Women of North Buxton and the Elgin Settlement

Eliza Ann Elizabeth Howard Parker
by A.C. Robbins

In these days when Women’s Rights And Women’s Lib are very much in the news, one cannot help but reflect upon the brave women of yesteryear. The women who were in the forefront of the battle; who were not content to sit with hands-folded piety but who literally took up the cudgel in their own two hands and dared to fight for their own freedom.

Such a woman was Eliza Ann Elizabeth Howard Parker, the wife of William Parker.

Perhaps Eliza’s deeds were overshadowed by those of her husband, for it is he to whom is given the credit of having caused the changes in Pennsylvania’s attitude toward fugitive slaves following the Christiana Riots, But where was Eliza when all this was going on? Although little is actually known now, a few things have been recorded which cast a little light in this remarkable woman.

In their first flight from slavery in Maryland , a neighbour was entrusted to drive the wagon in which Eliza and the other runaways were hidden. After driving all night, dawn should have found them far away from the scene of their thraldom. But such was not the case. As the nervous slaves beheld the first light of the day, they were dismayed to discover they were only a few miles away from their hated master for they had been betrayed by the driver. Being paid for delivering runaways into the hands of the slavecatchers, he had driven in a circle all night and was on the point of accomplishing his treacherous deed when he was discovered by the enraged and desperate runaways.

Being always on the alert, Eliza whipped off her head gear in a garroting motion and she and her companions soon sent the treacherous driver where his “thirty pieces of silver” would avail him nothing.

Again when they were besieged by slavecatchers in Christiana in the free state of Pennsylvania, Eliza handled the guns as capably as the men. And in the repercussions that followed , who was among the thirty Blacks and Quakers that were arrested? Who stood trial, along with five other women, for treason against the United States, for the Christiana Riots were being considered as an act of war against the United States? And who knew that the laws and customs of Pennsylvania’s majority offered little hope that she and here companions would escape with their lives? Again Eliza.

The trial that followed has been considered “the most important trial that took place in the country(The U.S.) relative to the Underground Railroad passengers.” For the results of this trial brought about the changes in Pennsylvania’s laws which prevented the slavecatchers from taking runaways in this state. And Eliza, the fighter, helped to write this page in Pennsylvania’s and ultimately our history.

The lives of the rioters were spared and Eliza lived to follow her husband into Canada. They arrived in Raleigh Township in 1852 where they raised their family. Although William returned to the United States in later years, perhaps in her usual spirit of independence Eliza elected to live out her life in the home they had made on the twelfth concession.

Today Eliza lies in the B.M.E. