The story of Charles Mitchell and the Underground Railroad of Puget Sound

Photo is of a sculpture that’s part of the Hands Of Time series by Crystal Przybille. It’s the location of Fort Victoria where the Eliza Anderson docked in 1860.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

Ending theme Music by Skrill Meadow

Dr. Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Washington. https://history.washington.edu/people/quintard-taylor

Dr. Taylor is also the founder of Blackpast.org

Dr. Lorraine McConaghy and Judy Bentley are the authors of Free Boy University of Washington Press 2013.

https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295992716/free-boy/

More on Judy Bentley http://www.judybentley.com/

More on Lorraine McConaghy https://www.humanities.org/speaker/lorraine-mcconaghy/

Sharmarke Dubow is a city Councillor in Victoria, BC. https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/somali-refugee-takes-amazing-road-from-refugee-camps-to-victoria-city-council

Go Do Some Great Thing by Crawford Killian was another source for this story https://www.amazon.com/Go-Do-Some-Great-Thing/dp/0978498151

The Following is a full transcript of this episode:

Rob Smith: The day Charles Mitchell was caught trying to escape Olympia was a Monday. He slipped out of the house well before the 6am sunrise. The boat wouldn't leave ‘til seven, but Charles wasn't a paying passenger - he'd need to get aboard unnoticed. It was September 24 1860. Charles, some called him Charlie, was a boy, 13, a Black boy. He was also a slave, considered the property of his owner James Tilton. The Tilton house was at 10th and what's now Columbia street overlooking an estuary, that's now Capitol Lake. After slipping into the darkness, Charles made his way down the hill - nervous no doubt, the familiar smell of low tide in the air as he headed down Main Street. You'll know it today is Capitol Boulevard.

At the foot of Main Street, about where modern day Thurston Avenue is, was the start of the wharf. It pointed north, and in those days ended just shy of where the farmers market is today. Now, the smell of rough timber and the ship's burning coal competed with the smell of the sea. A lit oil lamp or two may have been visible on the 140 foot steamship tied at the wharf. The crew was getting ready for the day's voyage. At least one member of that crew was expecting Charles.

This was the first and only known attempt to extricate a slave from Washington territory on Puget Sound's own version of the Underground Railroad. The seeds of this plan were already in the ground at least two and a half years earlier in San Francisco. San Francisco was home to a sizable Black population in the 1850s in Oregon and Washington territory, on the other hand, young Charles was one of just a handful of Black Americans.

Professor Quintard Taylor: If we're talking about the 1850s there's not just not a lot of Black people. In this region, there aren't a lot of people.

R Smith: Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt professor emeritus of American history at the University of Washington.

Professor Taylor: I have taught African American history since what 1971.

R Smith: He says there were roughly 4,000 Black Americans in California in the late 1850s.

Professor Taylor: The only other place in all of the West that had more Black people was Texas. And of course, the vast majority of those blacks were were enslaved at that time

R Smith: Most of us have learned some about the centuries long institution of slavery, and the deep persecution of Black Americans in the southern and eastern United States. But if you're like I was for a long time, there's this vague notion that the west coast in these early days of statehood and territories was different, at least for non native Americans. You know, frontier life was rough, but more egalitarian, more merit based.

Professor Taylor: Well, the reality is that the Black presence was almost always contested. I wish we had visuals I can show you a map of the West. And one of the things that you will see immediately is that California and Oregon and Washington territory were listed as Free Territory. In other words, there was no possibility of slavery theoretically. In a practical sense, there were numerous slaves, who were enslaved people who were brought to California, and they remained in slavery through the decade - through most of the decade of the 1850s.

R Smith: He said San Francisco was unusual, though, because there was a critical mass of Black Americans.

Professor Taylor: And, this is, I think, the key point. There were African Americans who had made money from mining. And so they and white abolitionists friends, were able to challenge some of these restrictions, or they they mounted an effort and a sizable, considerable effort to get those Blacks who were enslaved in California out of slavery.

R Smith: But no, California and the rest of the West was not an oasis for black Americans, to say nothing of the native people. In fact, the very creation of the state of California in 1850 was the result of a federal compromise that actually made things much worse for people like young Charles Mitchell, black Americans, slave and free.

Professor Taylor: The situation actually got progressively worse, with the attempt to try to ban Blacks from California - and the Dred Scott decision, which of course made it theoretically possible for somebody to take his slave, his or her slave, anywhere in the country.

