Wonderful information from all respondents; thank you all. I am not related to any of the families, but am an Underground Railroad researcher and am looking at the family history from that angle (I had cross-posted this query in the UGRR forum).

One or two messages mention the reported state of birth in census records. I'm sure you know to be wary of the data reported to census takers during the 1850 census in particular. Free persons of color in Pennsylvania and other free states, as well as freedom seekers who had successfully settled in free states, were known to have given false place of birth information out of fear of the newly passed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Of course freedom seekers who had successfully escaped and were now living in a free state had the greatest reason to mask their real place of birth, but free-born or manumitted persons also sometimes reported false information out of fear and distrust that they would be falsely of being escaped slaves.

George Nagle
Afrolumens Project Editor