From the Archives: Biographies:
Hamilton Waters
1800-1877

As he drove along the Old Lake Road with a wagonload of fugitive slaves, Hamilton Waters recalled his own journey on the freedom trail.

It was not long after the first Negro Rights Convention in Philadelphia that Waters, a partially blind slave in Somerset County, Maryland, hired himself out so he could buy his mother’s freedom along with his own.  He was issued a “deed of manumission” for himself and a “bill of sale” in the amount of $58 dollars for this mother. 

A Maryland law required that any free black traveling through the state had to find a job or leave the state within 15 days.  Those who stayed could be fined $30 a day or be sold back into slavery. Hamilton and his mother chose to leave.  He was issued his “freedom papers” in 1835.

Together they set out for the free black settlements in Canada near the Michigan Border.  Before reaching Canada, his fortunes changed when Hamilton met Lucinda Duncanson, an educated African-American woman who had worked in the household of New York Governor Enos Thompson Throop.  Hamilton and Lucinda married, gave birth to a daughter, and moved their young family from Michigan to Erie, where Hamilton found work as a clothes presser in Robert Vosburgh’s barber shop.  The family lived at East Third and Holland Streets for many years.

Hamilton Waters became a respected citizen and a founder of the Wesleyan Methodist (Colored) Church in a section of Erie known as Jerusalem.  Members of the Wesleyan Methodist Church were among the "staunchest advocates of the abolition of slavery.” 

Jerusalem was located on Erie's West Side, from Sixth Street north to the Bayfront and from Sassafras Street west to about Cherry Street.  The area was purchased by William Himrod, a white abolitionist, who wanted to offer "newly freed blacks and destitute whites" an opportunity to purchase a small homestead.  Jerusalem was known to have been a remote area and not easily reached from downtown Erie, making the area ideal for clandestine anti-slavery activities.

One night in the summer of 1858, Jehiel Towner of Erie contacted Frank Henry of Harborcreek about helping three passengers escape to Canada.  The next night about dusk, Hamilton Waters brought the family to Frank Henry in a wagon.  A skiff was waiting at the mouth of four-mile creek to take them across the lake to Canada.

“The driver, one Hamilton Waters, was a free mulatto, known to everybody around Erie.  He had brought a little boy with him as a guide, for he was almost as blind as a bat,” Henry recalled. 

Hamilton worked hard to secure an education for his daughters, Elizabeth and Louisa.  Louisa, his youngest daughter, filled an important clerkship under the state government of Louisiana and came back to Erie to work in the insurance agency of the Hon. J.F. Downing.

Hamilton’s connections with Pittsburgh’s abolitionists made it possible for his daughter Elizabeth to go to college at the Allegheny Institute and Mission in Pittsburgh, later called Avery College.  The college, founded by philanthropist Charles Avery, had a subterranean hideout for fugitive slaves. 

Elizabeth, trained in the classical languages, was one of three commencement speakers at her graduation.  Unable to find a job in Erie’s public schools, she taught the children of newly freed slaves at the Himrod mission. 

Elizabeth married black abolitionist Henry Burley who later fought in the Civil War.  Their sons Reginald and Harry often accompanied Hamilton on his lamp lighting rounds through the streets of Erie while he rang out the old plantation songs in his clear, distinctive voice. 

Waters determination to secure his release from slavery, to provide for his family and to assist freedom seekers despite his blindness helped to shape the character of one of America’s most influential composers and arrangers.  Harry Thacker Burleigh would go on to study at the National Conservatory of Music in New York.  His grandfather’s plantation songs would someday reach an international audience and inspire the famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony.

Hamilton Waters died on February 6, 1877 at the age of 77. 

His obituary in The Erie Morning Dispatch said "he has gone to the land where there is no oppression and the bondsman is free."  A few hours before he passed away Waters said to a friend 'I have my trunk packed-- been packed a good while -- and am waiting for the boat to round the curve.' "

SIDEBAR

Immediately after the Civil War, many former slaves placed advertisements in newspapers, searching for lost family members.  These notices provide precious details for genealogists.   The ad below, discovered as recently as 2002, was placed in the October 28, 1865 edition of THE CHRISTIAN RECORDER in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

NOTICE.

Information wanted of Matilda Waters, who formerly belonged to a man by the name of Levin Waters, of Princess Ann, Somerset Co., Maryland. She was married to Jeremy Horsey. She had four children when I saw her last, about thirty years ago. Also, of my brother, Simon Cater, or Simon Waters. I should like to hear from him. Also, of Rinaldo Turner, Sandy Anderson and Wm. Handy. Any information of the whereabouts of the said persons can be sent to the Book Store, No. 619 Pine St., Philadelphia - or to

HAMILTON E. WATERS,
Erie, Pennsylvania.