R Smith: Fed up with this relentless persecution, businessmen, Mifflin Gibbs helped organize a group of hundreds of Black San Franciscans. They'd find a new home. Panama and Mexico were on the table. But in 1858, about 400 black Americans sailed north. More would follow. An invitation from the governor of British Columbia had settled it.

Professor Taylor: As a matter of fact, the governor sort of tweaked the Americans by saying, Dred Scott has taken citizenship away. And he said, we will extend citizenship immediately to them in Canada. And so, this gets to be part of the Charles Mitchell story - and in fact, without that presence, without that Black presence in British Columbia, the story might have come out differently.

R Smith: Charles Mitchell was born on a plantation on Maryland's eastern shore.

Judy Bentley: His mother was an enslaved woman, his father, seems to have been white, probably an oyster man.

R Smith: This is Judy Bentley. She co-wrote the book free boy with fellow historian Dr. Lorraine McConaghy. It's the story of Charles Mitchell and James Tilton. The book is aimed at young adults. Charles's mother's name isn't known. She was the maid of Rebecca Reynolds Gibson, a mistress on the plantation. Charles's mother's ancestors had been violently enslaved by the Gibson's generation after generation In 1850, cholera swept the land, killing Charles's mother.

J Bentley: Mitchell was three years old when she died. The plantation she was on had been thriving for 150 years but was in the great decline. And they were... Rebecca could not figure out what to do with this boy. His mother had been her maid. And there was some fondness.

R Smith: The way the Gibson family story goes, Rebecca asked her dying, enslaved maid what she could do for her... Take care of Charlie was the answer.

James Tilton was a land surveyor from a prominent family. He was 34 in 1852. When Franklin Pierce was elected president. Tilton had campaigned for Pierce in Indiana where he lived. The two had met during the Mexican-American war. When it came time to pick a surveyor general for the brand new Washington. territory. Franklin Pierce, picked James Tilton.

Before they set sail for Olympia, there was no transcontinental railroad yet, James Tilton and his family visited a rundown plantation on the eastern shore of Maryland. Rebecca Reynolds Gibson, the white mistress and slave owner, was James Tilton's cousin.

J Bentley: She allegedly gave Mitchell to Tilton, either as a wedding present, or because she wanted to send him to what was thought to be a free territory out here in Washington. Tilton promised to raise him, to train, to educate him, train him as a ship steward, and free him when he turned 18. So he came out with the family in 1855.

R Smith: Olympia was the largest town in Washington territory in 1855. But that wasn't saying a lot.

J Bentley: It was a very rough place, a lot of stumps still in the streets. It was platted just around what is now the downtown and the bay there. There were a few public buildings. The legislature was meeting on the second floor of a store. There was a school, eventually. Streets were muddy, you know, a lot of the transportation is by water.

R Smith: Eight year old Charles Mitchell arrived in Olympia by water that spring. He and Tilton's family came by way of steamer from San Francisco. How long were they in San Francisco? Did he cross paths with any of the Black community that just three years later, would also leave San Francisco? - The people that would help decide his fate.

Charles and the family moved into the house on 10th. As James Tilton got to work. Tilton had power in Washington territory. Soon he was hosting dinners with Olympia's elites like governor Isaac Stevens, also appointed by the President. These were politically minded people and the conversations at these parties would no doubt turn to the topics that consumed the nation's politics, slavery and expansion. Young Charles Mitchell would have surely heard some of these conversations happening in the very house he lived and wondered what they meant for him.

Slavery was technically illegal in Washington territory. And yet Charles Mitchell was legally James Tilton's slave. Professor Taylor reminds us that these issues were very much in flux in the 1850s.

Professor Taylor: Again, to go back to the slave and free dichotomy, slave states and free states, you see the maps all the time. They tell us very little... They don't tell us how... how difficult, how complex the situation was for the the African Americans who were actually living in these states or territories at the time.

R Smith: Mitchell was one of just a few black people in town. But...

Professor Taylor: Charles Mitchell, is as far as we can determine the only Black slave that was ever in Washington territory.

R Smith: What did that feel like? How was he treated as he made his way around town running errands for the Tilton's? We don't know exactly.

J Bentley: That's part of the challenge in telling the story. We have Tilton's accounts, although, Tilton's writing is more in the political vein and what he's doing as a public person, not domestic, so we have nothing in, in Mitchell's words, so we we have to - we speculate as to what he might have done.

R Smith: We may not know his words, but his actions in 1860, would speak loudly. Mitchell attended some school over the years, he helped build a stockade, a long wooden defensive wall, for the city during the treaty war in 1856. In 1857, Charles was 10 then, the Dred Scott decision was announced. This decision, among other things, denied citizenship for black Americans.

