Secrets of the Underground Railroad/Greenwich Village Connections:
A Lecture and Book Signing by Don Papson with remarks by Otis Kidwell Burger

National Anti-Slavery Standard editor Sydney Howard Gay and his Philadelphia Quaker bride Elizabeth Neall made do in two small rented rooms on 12th street in 1845. Ten years later, Gay published the story of an enslaved woman named Harriet who escaped with her child from Richmond, Virginia, to New York City on the steamer Jamestown. A black family on Sullivan Street hid and protected them from the captain.

Between 1855 and 1856, Gay recorded the moving stories of over 200 fugitives. His unexpected transformation from slavery apologist to abolitionist, his unlikely alliance with the free black conductor, Louis Napoleon, and his never before published Record of Fugitives will be highlighted.

Don Papson is the founder the North Star Underground Railroad Museum at Ausable Chasm, New York, and is co-author of Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City, Sydney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon and the Record of Fugitives. Otis Kidwell Burger is a great-granddaughter of Sydney Howard and Elizabeth Gay. An artist, poet and author, she is a long time resident of Greenwich Village and a frequent contributor to The Villager.