As one would suppose, it is impossible to determine with any accuracy how many fugitive settlers there were in the North at any particular time. Estimates both local and general in character have come down to us, and, naturally enough, one is inclined to attach greater value to the former than to the latter, on the score of probable correctness, but here the investigator is met by the extreme paucity of examples, which, as it happens, are confined to two towns in eastern Massachusetts, namely, Boston and New Bedford. In October, 1850, the Rev. Theodore Parker stated publicly that there were in Boston from four hundred to six hundred fugitives.[691] Concerning the refugee population of New Bedford our information is much less definite, for it is reported that in that place there were between six hundred and seven hundred colored citizens, many of whom were fugitives.[692] Nevertheless one cannot doubt that the representatives of this class were numerous and widely scattered throughout the whole territory of the free zone, for reference is made by many surviving abolitionists not only to individual refugees or single families of refugees that dwelt in their neighborhood, but even to settlements a considerable part of whose people were runaway slaves. Where conditions were peculiarly favorable it was not an unknown thing for runaways to conclude their journeys when scarcely more than within the borders of free territory. The Rev. Thomas C. Oliver, of Windsor, Canada, is authority for the statement that fugitive settlers swarmed among their Quaker protectors at Greenwich, New Jersey, on the very edge of a slave state.[693] In communities situated at greater distance from the sectional line, like Columbus[694] and Akron,[695] Ohio, Elmira[696] and Buffalo,[697] New York, and Detroit, Michigan, many fugitives are known to have lived. The Rev. Calvin Fairbank relates that, while visiting Detroit in 1849, he discovered several families he had helped from slavery living near the city. He went to see these families, and afterward wrote concerning them: "Living near the Johnsons, and like them contented and comfortable, I found the Stewart and Coleman families, for whom I had also lighted the path of freedom."[698] In the vicinity of Sandy Lake, in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania, there was a colony of colored people, most of whom were runaway slaves.[699] [691] _Chronotype_, Oct. 7, 1850. [692] Clipping from the _Commonwealth_, preserved in a scrap-book relating to Theodore Parker, Boston Public Library. [693] Conversation with Mr. Oliver, Windsor, Ont., Aug. 2, 1895. [694] Conversation with the Rev. James Poindexter, Columbus, O., summer of 1895. [695] _History of Summit County, Ohio_, pp. 579, 580. [696] Letters of Mrs. Susan L. Crane, Elmira, N.Y. [697] See p. 250, this chapter. [698] _The Chicago Tribune_, Jan. 29, 1893. [699] Letter of John F. Hogue, Greenville, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895.