Professor Taylor: The phrase that everybody quotes is, you know, this is from Chief Justice Taney, and I'll paraphrase it, "Black people have no rights that the white man is bound to respect". But what what is more insidious, is that, theoretically the Dred Scott decision says that a person, a white person, can take his or her slave to any corner of the US if he wants. That's what angered abolitionists in the north. Essentially, there was no longer a Mason Dixon line that divided slave and free slaves.

R Smith: Now in theory, slavery could exist everywhere. If there had been any question about Charles Mitchell's status in the supposed free territory of Washington, this settled it. 1858 is when those 400 Black Americans left San Francisco for a new life in Victoria, a British colony, And it may have been 1859 when Charles Mitchell began seeing a couple new black faces in Olympia. This is the year that the 140 foot steamship Eliza Anderson began its regular mail route between Olympia and Victoria.

James Allen was a black man from Victoria. He was the cook on the Eliza Anderson. William Davis, also Black, was a barber in Victoria. They had heard about Charles Mitchell, his status as a slave, and they were going to risk everything to try to get him out. Professor Taylor says, this kind of attitude flourished in San Francisco where the two men had come from.

Professor Taylor: San Francisco was the only place in America in the 1850s, where a free Black could live literally side by side with an enslaved person. And so essentially, for those free blacks, the idea of freeing slaves, freeing enslaved people, wasn't an abstract idea, as it was in the east where there, there's the free north and the enslaved in the south. In California, it was as close as your neighbor, you know, the enslaved person may have been in the household next to you and so you had, how will I say, greater motivation to try to make sure that those folks were free.

R Smith: Charles began seeing these men around town.

J Bentley: As he ran errands on the streets, there would be an opportunity for him to talk to James Allen and to Davis. And we think that they talked to him a couple of times and said if you're going to, if you're going to go, you need to decide to do that.

R Smith: It was late summer 1860 as 13 year old Charles Mitchell made his decision to leave. The presidential election was in its final months. The nation was near a breaking point on the subject of slavery. The first shots of the civil war would be fired within six months. But that quiet September morning, Charles glided down the rough Wharf and with the help of the cook James Allen, he stowed away.

The side wheel steamer left Olympia at 7am, pushing against the incoming tide. William Davis the barber was on board. About 9am they reached their first stop, Fort Stillicum. Charles had been this far before. He'd attended some classes at the school there. By 930am, they were back on their way. Everything was going according to plan Until the boat got to Seattle…

J Bentley: Where it was boarded by authorities in Seattle probably looking for deserters...

R Smith: US Army deserters from Fort Stillicum. The authorities found Charles and turned him over to the captain of the ship. The captain knew who Charles was. He considered him Tilton's property.

J Bentley: But they weren't going to turn around and go back. They decided they would keep him in custody on the ship until he got to Victoria, and where they were not going to let him off, and they would return him to Tilton.

R Smith: But Charles hadn't told the captain the whole truth. He admitted he had run away, but made it sound like it was just a childish adventure. Under supervision he was made to work to earn his fare. It was a two day trip to Victoria, and at one of the ports along the way, Whidbey Island or Port Townsend, maybe, Charles spent the night under lock and key. Also on board the ship, coincidentally was the Acting Governor of Washington territory, Henry McGill. His seven year old son was with him. Sometime during the next day's voyage, Charles made a mistake. He told the little boy the whole truth - that he was escaping to freedom and that he had help. The seven year old did what seven year olds do. He told his father. Four miles from Victoria, Charles was questioned again. Before the Eliza Anderson reached the port, he was locked up.

Locked away Charles couldn't see the harbor, but he could feel the ship's engines slowing as they entered. The approach could be tricky, but once inside, Victoria's inner harbor is an incredible refuge from the sometimes violent Strait of Juan de Fuca that separated the British territory from the US. Charles still had a little reason to hope. He was locked up, but he was entering a city with hundreds of free Black citizens, ex Californians, and they knew he was coming.

<Sound of modern day Black Ball Ferry arriving in Victoria>

R Smith: Victoria's harbor is still a refuge from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but it's hard to imagine anyone from the 1860s recognizing it today. The rugged beaches are now clad in a concrete promenade. Hotels, restaurants, marinas and museums dominate the waterfront. Victoria is British Columbia's provincial capital. The House of Parliament is one of the older buildings around the harbor. But even It was built some 35 years after Charles Mitchell arrived here. With just a few exceptions, most of the earliest buildings were replaced long ago.

