The Mount Clare site, now the B&O Railroad Museum, is a 40-acre historic landmark in Baltimore where America’s first commercial railroad – the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad – was founded in 1827. The current station building was re-built in 1851.
The Mount Clare site was the headquarters as well as the bustling freight and passenger terminus for all trains from points south and west of the City until Camden Station was built in 1857. All underground railroad escapes to freedom made aboard railroad cars between 1830 and 1856 could have been routed through Mount Clare Station and its rail yards complex.
In addition to the courageous actions of freedom seekers, the actions – or deliberate inactions – made in the corporate offices of the B&O also shaped the experiences of freedom seekers taking the B&O Railroad to freedom across Baltimore and all the states that the B&O served.
Historian William Still, in 1872, lists in his book The Underground Railroad, more underground railroad escapes aboard the B&O Railroad through Mount Clare Station than are listed in the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee register.
Documented escapes through here include:
Jane Steiner was charged with the escape of a slave from the Custis-Lee family of Arlington House plantation via the B&O Railroad (1836).
Ellen and William Craft (1848)
Henry “Box” Brown (1849).
Jacob Bigelow, retired attorney, sent three passengers to William Still. (June 1854).
Emeline Chapman alias Susan Bell, aided by Jacob Bigelow, also escaped to Philadelphia by the “regular train” (1856)
