Thomas Garrett and John Hunn
Thomas Garrett was a stationmaster on the Underground Railroad in Delaware. Garrett was a businessman with interests in iron works and gasworks in Wilmington, where he lived on Shipley Street. Garrett’s station was the last of the Underground Railroad in the small state of Delaware, and he made no effort to keep his activities secret. Local authorities were well aware of Garrett’s sheltering and assisting escaped slaves on their trip north and made no attempt to arrest him or impede his activities. Garrett’s was another station often resorted to by conductor Harriet Tubman, whom he supported financially as well.
From Wilmington, the routes north included crossing New Jersey or Pennsylvania, or both. Garrett provided the “cargo” he received with clothes, food, shoes, and cash before sending them along their way. The materials and money came from his own funds and those of fellow Quakers in Wilmington, as well as the support of friends. Despite Delaware being a slave state at the time, abolitionist sentiment was strong there and the influence of the churches and abolitionist societies helped to keep at bay the slave catchers and federal marshals pursuing escaped slaves across the state. This led to another form of legal action.
John Hunn, a fellow Quaker, was a Delaware farmer who coordinated all of the Underground Railroad stations in the state, including Garrett’s. Hunn aided a slave named Samuel Hawkins escape with his family from Maryland, routing him to Garrett’s station. Garrett moved him further along the route to the north in 1845. In 1848 Hunn and Garrett were sued by the escaped slave’s owner in federal court in New Castle for violating the Fugitive Slave Law. The case was presented by future US Senator James A. Bayard and the judge was Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who heard the case as a sitting circuit judge.
Bayard succeeded in obtaining a judgment against the two, and Taney, who was a strong supporter of slavery, fined both men heavily. Garrett’s house was placed under a lien imposed by the court until the judgement and fines were paid, as was Hunn’s. Hunn was then fined again by the state of Delaware, and unable to pay the fines his farm was seized and sold at a sheriff’s sale. Garrett’s fines were paid through the intercession of friends and abolition societies. Both men continued their efforts to operate the Underground Railroad through Delaware after the lawsuit, though under the threat of additional civil action.
Although estimates vary and some are wildly exaggerated, Garrett claimed that he “helped 2,700” escaped slaves from his station in Wilmington to destinations in the free states. Throughout his operation of his station Garrett believed that slavery would never be eliminated but through Civil War, and though a Quaker, that physical violence should be met with physical violence. During the Civil War his house was protected from slave owners by armed free blacks. He died in 1871. Hunn returned to Delaware after working for the Freedmen’s Bureau during the Civil War, and died in Camden in 1894.