Background
Thomas Garrett was the son of Thomas and Sarah Price Garrett, both Quakers. He was born on August 21, 1789, on a farm in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
Thomas Garrett was the son of Thomas and Sarah Price Garrett, both Quakers. He was born on August 21, 1789, on a farm in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
In Delaware, Garrett set himself up as a hardware merchant and tool-maker. During a pursuit to recover a free colored woman kidnapped from his father’s home, Garrett became convinced that his special mission was to help slaves escape.
As early as 1818, he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. In time his Wilmington home became widely known as a refuge for slaves. With the sentiment of a slave state bitterly hostile to him, with his house constantly under surveillance, with a ten-thousand-dollar reward placed by Maryland for his arrest, it is a tribute to his shrewdness that he so long escaped the penalty of the law.
Although scurrilously attacked in the press, threatened, and warned by friends to leave, he was not prosecuted until 1848 when certain slave-owners brought suit against him' before Chief Justice Taney for assisting seven slaves to escape, and ultimately secured his conviction.
The fine, because of his recent business reverses, swept away all his property but did not deter him from continuing his activities in behalf of the negroes. With the assistance of his friends, he was able to rebuild his business handsomely although he was then over sixty years of age.
By the time the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, he had helped about 2, 700 slaves to escape. In April 1870, the negroes participated in the Wilmington celebration over the Fifteenth Amendment by drawing Thomas Garrett through the streets in an open barouche, heralded by a transparency labeled “Our Moses. ”
Upon his death some months later several of his colored friends bore him on their shoulders to his resting-place in the Friends’ burying-ground.
Garrett was interested in many reform movements; his last important public appearance was as a presiding officer of a suffrage meeting.
The dominating traits of Garrett's character were an utter fearlessness which overawed even his slave-holding enemies, an honesty so upright that he refused to allow his lawyer to misrepresent him in pleading for leniency, great resourcefulness in an emergency, and a genuine love for his fellow men.
Garrett married Mary Sharpless. In 1827, his wife died and shortly afterward he was married to Rachel Mendenhall.