William Still was the clerk, organizer, and chronicler at the center of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. Between 1850 and 1861 he and the Vigilance Committee aided hundreds of people escaping slavery, and against the risk of prosecution he kept written records of their names and stories — records that became The Underground Rail Road (1872), the most detailed first-hand account of the network ever published.
At a Glance
- Born
- 7 October 1821, Burlington County, New Jersey
- Died
- 14 July 1902, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Known for
- Chairman of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee (1852–1861); The Underground Rail Road (1872); campaign to desegregate Philadelphia’s streetcars
- Fields
- Abolition · Civil Rights · Enterprise
- Era
- 19th Century
Early Life
Still was born on 7 October 1821 in Burlington County, New Jersey, the youngest of eighteen children of Levin and Sidney Still. Both parents had been enslaved in Maryland. Levin purchased his own freedom and moved to New Jersey; Sidney escaped with their four children, was captured and returned, and escaped a second time with only her two daughters, leaving behind two young sons, Levin and Peter, who were then sold into slavery farther south. To protect herself she took the name Charity, and the family changed its surname to Still.
Still grew up on the family farm near Shamong in the New Jersey Pine Barrens with little formal schooling, teaching himself to read and write. In 1844 he moved to Philadelphia. In 1847 he was hired as a clerk by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, and that year he married Letitia George; the couple had four children, including Caroline Still Anderson, who became a physician and educator.
Life and Work
Still’s work at the society’s office brought him into daily contact with people who had escaped slavery. In August 1850 a man calling himself Peter Freedman came to the office seeking information about the parents he had been separated from as a child. As he told his story, Still realized that the visitor was his own brother Peter, left behind in slavery when their mother fled nearly fifty years before. The reunion convinced Still of the value of keeping records that might help other separated families find each other.
After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the dangers to anyone aiding escape, Philadelphia abolitionists reorganized their Vigilance Committee in 1852 and made Still its chairman. The committee fed, sheltered, clothed, and forwarded people traveling north, many of them bound for New York, New England, and Canada. Still interviewed arrivals and recorded their names, origins, enslavers, and routes, hiding the records for safety. From 1850 until he stepped down in 1861, he helped at least 649 people to freedom. Among those whose passages he recorded were parties guided by Harriet Tubman.
In July 1855 Still and the white abolitionist Passmore Williamson helped Jane Johnson and her two sons leave their enslaver, John H. Wheeler, the U.S. minister to Nicaragua, while Wheeler was passing through Philadelphia. Still and five Black dockworkers were charged with riot and assault; at their trial Johnson testified that she had left of her own will. Still was acquitted, though two of the dockworkers served a week in jail for assault. Williamson, held in contempt of federal court for refusing to produce Johnson, spent more than three months in Moyamensing Prison before his release in November 1855.
Still also prospered in business. He built a coal business that grew large enough to require a new yard on Washington Avenue, and in 1864 he was appointed post sutler at Camp William Penn, the training camp for U.S. Colored Troops outside Philadelphia. Beginning in 1859 he campaigned against the exclusion of Black passengers from the city’s streetcars, working through the Social, Civil and Statistical Association, which he helped found around 1861. Pennsylvania outlawed streetcar segregation in 1867, and that year he published A Brief Narrative of the Struggle for the Rights of the Colored People of Philadelphia in the City Railway Cars.
In 1872 the Philadelphia firm Porter & Coates published The Underground Rail Road, a compilation of several hundred pages of narratives, letters, and records drawn from his files, with sketches of abolitionists who had aided the work. The book opens with the story of his own parents’ escapes and the family’s separation, and it went through several editions. Unlike many later memoirs by white abolitionists, the book placed the courage and initiative of the people escaping slavery at the center of the story.
Legacy
In his later years Still served on the boards of Black charitable institutions, including twenty-five years as a board member, vice president, and president of the Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored Persons, founded in Philadelphia in 1864. He had spoken publicly about the Underground Railroad even before the war: on 1 August 1859, as a vice president of the New England Colored Citizens’ Convention in Boston, he lectured to a crowded audience on its history and some of its operations, while the work itself was still illegal under federal law. He remained active in Black civic and church life. He died in Philadelphia on 14 July 1902.
The Underground Rail Road remains the most important primary source on the network’s operations in the East and a record of hundreds of individual lives that would otherwise be lost. Historians have used it to correct romanticized accounts that credited white conductors and hidden tunnels, showing instead a system run largely by free Black communities and by freedom seekers themselves. His own family history, told in the book’s opening pages, shows why he treated record-keeping as a form of resistance.
William Still’s careful records show that the Underground Railroad was run largely by free Black communities and by freedom seekers themselves, and that keeping records could itself be an act of resistance. Open the classroom lesson →
Key Dates
- 7 October 1821 Born in Burlington County, New Jersey.
- 1844 Moves to Philadelphia.
- 1847 Hired as a clerk by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society; marries Letitia George.
- August 1850 Recognizes his long-lost brother Peter among visitors to the society’s office.
- 1852 Becomes chairman of the reorganized Philadelphia Vigilance Committee.
- July 1855 Helps Jane Johnson and her sons claim their freedom; later acquitted of riot and assault.
- 1859 Begins campaigning against segregation on Philadelphia streetcars.
- 1864 Appointed post sutler at Camp William Penn.
- 1872 Publishes The Underground Rail Road.
- 14 July 1902 Dies in Philadelphia.
Sources and Further Reading
- William Still, The Underground Rail Road: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters, &c. (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1872).
- Maryland State Archives, Legacy of Slavery in Maryland, “William Still (1821–1902).” Link
- Colored Conventions Project, “William Still.” Link
- Temple University Libraries, “William Still: An African American Abolitionist.” Link
- Bryn Mawr College, Quakers & Slavery, “Rescue of Jane Johnson.” Link
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