Walk With Me - A Different PTO

August has always been our worldwide agreed-upon ‘slow down’ for vacation/holiday/ooo time. This year was no different for me as I’d decided to take a few days off to embark on a special journey…. a trip that I’d wanted to take for many years.

This sojourn required detailed planning, careful coordination, a supportive network, and local guides.

After years of dreaming of this trek, I finally made it happen, this trip…. back in time. Back to 1848.

Karen, my Historian friend, called me last week before my departure to share her view of the plan: “this is some weird sort of vacation. Isn’t it”? We laughed.

Karen had helped me plot a course for this time-travel experience. She’d used hand-drawn maps from several 1850-1880 documents to trace this bend in the road, or that landmark, and this river…when places were measured in ‘perches’.

I’d enlisted a historical society in Maryland to help me identify exact locations of this and that. They’d amassed a team of talented researchers who spent several weeks digging and tracing deeds and maps and latitude and longitude coordinates.

Meanwhile, researchers and historian in Pennsylvania sent word of the plan and one by one, History Hunters jumped on board and organized themselves to support the plan, akin to the marathon path volunteers handing out cups of Gatorade, with the exception that they’d be handing me clandestine letters and instructions along the way.

After all, I was planning to travel the Underground Railroad.

Quaker, Mennonite and Amish “friends” in Pennsylvania got the word out in the way of their community – they went farm to farm, seeking permission for my arrival onto their properties. I was planning to trace the farms identified in the unpublished memoir of my ancestor who’d made this journey and documented the path, step by step, day by day, hour by hour.

Many of you have seen and messaged me about the August 5th Washington Post article about the history of my ancestors and current-day events. Clearly, there is interest in the topic. That article, written by journalist Sydney Trent, trended on Apple News as the top story for most of that weekend. Later, it was syndicated and picked up as far away as New Zealand. Just this past Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer covered it. Messages of support poured in, inclusive of notes from the descendants of all involved parties. My gratitude cannot be measured. I truly expected that story to get little attention and fizzle, despite the almost 5 months Sydney had put into it.

So, when I’d realized that this August 20 would be the 175th anniversary of Oliver Gilbert’s escape from slavery, I felt we needed to do ‘something’. Our days/health are not promised, so I didn’t want to wait another 25 years to walk the 100-mile trek from the point of escape to the embrace of the Quakers in Lancaster and Chester County, Pennsylvania. We drove most of the route, but certainly walked a significant portion and stopped at every meaningful place along the way, and filmed much of it.

At the turn of the 19th century, Oliver dictated his autobiography to his wife, Maria, who chronicled every step of his escape from slavery using the Underground Railroad (UGRR) network, inclusive of who helped, the coordination of the plan, the eventful experiences along the journey, the fear, the trouble they met, and the eventual relief as they fell, exhausted, into the arms of the abolitionists in Pennsylvania and began the conditioning process to live as freedmen.

I wanted ALL of that on my journey, so we called upon the descendants of those who helped, and they responded with relentless enthusiasm. They dusted off their abolition record books and account books and invited me into their homes, showed me paths in the woods, opened Quaker meetinghouses, resurrected abolition documents, and in one case I was shown a hand-excavated cellar where freedom seekers had been hidden by one of the nation’s most celebrated abolitionists.

Supporters handed me clandestine notes and hand-drawn maps, wishing me well on the journey. I crossed creeks and streams, trekked through the woods of the most ardent resistance leader in the Quaker Community, led by his family (Daniel Gibbons). I met the living history interpreter of William Goodridge. I dodged snakes and poison ivy and peeled through 7-foot-high rows of corn crops.

August is a brilliant time to escape with the corn crops serving as a perfect hiding place and food source, at once.

Keeping pace with Oliver’s dates and hours, I attempted to arrive at each location at the approximate time of his arrival (witnessing sunsets and sunrises as he did, on those exact dates).

And Wednesday I stood on the raised platform of a 1747 Quaker meetinghouse to read ‘The Letter of Exhortation’ (1848) at the request of the family member of the Amos Gilbert family, the Quaker abolitionist who had given us his name to conceal our original identity.

Traveling from farm to farm in Lancaster and Chester counties in Pennsylvania presented the rare opportunity to meet current-day Amish owners who were curious and welcoming. They were inquisitive about the history of their homesteads and prior Quaker owners. I’d not before held private conversations with members of the Amish community. It was extraordinary and heartening, and I am forever grateful for their generosity and warm welcome. Amish children huddled around us to hear the stories of the brave and powerful history of the land beneath their feet. The opportunity to give and receive felt significant.

Finally, we visited the grave of Quaker Amos Gilbert and thanked him for giving us our surname - and our freedom.

I have yet to open all the packages and envelopes handed to me along the way as strangers and friends alike scribed messages of encouragement. These remembrances will be forever treasured.

There are so many to thank; I won’t try here.

Four days. 100 miles. 175 years. A stitch in time.

I thank my friend and mentor, Kate Clifford Larson, Historian and author of the biography of Fannie Lou Hamer for enthusiastically offering use the title of her book ‘Walk with Me’ (those interested should research Hamer’s association with the hymn) as a theme for the planned sojourn.

‘Walk With Me’ is a continued and living theme.

Seeking to hear and be heard, to understand and be understood, to heal and provide healing, is the call.