The Lost Fugitive Slave Graves of Blue Mountain

Blue Mountain, as seen from Fishing Creek Valley

Buried in a hidden spot on the north side of Blue Mountain, just north of Linglestown, lie the mortal remains of two men whose lives were marked by unspeakable hardships. These men were runaway slaves; one by the name of George Washington, and the other whose name is known only to God.

Of these two men little is known, but it is known that George Washington built himself a cabin near Pletz Pass years before the outbreak of the Civil War and lived to a ripe old age, until his body was discovered in April of 1863, by a resident of Linglestown who was traveling over the mountain to Fishing Creek, frozen in a kneeling position near his tiny shack. Records indicate his cabin stood within sight of "Magilligan's Rocks", which later came to be known as Linglestown Rocks or the McQuarry Rocks.

As for the other man, whose last name was reported to have been either Brown or Lewis, he was a slave who escaped from Virginia and made his way north to Harrisburg. It is unclear if this slave was a friend or relative of Washington, but he, too, lived in the cabin on the mountain for a few years. Sadly, upon hearing a report that his master had reached Hummelstown and was hot on his trail, the runaway slave took his own life by drinking poison sometime in the early 1850s. History would have forgotten these two men had it not been a local resident who, according to legend, buried them side by side in a spot "overlooking Fishing Creek valley" and marked their graves with rough mountain stones.

Nearly thirty years later the lonely spot on the mountain with its crude uncarved stones was in danger of being forgotten. In August of 1897, Dr. Charles Smith, president of the Board of County Commissioners, and a local attorney and merchant named R.S. Care, oversaw the placement of a four-ton boulder at the burial site to mark the final resting places of the two slaves. On Sunday, September 5, 1897, a ceremony was held at the site unveiling a white marble tablet which Dr. Smith had paid for with his own money and had mounted to the enormous boulder.

The ceremony on Blue Mountain began shortly after 3 o'clock. While several hundred persons had attended the memorial service for the two slaves earlier in the day in Linglestown, the rough terrain (the Blue Ridge Parkway was not yet constructed, and the only access to the spot was an old Indian trail through Pletz Pass) prevented many from making the trip to the grave site. The Harrisburg Telegraph reported that over a hundred people were in attendance for the unveiling of the monument. As a large American flag draped the boulder, a prayer was recited by Rev. John Allen of Baltimore. After the crowd joined together to sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", a passage from Corinthians was recited and a speech given by Rev. William Howard of Harrisburg.

During his address, Rev. Howard stated that he had known Washington, and declared that the refugee slave was an honest, kind and generous man. He also paid tribute to the residents of Linglestown, stating, "Negro refugee though he was, he was never turned away from any door in Linglestown or this vicinity, for all of us had grown to esteem him as a friend... Though a different color, George Washington was a fellow human being with an immortal soul, and as such we have erected this tablet to his memory."

Justin Carter, a Harrisburg attorney, was the next to speak. In his moving speech, he said:
"What little was known of these humble men may be recorded in a few brief words; they were born, toiled, suffered and died. They were children scorned by fortune and bereft of gentle care. Sated avarice, no doubt, begrudged the stinted rag that wrapped their infant form. They were held in arms that trembled and to hearts that bled. Their childhood knew no tender guidance, their manhood had no inspiring hope, their age no comforting memory of happy days that are gone and no consoling dream of earthly peace to come. Enshrined in the enduring fabric of solid rock, charity, with holy ceremonies, commits their memory to time."

Of the unknown slave, Carter eloquently remarked:

"This brother, brave and unknown, who died by his own hand rather than lose freedom, barren of all the fruits of glorious liberty but sweeter ten thousand times than foul slavery's blandest touch, was a hero born to a realm that scorned the human dogs that bayed him to his grave... I proudly own him as my kin, I boast the noble heraldry of his deed, and, on this sacred occasion, I reverently lay the barren laurel of my praise."

The marble tablets bore the following inscription:

Unfortunately, records of this unique burial ground have all but disappeared. My research has turned up very little, aside from old newspaper articles. This burial site is not recorded in any database of cemeteries in Dauphin County, and it appears that no death certificate was issued after Washington's death in 1863. A blurb in the Harrisburg Evening News from Nov. 10, 1939, states that the Paxton Rangers Hiking Club hiked from Wenrich's Church over the mountain "by way of a new trail through Pletz's Pass to the grave of a runaway slave", which indicated the boulder and gravemarker were still accessible as recently as 80 years ago.

I've attempted to locate this monument on several occasions, but found that much of the area is private property. The one major trail that used to run across the top of the mountain, the eastern leg of the famed Darlington Trail, was abandoned sometime in the 1950s or 60s when the Appalachian Trail was re-routed. A few hundred feet of the original Darlington Trail from 1908 can still be accessed from Pletz Pass, but is overgrown, littered with trash, and terminates in the backyard of a property owner with a rather large mean-looking dog (at this point I wisely turned around!).

As for Pletz Pass, it has a remarkable history in its own right, having been named for the ancestors of George Pletz, who, in September of 1828, became the first aviation fatality in American history, when his homemade flying machine crashed into the mountain (I wrote a story about George Pletz a few weeks ago).

Today, the north side of Blue Mountain overlooking Fishing Creek Valley is dotted with private residences, built in the years following the construction of the Blue Mountain Parkway in the early 1960s. Is there still a large boulder somewhere on the mountain, tucked away on private property and overgrown with brush? Perhaps somebody who lives on the mountain has a boulder with a most remarkable history in their backyard and doesn't even know it.

Hopefully, somebody out there knows where this monument is located, and perhaps they would be willing to bring it to the attention of a local historical society. With all the race-related tension in our country right now and the fervor to tear down monuments offensive to African-Americans, now would be the ideal time to restore this forgotten memorial, erected 123 years ago by the compassionate and tolerant residents of Linglestown to honor the lives of two runaway slaves who beat incredible odds to find freedom in the mountains of Dauphin County.







Sources:

Harrisburg Telegraph, Aug. 19, 1897.
Harrisburg Telegraph, Sept. 4, 1897.
Harrisburg Telegraph, Sept. 6, 1897.
Harrisburg Daily Independent, Sept. 6, 1897.
Harrisburg Evening News, Nov. 10, 1939.