[726] Quoted by F. B. Sanborn, in his _Life of Dr. S. G. Howe, the Philanthropist_, pp. 237, 238, 239. Similar stories are related by Lydia Maria Child, in her _Life of Isaac T. Hopper_, pp. 455-458. In localities nearer to slave territory than Boston, and in places where anti-slavery sentiment was perhaps less pronounced, it may be supposed that terror was not less prevalent among fugitive settlers. The members of the colored community near Sandy Lake in northwestern Pennsylvania, many of whom had purchased small farms and had them partly paid for, sold out or gave away their farms and went to Canada in a body.[727] The sudden disappearance of refugees from their habitations in various other places as soon as the character of the new law became noised abroad was a phenomenon the cause of which was unmistakable. Of the many that thus vanished from their accustomed haunts,[728] Josiah Henson, writing in 1852, said: "Some have found their way to England, but the mass are flying to Canada, where they feel themselves secure. Already several thousands have gone thither, and have added considerably to the number already settled, or partially settled, in that part of the British dominions...."[729] As Mr. Henson was a worker among the refugees in Canada he was in a position to speak from his personal knowledge, and his testimony is sustained by that of the Rev. Anthony Bingey, an escaped slave, who helped receive fugitives at Amherstburg, Ontario, one of the chief landing-places of the negro emigrants from the United States. Mr. Bingey states that after the Fugitive Slave Law took effect the runaways came there "by fifties every day, like frogs in Egypt." Before that time "many had settled in the States, but after the Fugitive Slave Law they could be taken, so they came in from all parts."[730] Sumner estimated that, altogether, "as many as six thousand Christian men and women, meritorious persons,--_a larger band than that of the escaping Puritans_,--precipitately fled from homes which they had established" to British soil. _The Liberator_ published a statement, made in February, 1851, that the African Methodist and Baptist churches of Buffalo, New York, had both lost a large number of members, the loss of the former being given as one hundred. The Baptist church of the colored people of Rochester, in the same state, out of a membership of one hundred and fourteen, lost one hundred and twelve, including the pastor. The African Baptist church of Detroit lost eighty-four members at this time.[731] [727] Letter of John F. Hogue, Greenville, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895; letter of the Rev. James Lawson, Franklin, Pa., Nov. 25, 1895. [728] _Life of William Lloyd Garrison_, Vol. III, p. 302. See also Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. I, p. 198. [729] _The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by Himself_, pp. 97, 98, 99. [730] Conversation with Mr. Bingey, Windsor, Ont., July 31, 1896.