James Alford was born enslaved near Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), New Jersey about 1769. By his account, "When about eighteen years of age, as I was one day ploughting in the field with a yoke of oxen,... I felt a spring of life in my heart, and a voice saluted by spiritual ear.. " Telling him to "Turn unto the Lord and he will deliver theee from all thy troubles and out of the power of thy master."

Alford began attending Quaker meetings, learned to read and write, but remained enslaved. At attempt, with the aid of a local Quaker, to buy himself out of slavery was unsuccessful.

When he was twenty five (about 1794) he had another religious experience, and this time was told that "time had arrived for me to leave." Obedient to his leading, he gathered up his clothes and a little money had left for Philadelphia. At Philadelphia he again came among the Quakers, and found employment.

After a few years he had set aside $250 and, thought Friends, contacted his former master with another offer to buy himself. The old master agreed, Alford returned to New Jersey, paid his old master and received his manumission papers.

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A couple of months ago, we had a dicussion on this forum about the definition of the Underground Railroad. Should James Alford be part of the Underground Railroad story?

1. His actual escape was entirely on his own initiative and his own doing. He apparently received no assistance while making his way from Elisabethtown to Philadelphia. Or, no human assistance-- Alford was a very religious man.

2. His choice of going to Philadelphia is interesting and probably be significant. Elizabethtown is near Newark and Staten Island. He could have headed to New York City, just across the river (and his master apparently assumed that he had gone in that direction), but instead travels about eighty miles (if going in a straight line) across New Jersey (traveling southwest) to Philadelphia, a place that in the 1790s had a signficant free African-American population (the majority of African-Americans in Philadelphia were free) and an active anti-slavery movement.

While this is speculation, it seems reasonable to think that he had good knowledge of Philadelphia as a possible haven. His Quaker contacts in New Jersey would have been one source of this information.

3. After arriving in Philadelphia, he quickly made contact with a "support network" that enabled him to find work and later assisted him in gaining his legal freedom. Here too, Alford is the active person-- it is he who raises the money for his own liberation.

So, do we consider Alford's story as part of the Underground Railroad story? No assistance or cooperation in his actual excape, but Alford was tied into information networks (he knew about Philadelphia) and support networks (finding jobs once he arrived in Philadelphia). What do others think?

[Alford's story was told, as dictated by himself, in the Friends Weekly Intelligencer in 1845. In his later years, Alford was in charge of the Shelter for Colored Orphans-- and escaped injury when that facility was attacked by a mob in 1838. He died in 1842.]