Taking the name “Still,” the family settled in rural South Jersey where they hoped to make a new life for themselves as free people, and where they hoped to evade the long reach of slavery. and Peter, knowing that she likely would never see them again. When Sydney fled a second time, she made the heartbreaking decision to leave behind her two eldest children, Levin, Jr. She joined her husband in New Jersey, but before long they were tracked down by slave hunters and dragged back to Maryland. When his wife, Sydney, was unable to do the same, she fled, taking with her the couple’s four children. Levin Steel, William’s father, was able to purchase his freedom after years of saving. His parents had been enslaved on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Still was born free, in the free state of New Jersey, the youngest of 18 children. Still devoted himself to supporting “agents” like Tubman, and to assisting the fugitive slaves-men, women, and children-who were themselves the true engine of the Underground Railroad. In contrast to his far better-known co-worker, Harriett Tubman, who famously traveled into her native Maryland over and over in order to guide others to freedom, Still’s work seems less dramatic. Still was the most important figure in this critical portion of the Underground Railroad, during the period when the network was more important and visible than ever before, and yet we know far less about him than we should. At the center of this network was William Still. By the 1850s, a network of activists had come together in order to help such fugitive slaves-to help them get to Philadelphia and to help them move on safely. They needed to keep moving, traveling on to places where they might be more secure, perhaps to New England, or better yet, all the way to Canada. ![]() Once they arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, however, most knew they were not yet safe. Each year, hundreds of fugitives passed through the city, seeking refuge from the slave catchers who pursued them. The Underground Railroad ran straight through Philadelphia.
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