THE ESCAPE

Ellen and William Craft escaped from slavery in Macon, Georgia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in four days. Their story of traveling in the open, on railroad and steamship through five slave states was remarkable. It was unbelievable for fugitives who could neither read nor write to develop a plan and successfully execute it in eight days, to then arrive in a free state on Christmas Day 1848. But that was just the beginning of their story.

Ellen Craft (1824-a.1891) and William Craft (1824-1900) obtained travel passes from their individual owners and left the little house where Ellen stayed which was behind the house of her white, half-sister, Eliza Smith Collins and owner, Dr. Robert Collins, a leader in Macon. Ellen’s father was a wealthy plantation owner, Major James Smith, in Clinton, Ga, and her mother, Maria, a mulatto slave of Major Smith. As an 11-year-old, Ellen, a house servant, was a wedding gift to Eliza after Mrs. Smith could no longer tolerate visitors to their home complimenting her under the assumption that little Ellen was her daughter. 

Ellen was so fair that she and William developed a plan for her to dress as a frail, white man traveling north for medical treatment, with William as her slave. Upon leaving the cottage four days before Christmas, she cut her hair and became “Mr. Johnson” who was dressed in a man’s trousers, cloak, hat and green spectacles. Ellen wore a sling to avoid being required to sign hotel registers and a poultice around her face to hide that there was no beard. The disguise was successful with only a couple of close calls during their journey. 

Read on After the Escape​