The Film: Interview Transcripts: David Frew

David Frew, Ph.D., maritime author and executive director,
Erie County Historical Society and Museums, on
conflict on the bayfront

In the early days when Erie was struggling to find its economic identity, there was an idea that it could be a mercantile town, and probably our premier mercantilist was a fellow by the name of Himrod, who was an abolitionist and hated slavery.  Meanwhile, the fellows who were evolving into shipping, and shipping transfer, and finally manufacturing, were the Reeds. The Reed family and Himrod were somewhat at odds with each other with respect to the economics of the town and how things should be laid out strategically.

Himrod, who was the abolitionist, took it upon himself to buy the land north of Sixth Street.  Sixth Street was interesting and was being developed as millionaire’s row and all the way between Lee’s Run and Cascade Creek is essentially like just a jungle out there, and he chopped that land up into small parcels and originally offered it to blacks using the traditional British system, that if they would develop the land, put a building on the land within so many years, that they could essentially have the land for free.  That was his way of trying to encourage black people to become free and to become part of a community.  That area of Erie, Pennsylvania came to be called Jerusalem, because it was so hard to get to.  You had to cross Lee’s Run to get back and forth, and every year, in fact, during spring run, there would always be one or two or three drownings.  People from Jerusalem who worked in the core city between Sassafras and Parade Street, trying to cut corners and get back and forth without walking all the way up to 23^rd or 24^th Street where you could cross the creek safely.

When Himrod bought the properties, which essentially went from the backyards of the millionaires who lived on Sixth Street, down to the bayfront, and chopped that up into little tracts that he offered to free blacks, he was, in effect, rubbing the conflict between himself as an abolitionist and the slave owners.  Many of those millionaires were at that time, slave owners, so he was rubbing the existence of the free blacks and their position in the community and the new Jerusalem compound in the faces of the wealthy folks, and creating a terrible conflict.

Just before the Civil War time was the time when Charles Reed, the steamship king, was making a transition in his commercial fleet from sailing ships to steam ships.  The steam ships could easily run the length of the lake without having to stop and/or tack up wind, but he didn’t want to abandon his old sailing ships.  He was using them as best he could to make short runs.  The sailing ships, if they would leave Erie on the closest tack, would end up roughly at the base of Long Point.  There was a port there in ancient times called Port Royal and legend has it -- and this is oral history -- that Reed would take slaves who were escaping from the South, and to get them out of the community and out from under the nose of all the conflict between he and Himrod, he would load them on his schooners and help them get to Canada. 

navigating the Great Lakes

canals and towpaths

finding safe harbor