<P> The earliest and only abolitionists in Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships were Samuel Maulsby, Joseph Corson and (his son) Alan W. Corson . Away back before 1820 they had been stirred by the scathing denunciations of slavery, and the horrors of the slave trade, made by Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Thomas Fouell Buxton, before the Parliament of Great Britain, to an intense hatred of slavery and the slave trade, and the abominations of slavery in our own country . </P> <P> Both George Corson's and Martha Maulsby's parents had sheltered escaped slaves . But it was the couple's close friendship with Benjamin Lundy--publisher of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society's weekly newspaper, The National Enquirer (1836--38)--that inspired them to fully engage in the cause . They turned their property into a major station on the Underground Railroad, providing food and shelter to hundreds of escaped slaves . Daniel Ross, a free black man in Norristown, Pennsylvania, often acted as "conductor," leading the fugitives by night to the next station--north to the house of William Foulke at Penllyn, Pennsylvania; or northeast to abolitionists living around the Quaker meetinghouses in Upper Dublin and Horsham, Pennsylvania . The Underground Railroad route continued through Bucks County, New Jersey and New York, and to eventual freedom in Canada . In at least one instance, Corson hid people under a wagonload of hay and drove them to the next station . </P> <P> The greater burden of the work (of sheltering runaways) was borne by George and his wife, Martha Maulsby Corson . Their residence in the old Maulsby home, right in front of the Friends' Plymouth Meeting - House, was so prominent a place, known by everybody for miles around, made it easy for slaves to find the place, when sent by those from a distance to "George Corson's at Plymouth Meeting ." He it was who forwarded fugitives to Mahlon Linton, at Newtown, or to William H. Johnson, at Buckingham, or to Richard Moore, at Quakertown, Bucks county, time after time, during the whole period of the great struggle from 1830 to 1850 . </P> <P> The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the penalties for giving assistance to an escaped slave to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine . It allowed slavecatchers to pursue a fugitive across state lines into every U.S. state and territory . Corson was involved in hiding Jane Johnson, whose escape exposed a loophole in the federal law . </P>

Abolition hall state historical marker butler pike plymouth meeting pa