Mamie Toogood and the Burning Boarder
Ercildoun, the birthplace of Mamie Toogood Few places in Pennsylvania played as important a role in black history as Chester County. With its large pro-abolition Quaker population and close proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line, Chester County boasted a significant black population in the 19th century, even before the Civil War. Many early black residents of the county were former slaves, but had spent their entire lives north of the Mason-Dixon Line, as the abolition of chattel slavery didn't begin in Pennsylvania until 1780, when the state general assembly passed the Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act. This act was essentially a compromise. The 1780 Act prohibited the importation of slaves into the commonwealth, but it also pacified those who were already slaveowners by not freeing those who were enslaved before the act's passage. The Gradual Abolition of Slavery Act also changed the legal status of children born into slavery to "indentured servants" until the age of ...
