Along with her husband Lewis, Harriet Hayden (ca 1816-1893) owned this boarding house on the North Slope for more than 40 years. Both born enslaved, their home was a stop on the Underground Railroad and included a cache of weapons that was reportedly stored under the front steps in order to frighten slave hunters away. Harriet Hayden bequeathed a scholarship for “the needy and worthy colored students” at Harvard Medical School.
In 1848, Ellen Craft (1826-1897) and her husband, William, escaped from Georgia by taking a train and steamer to Boston. Ellen, light-skinned, disguised herself as a white man, bandaged as if injured, while her husband William travelled with her as if he were the slave. They lived at the Hayden’s boarding house where they became active in the antislavery cause. Since the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law posed a danger to them, the Crafts left Boston and sailed to England. After the Civil War, they returned to Georgia where they bought a farm and also founded a school for freedmen.
