December 13th, 1892, I called on Mrs. Edwin Bigelow widow of the good blacksmith & citizen and friend of the slave. Mrs. Bigelow, be it said, knew Henry Thoreau well from the time when he taught school in Concord to the time of his death, and valued and honours his life & character.
When asked about his connection with the Underground R.R. she said:
"The Thoreaus in those days lived in the 'Parkman House' where now the Library stands* (a private tenement but bearing the name of its former owner Dea. [Deacon] Parkman a relative of Francis Parkman the historian [(]E.W.E.) Squire Brooks & his wife lived next door at the parting of the roads and we (the Bigelows) just across the (Sudbury) Street from them. So we were close together & all anti slavery people, although Squire Brooks believed that it was his duty as a good citizen to obey the law.
From the day of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground R.R. was organized & active and nearly every week some fugitive would be forwarded with the utmost secrecy to Concord to be harbored over night and usually was sped on his way before daylight. They were escorted to West Fitchburg (never to Fitchburg, a large town) a small station where they got aboard the North-bound train. Dr. Bartlett often drove them from Concord in his chaise with his swift horse. Sometimes they went by cars from Concord, & then Henry Thoreau went as escort probably more often than any other man. He would look after the tickets, &c., but in the cars did not sit with the fugitive so as not to attract attention to the companionship (I think Mrs. B. said that H.D.T. also sometimes drove them to W. Fitchburg E.W.E.). The fugitives were harboured in Concord at Mrs. Thoreau's, Mrs. Bigelow's or Miss Mary Rice's. This last lady lived in a little house in a field behind the old Hill Burying Ground. She had a little nook built by old Francis Buttrick the carpenter in her attic projecting over the eaves & ventilated by auger-holes. While Henry Thoreau was in the woods the slaves sometimes were brought to him there, but obviously there was no possible concealment in his house (H.D.T. built his house, like Marcus Scaurus's into which all Rome could look. E.W.E.) so he would look after them by day, & at night-fall—no street lamps in Concord in those days—get them to his mother's or other house of hiding. He was always ready to help with service and didn't count risk, & also, although he had little money, always gave or advanced money to a slave who needed it. Sometimes this was repaid from the fund. It was no part of his plan in making the Walden hermitage to make there a refuge for fugitives. That was only incidental. But when they came to him there, he acted more independently and by his own good judgment than while living in his mother's house. Then she had sway & he took only a second place as helper. There never was any pursuit to Concord or domiciliary search.
Shadrach a slave who had for some time been at work in Boston (U.S. Hotel? ["U.S. Hotel?" crossed through] no that was Sims) was identified (by his master) & seized by officers & handcuffed & carried to the U.S. Court house early in the morning before many officers or people were there. Word went abroad among the Abolitionists and in half an hour a crowd rushed in and surrounding him & the officers took him out of their hands & brought him to the door (looking out on Court Square). There Mr. ------ cried out to the crowd 'For the love of Heaven, if you have any pity for this man, disperse in all directions!' So they shouted and put up their umbrellas & scattered: This man then with Shadrach, slipping among the men, went by by-ways to the Cambridge bridge, crossed it (walking apart, but keeping within sight of each other) into Cambridgeport & so to the house of Mr. Lovejoy (brother of the Alton martyr!**) when the handcuffs were removed, & thence they came to Concord.
At about 3 in the morning of March 17th*** a little before dawn, Shadrach was brought to the Bigelows house. Mrs. Bigelow was not well. Her husband however made a fire in the air-tight stove in her room to get the slave & his rescuer some breakfast & meantime went over to get Mrs. Brooks a most ardent abolitionist saying that Mrs. Bigelow was sick & wanted her: but the kind hearted though law-abiding Squire Brooks said 'But if she is very sick they may want me for something so I'll go over with you.' When then the door opened Mr. Bigelow heard Mr. Brooks voice down stairs with his wife's he said [']What shall we do now?' But Mrs. Bigelow said [']there must be no concealment: let Mr. Brooks come up.' Mr. Brooks with his wife entered Mrs. Bigelows chamber and to their surprise found Mr. & Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. ------ and Shadrach the fugitive. Squire Brooks saw what was going on at once, but here was an abstract matter hitherto presented to him in a most concrete form.
They were fitting Shadrach out with clothes. Mr. Bigelow's hat wouldn't fit him, but the man of law straightway zealously ran across the road to his house & fetched his own hat, sheltered by which Shadrach departed for the North Star, driven by Mr. Bigelow with a horse got from the stable near by (his own horse was white, well known & hence unadapted for contraband service) in the wagon of Lowell Fay, another near neighbor.****
Next day Mr. Cheney, a Webster Whig, said sharply to Mr. Brooks 'Shadrach was brought to Concord,' which statement the Squire had to bluff off as best he might, but he was now liable to fine and imprisonment for violating the sacred law of the land.["]
[Edward Waldo Emerson's note up the margin of the first page of the manuscript]: See also R.H. Dana's diary at the time of Fugitive slave law doings in Boston in C.F. Adams's biography. The juror there mentioned as having driven Shadrach was Edwin Bigelow.
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*The Parkman House stood on Main Street behind the Nathan Brooks House at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road. Both occupied what is now the Concord Free Public Library lot.
**Antislavery publisher Elijah Lovejoy of Alton, Illinois, who died in November of 1837 while defending his press from a rioting mob.
***Mrs. Bigelow's chronology was off by a month. The actual date was February 16, 1851.
****Lowell Fay lived in what is now 46 Sudbury Road (next to the Concord Free Public Library).