Delaware Backstory: Pardons for 3 who aided slaves?

An effort has begun to pardon three notable Delawareans for criminal convictions connected to their work smuggling slaves to freedom.

It started last week with news from Illinois.

Outgoing Gov. Pat Quinn granted New Year's Eve clemency to 102 people, including three abolitionists convicted of "crimes" for hiding and helping escaping slaves, the Associated Press reported.

Those pardons – championed by historians and Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon – posthumously were granted to Underground Railroad conductor Richard Eells of Quincy, whose home was labeled by the National Park Service as one of the most important sites on the network to freedom, Julius Willard of Jacksonville and his son, Samuel, the news account said.

The news article moved one reader to action.

That's Robert E. Seeley.

He is a descendant of Pennsylvania-born Thomas Garrett, who moved to Wilmington at age 33 in 1822 and is credited with helping more than 2,700 slaves to freedom.

The prominent Quaker owned a successful store and worked closely with Harriet Tubman – as memorialized by a Wilmington park that bears both their names and has a statue depicting and honoring them. Garrett also supported the city's black residents.

He provided the funds for land where Bishop Peter Spencer built the Mother African Union Church at what is now Wilmington's Peter Spencer Plaza, long recognized as the nation's first fully independent black church without white supervision, required by law at the time. He also taught black city residents to read, write and teach others those skills.

And reading the article about Illinois abolitionists' pardons made Seeley think of Garrett.

On New Year's Day, Seeley asked Gov. Jack Markell – in the form of a Facebook post – to pardon him and two other Delaware abolitionists.

When Seeley shared the request with his friends, the response was fast and enthusiastic. One responded, "What a wonderful and appropriate action!"

"Good idea," responded Bayard Marin, urging him to bring it up at the next meeting of the Quaker Hill Historic Preservation Foundation, of which Marin is president.

And Wilmington City Councilmember Loretta Walsh lent her support, posting, "I am sending the Governor an email. Let us get this rolling."

Seeley – who lives near the Garrett family home in Pennsylvania, where a state historic marker honors him at Drexel Hill – also seeks pardons for John Hunn and Samuel Burris.

Hunn, born in Kent County, was a member of the Camden Friends Meeting, an Odessa-area farmer and abolitionist, convicted with Garrett in 1848 for aiding the Hawkins family, whose trail to freedom is documented at the New Castle Court House Museum – now part of Delaware's National Historical Park.

Burris, a free black man, was Hunn's partner, historians say.

Although he moved his family for safety to Philadelphia, he was heavily involved in helpng slaves from Maryland and southern Delaware.

He was caught and jailed in 1847, convicted 14 months later, with the automatic sentence of being sold for slavery – but a supporter bid the most, then freed him.

Garrett, Hunn and Burris put their lives on the line in Delaware, a border state east of the Mason-Dixon Line, where people were enslaved for others' profit, others risked their own wealth and freedom to help free them, and still others kidnapped free blacks, freed slaves and escaping slaves to sell them back into slavery.

What Quinn said about the Illinois abolitionists he pardoned also could be said of Delaware's Garrett, Hunn and Burris.

"These early warriors for freedom put everything on the line to help their fellow man, and their civil disobedience paved the way for civil rights," Quinn said in a statement. "Clearing their criminal records 171 years later shows how far we have come, but reminds us all that we should fight injustice wherever we find it."

At the 2012 dedication of the statue at Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park in Wilmington – where Seeley portrayed Garrett, complete with top hat, to help share his story with attending school children – city historic planner Deborah Martin spoke of the park namesakes and their "precious cargo."

Martin spoke of Wilmington as "a beacon to the enslaved and a supreme irritation of the enslavers," of the "faith-filled risk" of those who broke the law to fight slavery, and of "cooperation across racial lines in the name of justice."

She urged Delawareans to "take this history to heart.... It is the story of real people not told in history books."

Pardons seem like a no-brainer.

Do you have a Delaware Backstory? Tell robin brown at (302) 324-2856, rbrown@delawareonline.com, on Facebook, via Twitter @rbrowndelaware or The News Journal, Box 15505, Wilmington, DE 19850.