I visited Victoria on a Sunday in February, the BC Black History awareness society is especially active during Black History Month. At a church in the James Bay neighborhood, they'd set up displays on different aspects of local history. There was information on the many Black families that called nearby Salt Spring Island home. There was an expert on the Underground Railroad answering questions. And a direct descendant of a prominent black pioneer family shared photos and keepsakes. Mifflin Gibbs’ name came up. Remember, he was the man who helped organize the immigration of hundreds of black San Franciscans. He became Victoria's first black city councilor. 152 years later, Sharmarke Dubow became the second.

Councillor Sharmarke Dubow: ...because he got elected November 19, 1866. And I got elected October 20, 2018.

R Smith: Dubow admires Mifflin Gibbs.

S Dubow: Very interesting and very highly educated and smart character. And sometimes I wonder if I could fill his shoes.

RS: Of course, Dubow has his own experience as a black Canadian.

Dubow: My story coming from East Africa would be different than someone who's coming from San Francisco or someone who's coming from Cuba or Brazil or from Ghana or from the Caribbean.

R Smith: But he helped fill out the picture of Victoria's Black community around the time that Charles Mitchell was locked up on the Eliza Anderson.

S Dubow: Because at that time, it was the gold rush, you know…

R Smith: The Californians had arrived in Victoria at the time of the Fraser River Gold Rush. So, much of the city's population was seeking their fortune on the mainland. Victoria was an important stop though, for those on their way to the river, and these San Franciscans knew all about the Gold Rush economy.

S Dubow: They owned businesses. They were into the real estate they were owning a lot of homes.

R Smith: Mifflin Gibbs and his partner began outfitting miners. They were the first competition to the massive Hudson's Bay Company. Dubow explains to me later than for a time, these immigrants from America made up a majority of Victoria's police force. They formed a militia and vowed to fight for the British should territorial conflicts escalate with the US.

S Dubow: They got involved in politics. They organized themselves they had a block, voting block and that's why Gibbs got elected.

R Smith: They faced racism and discrimination. But they were part of local congregations and civic groups. In Victoria, the law mostly treated them as equals, even if their neighbors didn't always.

S Dubow: They had influence in the politics, in the business and in the in the community and they were well respected and they were highly educated!

R Smith: These were the people that were waiting for young Charles Mitchell. This was the community that had his back. City Councilor, Dubow and I went for a walk that ended on Wharf Street. I found the spot where the 140 foot Eliza Anderson pulled up on September 25 1860, Charles Mitchell locked inside. The only evidence that remains are several large mooring rings mounted in the moss covered rock.

As the ship pulled up that afternoon, word of its arrival spread.

J Bentley: And so when the boat got there and he did not come off, a crowd waiting said you know, where is he? They knew he was to be, he was to be there. So, everybody was a little nervous, wondering where he was wondering what would happen.

R Smith: The question didn't hang in the air long. James Allen the ship's cook, fired for his role in all this, rushed off the boat. William Davis, the Victorian barber and passengers since Olympia, followed. They told the crowd that Mitchell was locked on board, before rushing off to get a lawyer involved. The crowd swelled to nearly 100 people, the ship's first mate threatening them as they grew more vocal in demanding Charles Mitchell's release.

At the Law Offices of Henry Crease, Allen and Williams made sworn affidavits, Free Boy authors, McConaghy and Bentley came across them in their research. Here's Judy reading one:

J Bentley: "I William Davis of Victoria, barber, may goeth for myself and say that I was a passenger on board the Eliza Anderson from Olympia to Victoria on Monday, the 24th day of September, that when the said steamer had left Olympia, a boy of the name of Charles was found stowed away on board. He told me that he was a slave and belonged to judge Tilton." (Tilton was often called judge) "and was then trying to make his escape. That the captain of the Eliza Anderson endeavor to have him taken off by ships that he passed but could not succeed. And accordingly he brought him into the port of Victoria. That said, Boy, Charles now locked up on board the Eliza Anderson, and the captain and officers will not let him out as they are afraid of his obtaining his freedom by setting foot on British soil. That the said Charles is wrongfully detained in custody as a fugitive slave."

So this is Davis talking. Allen, James Allen a cook on board made about a similar affidavit. And this is what brought Charles before a judge.

R Smith: The lawyer presented these affidavits to the judge, who issued a writ of habeas corpus. It's basically an order to bring the detained before the court to decide if their imprisonment is legal. The captain of the ship denied the order but the sheriff threatened force. Scores of supporters on the wharf were ready to back him up. Eventually the captain gave in. He surrendered Charles Mitchell to the sheriff.

