Christopher "Kit" Anthony (b. circa 1822 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-8023
Fled from slavery, Dorchester County, Maryland, 1857
Biography:
"Kit" Anthony escaped from slavery on October 24, 1857 with twenty-eight other slaves from the Cambridge District in Dorchester County. Prior to the escape, he was the property of Samuel Pattison, whom other fugitives had described as a man that "drank pretty freely," and "wouldn't bear nothing." Immediately after Kit's escape, Pattison placed an ad in the Cambridge Democrat for the fourteen slaves that absconded from his plantation. The other slaves include Kit's wife, Leah, and their family, Susan Viney and her family, and several others..
Samuel Pattison lived in Cambridge in close proximity to William E. Brannock and Reuben E. Phillips, who also owned slaves who ran away in the "Cambridge Party". This group of freedom-seekers likely received information from Harriet Tubman as many local blacks had in recent years. The news of the "Cambridge Party" quickly spread throughout the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Their profile was much too high to head directly to the known accomplices in Wilmington, Delaware. Pattison, and the other fugitives' owners, were reportedly on the trail of the Anthony family. Kit, Leah, and the children were forced to travel through constant rain with scant supplies, but were finally able to make it to William Still's Philadelphia depot in early November. Here, Aaron Cornish and Joseph Viney were among the members of the large group that recounted their harrowing journey to the abolitionist.
Nearly all of the Cambridge party was successfully relocated to the growing fugitive community in Canada. Kit and his family appear in the 1861 Canada Census, where they lived as freemen alongside many of the same individuals that they had labored with as slaves in Maryland. As of October that same year, Anthony also became the secretary of the fledgling Fugitive Aid Society of St. Catharines, established and staffed by Harriet Tubman. Along with several other former Maryland slaves, including Horatio Wilkins, Kit Anthony played a central role in easing the transition of former slaves to their new homes in Canada.
Return to Kit Anthony's Introductory Page
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