prisoners was a Quaker woman. After Lucretia Mott clocked the reaction, she decided she was going to come back the next day, and she came back with knitting needles, and she would click, click, click, click, click, all during the testimony. And whenever somebody who was testifying would say something offensive, the clicking would stop, and people would pay attention. And by the end of the trial, 50% of the audience was Quaker women.

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The charges against the Christiana defendants were eventually dropped.

In 2001, 150 years after the Christiana Resistance, 

descendants of William Parker and the Quaker Pownall family

invited the Gorsuch family to join them in Christiana, Pennsylvania.

Their ancestors stood on opposite sides of slavery.  

Their descendants came together for healing, peace, and reconciliation.

They all stood together.