The Underground Railroad had many routes, but one of them ran right through Bladensburg in the 1850s.

Thanks to the meticulous records of William Still, an African-American abolitionist who worked in Philadelphia with the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, the story of that escape has been etched in history.

As with many stories about enslaved people, the details are spare, but telling.

On the night of Saturday, March 22, 1856, an enslaved man named Tom Matthews escaped from E.A. Jones, who was living near Bladensburg.

In an ad offering a reward for his return, Jones described him as 25 years old, five-foot-nine or five-foot-ten, wearing a “black coat and brown pantaloons” at the time of the scape.

With the typical lack of self-reflection of a slaveowner, Jones wrote that Matthews was “quite a sluggard” in forced labor but not “in a dance, at which he is hard to beat.”

The reward for his return either to Bladensburg or a jail where he could be picked up was $300 — the equivalent of more than $10,000 in today’s dollars.

In his 1872 book recounting various escapes, Still gave the final word on Matthews’ fate:

As Mr. Jones may be unaware which way his man Tom traveled, this item may inform him that his name was entered on the Underground Rail Road book April 4th, 1856, at which date he appeared to be in good health and full of hope for a safe sojourn in Canada. He was destitute, of course, just as anybody else would have been, if robbers had stripped him of every dollar of his earnings; but he felt pretty sure, that he could take care of himself in her Majesty’s dominion.

The Committee, encouraged by his efforts, reached him a helping hand and sent him on to swell the goodly number in the promised land—Canada.

While Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, in Prince George’s County it officially ended on Nov. 1, 1864 when a state law went into effect.

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