The remoteness of New England from the slave states did not prevent its sharing in the business of helping blacks to Canada. In Vermont, which seems to have received fugitives from the Troy line of eastern New York, the period of activity began "in the latter part of the twenties of this century, and lasted till the time of the Rebellion."[80] In New Hampshire there was a station at Canaan after 1830, and probably before that time.[81] The Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, personally conducted a fugitive on two occasions from Concord, New Hampshire, to his uncle's at Canterbury, in the same state "most probably in 1838 or 1839."[82] This thing once begun in New Hampshire seems to have continued steadily during the decades until the War of the Rebellion.[83] As regards Connecticut the Rev. Samuel J. May states that as long ago as 1834 slaves were addressed to his care while he was living in the eastern part of the state.[84] In Massachusetts the town of Fall River became an important station in 1839.[85] New Bedford, Boston, Marblehead, Concord, Springfield, Florence and other places in Massachusetts are known to have given shelter to fugitives as they travelled northward. Mr. Simeon Dodge, of Marblehead, who had personal knowledge of what was going on, recollects that the Underground Road was active between 1840 and 1860, and his testimony is substantiated by that of a number of other persons.[86] Doubtless there was underground work going on in Massachusetts before this period, but it was probably of a less systematic character. In Maine fugitives frequently obtained help in the early forties. The Rev. O. B. Cheney, later President of Bates College, was concerned in a branch of the Road running from Portland to Effingham, New Hampshire, and northward, during the years 1843 to 1845.[87] That later conditions probably increased the labors of the Maine abolitionists appears from the statement of Mr. Brown Thurston, of Portland, that he had at one time after the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law the care of thirty fugitives.[88] [80] Letter of Mr. Aldis O. Brainerd, St. Albans, Vt., Oct. 21, 1895. [81] Letter of Mr. Charles E. Lord, Franklin, Pa., July 6, 1896: "My maternal grandfather, James Furber, lived for several years in Canaan, N.H., where his house was one of the stations of the Underground Railway. His father-in-law, James Harris, who lived in the same house, had been engaged in helping fugitive negroes on toward Canada ever since 1830, and probably before that time." [82] Letter of Judge Mellen Chamberlain, Chelsea, Mass., Feb. 1, 1896. [83] Letter of Mr. Thomas P. Cheney, Ashland, N.H., March 30, 1896. [84] _Recollections of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_, p. 297.