George DeBaptiste

rdf:langString George DeBaptiste

rdf:langString George DeBaptiste

rdf:langString George DeBaptiste

rdf:langString Detroit, Michigan, U.S.

rdf:langString Fredericksburg, Virginia, U.S.

rdf:langString George DeBaptiste (c. 1815 – February 22, 1875) was a prominent African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad in southern Indiana and Detroit, Michigan. Born free in Virginia, he moved as a young man to the free state of Indiana. In 1840, he served as valet and then White House steward for US President William Henry Harrison, who was from that state. In the 1830s and 1840s DeBaptiste was an active conductor in Madison, Indiana. Located along the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, this town was a destination for refugee slaves seeking escape from slavery. DeBaptiste moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1846. While Michigan was a free state, refugee slaves often preferred to continue to Canada to get beyond the reach of United States fugitive slave laws. DeBaptiste was considered the president of the local underground railroad group. During this period, he purchased a lake steamboat for carrying fugitives across the Detroit River to Amherstburg, Ontario. Historians have estimated that DeBaptiste and close collaborator William Lambert secured passage of hundreds of slaves, of the estimated 30,000 slaves who settled in Canada. In the late 1850s, DeBaptiste worked with nationally known abolitionists Frederick Douglass and John Brown. During the American Civil War, DeBaptiste helped recruit black soldiers from Michigan for the Union Army. After the wars he continued to work for African-American civil rights, helping gain admission of black children to Detroit public schools.