National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom

[left panel] Black Rock Harbor. The Village of Black Rock received its name from a large rock outcropping that jutted into the river about a half mile south of this site. The original ferry crossing was located at the rock and a small village grew up around it. The rock outcropping was demolished for construction of the Erie Canal and the ferry and village relocated here. Black Rock and Buffalo competed to become the terminus of the new canal. Buffalo won, in part, due to concerns about damage from ice flows in the river during winter. Nonetheless, a protected harbor was created here by construction of a long stone pier connecting Unity Island (formerly known as Squaw Island) to the north and Bird Island to the south. Originally, canal boats entered the harbor, traveled upriver and enetered a final canal segment leading to Buffalo. The configuration of the Erie Canal at Black Rock Harbor changed over the decades as industrial growth increased. Black Rock was absorbed into the City of Buffalo in 1853. An 1825 view of Black Rock, facing north. The ferry dock is on the stone pier to the left where the ships are shown. Source: Buffalo History Museum. Stone pier looking north toward the ferry dock with river on the left and harbor on the right. Image courtesy of the Queens College CUNY Graduate
School Library & Information Studies "Waterways of New York" project and the "Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York" database. Background image: Detail, 1866 Stone and Stewart Atlas. Map of the City of Buffalo. Source: Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library "City of Buffalo [Township]" The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1866. [right panel] From Plantation to Promised Land. In the decades before the Civil War, the Black Rock Ferry was an important crossing point of the Underground Railroad. Fugitive Freedom Seekers used the ferry to cross the river to Canada and freedom. Other documented crossing points were located downriver at Niagara Falls, Lewiston, and Youngstown. The Underground Railroad was an informal, interlocking series of local networks through which fugitive Freedon Seekers were assisted in reaching free states and Canada. The fugitives faced long journeys, great danger, and daunting odds. 1836 publication of the American Anti-Slavery Society in which a fugitive crossing at Black Rock is recorded. Period accounts, memoirs, and local histories record crossings at Black Rock beginning as early as 1824, increasing though the following three decades. Each story has its own character and recounts its own dangers. Broderick Park's Freedom Walk engravings note
important events and moments in American slavery combined with documented crossings of fugitives at Black Rock. Left: Samuel Ringgold Ward, an escaped Freedom Seeker, newspaper editor, and abolitionist, wrote about the 1836 escape at Black Rock depicted in the Anti-Slavery Record in his 1855 autobiography. Source/l "Samuel Ringgold Ward, "TPL Virtial Exhibits, accessed May 18, 2016, http://omeka.tplcs.ca/virtual-exhibits/items/show/172

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Broderick Park / Distinctive River Ecosystems Historical
Underground Railroad River Crossing Historical
International Crossing Historical
Industrial Powerhouse Historical
Harrowing Journey Historical
West Ferry Street Bascule Bridge Historical
Nowak Pier Historical
Peter B. Porter
The Site of Fort Tompkins
Freedom Park

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