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The Smiths’ Station on the Underground Railroad

Introduction

Mary and Barak Smith ran a Station on the Underground Railroad in Collins, New York. This overlapped with the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law — a law which empowered federal agents to fine anyone up to $1000 (around $41,000 in 2025) and imprison them for up to six months for concealing or harboring people who had escaped from slavery. The Smiths’ bravery and creative act of resistance stands as an inspiration for us today.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008661523

Mary and Barak were “dyed-in-the-wool” Quakers and dedicated abolitionists. In 1826 they moved from a strong Quaker community in Danby, Vermont, to Collins, New York, near the newly opened Erie Canal. We have a few published records of their involvement in abolition and the Underground Railroad.

From “By the Old Mill Stream,” by Carlotta Wood and Nora Johnson Brown, published in 1935 in the Gowanda New York News and Observer. Much of the article focuses on Barak and his family. Note this and other articles mention Barak, not Mary. Of course, they BOTH made the decision to run a station on the Underground Railroad.

See full article, “By the Old Mill Stream”

Barak was listed in The Non-Slaveholder periodical in 1850 as a member of the Free Produce Association of Collins, a group dedicated to buying products made by free labor.

From The Non-slaveholder v.5 1850, Philadelphia, 1846-1854,p. 77. The group’s full report on free-labor products can be found on pages 77-78.

Then in 1852, abolitionist Stephen Symons Foster published a letter in the National Anti-Slavery Standard that listed Barak as someone in Collins who would help a fugitive slave.

This was high praise, indeed. Scholar Christopher Densmore (who sent his own letter along with this original publication) said: “S. S. Foster was one of the most caustic of the abolitionist lecture[r]s, and quite ready to condemn anyone that he didn’t feel was at least 99% in the right on the slavery issue.” See a copy of the original document (from the National Anti-Slavery Standard Archive)

We also have a family story about their Station on the Underground Railroad. One day in 1851, a neighbor warned Mary that a federal marshall was coming. Marshalls often targeted Quakers who were known to be abolitionists. Barak and Mary were hiding an escaped enslaved person in their barn, and they had to act quickly.

Mary gave her five-year-old granddaughter, Rhoda Ellen Strang, a teaspoon of ipecac syrup. This caused the child to throw up on her grandmother’s “Whig Rose” quilt, a popular pattern of the time.

A later photo of Rhoda Ellen Strang (1846-1930), who went by “Ellen.”

An example of a Whig Rose quilt, made between 1850 and 1860. https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/19970070718 [1]

The federal marshall barged into the house and demanded to be shown around. He was distracted by the sick child in the house, ensuring that the enslaved person could get back into the hiding place in the barn, and the marshall left empty-handed.

This story was passed down by Rhoda Ellen’s granddaughter, Lida Lisle (Malloy) Greene to her cousin Clarance Smith in the 1990s. She also wrote about it as a story that she shared with the family. It remains a powerful reminder of the Smith family’s resistance to federal law as they stood up for their deeply held beliefs.

lida-greene-story Download

This photo of Clarance Smith, his grandfather Clarance Smith, and Lida Lisle Greene was taken in the lobby of the State Historical Society in Des Moines in 1989. Lida was the retired librarian of the Society, and an expert in genealogical research.

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1. The Smiths and most of their adult children moved to another strong Quaker community in Springdale, Iowa in 1853 (the same year the township was founded). The famed abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) and his men went to Springdale in 1857 to train their militia for the Harpers Ferry raid that took place in 1859 — a failed violent raid that was intended to launch a larger uprising against slavery. “Bright Radical Star:’ When John Brown came to Iowa” by Nicholas Dolan in the Jan 15, 2019 Little Village publication provides a description of John Brown’s presence and influence in Springdale, Iowa during the time that the Smiths lived in this very small community (population around 1000 by 1860 – currently around 3,000).

“A daguerreotype of Brown taken by African-American photographer Augustus Washington in Springfield, Massachusetts, c. 1846–1847.”

2. Mary [Strang] Russell, granddaughter of Barak and Mary and older sister of Rhoda Ellen, moving to Kansas with her husband during the period that came to be called “Bleeding Kansas” (1854-1859) “a state-level civil war over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state or a free state.” John Brown played a key part in “Bleeding Kansas.” We have a great deal of correspondence to Mary Russell from various family members (though the letters don’t talk about abolition efforts), collected and transcribed by Clarance Smith.

This Reynolds Map of the United States from 1856 shows free and slave states and populations. Gray represents slave states, pink shows free states, territories are green, and Kansas is white.

3. Narcissa Mary Smith (1841-1905) — wife of Barak and Mary’s grandson Daniel Wheeler Smith (1843-1918) — visited John Brown’s sons Owen Brown (1824-1889), who escaped from the raid at Harpers Ferry, and Jason Brown (1823-1912) in 1887/8. This was many years after the 1859 raid when they were living in a log cabin in the Altadena Hills above Pasadena, California. Many of Barak and Mary’s adult children and grandchildren ended up in Pasadena, including Deborah Chickering Smith (1831-1905) and her children. Narcissa wrote about the visit, and the Browns in Springdale, Iowa, in the article, “Reminiscences of John Brown by Narcissa Macy Smith,” 1895, Midland Monthly Magazine.

“The first cabin of Owen (left) and Jason Brown, near Altadena, California. The beams protect from the winds high on the hill. This cabin was destroyed by fire in 1888.”