The next morning after a night in jail, the boy appeared before the court. Supporters filled the room. Mitchell's lawyer argued that the captain had no right to hold Mitchell against his will. And regardless, he was on British soil now, where slavery was illegal. The captain's side cited of the Dred Scott decision and the fugitive slave laws, they called Mitchell, "…the property of James Tilton - a runaway who should be returned to his master".

The judge's ruling was quick. He said "no man could be held a slave on British soil." Charles Mitchell was a free boy. The courtroom erupted, mostly cheers. The Victoria Colonist newspaper called it a righteous decision.

It's not clear when James Tilton learned all this. There was no telegraph in Washington territory in 1860. But when he found out, he said that he hopes the boy never returns, as, quote, "his services have lately not been equivalent with his expenses." He was furious with the British.

J Bentley: ...that you know, the British being so arrogant as to, as to take his property away. And he writes a letter to the Secretary of State. writes a letter to the newspaper. There's quite a bit of protest over it. But then it dies down. Events. We're moving very quickly. This is September 1860. Abraham Lincoln is elected President that fall, and suddenly, the country's moving towards war.

R Smith: Charles Mitchell began attending the Collegiate School for Boys, a school for the sons of Victoria's elite. It seems he was part of a community that really cared for him. But he would have found that racism and discrimination were alive and well in this new home. During the Civil War, Confederate flags could be seen around Victoria, Secessionists would pour in after the union won the war. Many of the Black pioneers that had found some refuge in Victoria...

S Dubow: Unfortunately, a lot of them went back to the States.

Professor Taylor: Many of the Blacks who ended up in Canada, including some of the black leadership, after the war came back to the US, because they assumed that now, especially with reconstruction looming, they assumed that they would have rights, their political rights would be respected.

R Smith: In the epilogue of Dr. Lorraine McConaughey and Judy Bentley's book Free Boy. They wonder if Charles Mitchell returned to the states like so many others, or did he stay in Canada? Charles Mitchell is a common name. They found possible evidence for both scenarios. But they concluded that he was probably the Charles Mitchell whose canoe washed up near Victoria in 1876 - presumed dead. He'd have been 29, survived by a wife and several children.

But new information came to light.

J Bentley: About a year after the book came out. We were contacted by Thomas Blake, who's a retired lawyer and amateur genealogist who was intrigued with what happened to Charles Mitchell. After extensive research, he thinks he knows what, he's identified what happened to him.

R Smith: Charles Mitchell actually returned to the states before the Civil War ended - still a teenager!

J Bentley: Enlisted in a California infantry company. For about three months he was stationed at Fort Stevens on the mouth of the Columbia River, which was named after Isaac Stevens, the territorial governor of Washington who had just died and had been killed in the Civil War. And that was very important because he has then a military record. And it's one of the biggest sources of information about Charles Mitchell comes from his military pension records. It seems that he in fact became a Mariner. A cook, a steward on ships. He lived in San Francisco, was based in San Francisco.

R Smith: Charles Mitchell had a son with his first wife before her death in the 1880s. He eventually married again, a woman from Liverpool, England.

J Bentley… and we have their marriage certificate... Charles Gibson Mitchell, Sarah Matilda Frederick, he was 40 she was 25... 1889 They were married in the parish church of Liverpool, in the county of Lancaster. They came back to San Francisco. He continued, and they appeared then in various censuses.

R Smith: They had seven children, and spent the rest of their lives in California.

Bentley: So he lived in a way a very ordinary life, which is what he was entitled to.

CREDITS:

R Smith: Thanks to Professor Quintard Taylor. In addition to his university work, he's the founder of blackpast.org an encyclopedic resource for researching black history. Thanks to Free Boy authors, Dr. Lorraine McConaghy, and Judy Bentley. I'll have links to their other work in the show notes. Thanks to Victoria city councilor Sharmarke Dubow for taking time out of his busy schedule to meet with me. His own story is incredible. I have more information about him on the website, Welcometoolympia.com. Music today by Blue Dot Sessions. Ending theme music by Olympia's own Skrill Meadow.

Thanks for sharing this show on social media. Thanks for the ratings and reviews, it really does help. If you're looking for more ways to support the show and you're able to, consider supporting it financially. You can give a little, or a lot. Click the support button at WelcometoOlympia.com. Thanks so much to those who have, and continue to give. My goal is to make this podcast financially sustainable for me to produce. It's getting there. Those monthly contributions really help.

Last year the city of Olympia declared September 24 Charles Mitchell day. This year is 160th anniversary of his escape.

Thanks for listening. I'm Rob Smith.