youth...."[352] Levi Coffin, Vestal's cousin, helped many slaves from this region to reach the North before he moved to Indiana in 1826.[353] In Delaware there seems to have been a well-defined route upon which the houses of John Hunn, of Middletown,[354] Ezekiel Hunn, of Camden, and Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington,[355] were important stations. John Hunn speaks of himself as having been "superintendent of the Underground Railroad from Wilmington down the Peninsula."[356] Maryland also had its line--perhaps its lines--of Road. One route ran overland from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia. Mr. W. B. Williams, of Charlotte, Michigan, throws some light on this route. He says, "My uncle, Jacob Bigelow, was for several years previous to the war a resident of Washington, D.C. He was an abolitionist, and general manager of the Underground Railway from Washington to Philadelphia...."[357] Mr. Robert Purvis tells of two market-women that were agents of the Underground Road in Baltimore, forwarding fugitives to the Vigilance Committee with which he was connected in Philadelphia.[358] The Quaker City was also a central station for points still farther south. Vessels engaged in the lumber trade plying between Newberne, North Carolina, and Philadelphia, were often supplied with slave passengers by the son of a slaveholder living at Newberne.[359] A slave at Petersburg, Virginia, was agent for that section of country, directing fugitives to William Still in Philadelphia.[360] Eliza Bains, a slave-woman of Portsmouth, Virginia, sent numbers of her people to Boston and New Bedford by boat.[361] Frederick Douglass declared that his connection with the Underground Railroad began long before he left the South.[362] Harriet Tubman, the abductor, made use of stations at Camden, Dover, Blackbird, Middleton and New Castle in the State of Delaware on her way to Wilmington and Philadelphia.[363] The testimony of these various witnesses seems to show that underground routes existed in the South, but it is not sufficient in amount to enable one to trace extended courses of travel through the slaveholding states. [351] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_, pp. 296, 297. [352] _Southern Quakers and Slavery_, p. 242. [353] _Ibid._, p. 242. See also _Reminiscences of Levi Coffin_, pp. 12-31. [354] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 238, 244. [355] _Ibid._, p. 326. [356] Letter of John Hunn, Wyoming, Del., Sept. 16, 1893. [357] In the _Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is the facsimile of a letter addressed to him by a slave, pp. 171, 172. [358] R. C. Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 355, letter from Robert Purvis printed therein. [359] Chapter III, p. 68.