The Film: Interview Transcripts: John Burt

John Burt, Esq., Pittsburgh historian on
Pittsburgh’s cast of characters
The cast of characters in the anti-slavery activity in Pittsburgh contains a plethora of stars. 

John Vashon, a veteran of the War of 1812, French-Canadian father, African-American mother, successful businessman, deacon in the African-Methodist Episcopal Church. His barber shop is a safe station on the Underground Railroad. 

His close friend, Charles Avery, a white man, who, like Vashon, had come here after the War of 1812 to make his fortune, and he also is very rich.  He is also deeply religious, somebody who has found religion in one of the Methodist revivals, and for him, as for Vashon, slavery is a sin.  His religious conviction prompts him even from time to time to use his own carriage to move fugitive slaves from one safe place to another. 

Martin Delaney, a dark complexioned African-American born to a free mother and a slave father, walks to Pittsburgh from Somerset County, Pennsylvania in order to obtain more schooling and becomes a successful physician.  His medical office is a safe station on the Underground Railroad. 

John Peck, another African-American, a barber, who we know from the documentation, hosts William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass when they are in the city. 

Jane Swisshelm, a white woman, and a radical feminist, who does not hesitate -- a self-educated woman -- who does not hesitate to become a pioneering journalist when few women work outside of the home and who uses her journalistic skill to criticize people in the government, including a federal judge who supports the slave system. 

And, one of my favorites, a young white man by the name of Charles Sheras.  Sheras dies six weeks shy of his 30^th birthday, and he’s Pittsburgh’s poet of abolition.

A strong cast of characters.

confluence of three rivers

the second great awakening

the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

government by the people

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