Hiding in Plain Sight...in the Adirondacks
You would not expect fugitive slaves to be found in the Adirondack wildnerness, but they did live there, in Bloomingdale(Franklin County), not far from majestic Whiteface Mountain. Read the account below: |
| Some fugitives preferred to continue
into Canada or to lose themselves in the Adirondack forests. Alexander
Hazard was one of the latter, and lived undisturbed for many years in
the vicinity of Bloomingdale. John Thomas and Jesse Runyon were
two others. Thomas was the grandfather of the second Mrs. Jones. The story
used to be current in Franklin Falls, Vermontville and Bloomingdale that
his former master located him, and sent agents to apprehend him and return
him to slavery; that these actually proceeded as far as Franklin Falls on
their mission, but that upon being warned there that Thomas was armed and
would never be taken alive, and that the local whites would stand by him,
with certainty that some one would be killed, they abandoned their purpose,
and turned back. Runyon returned, to the South voluntarily during the civil
war. |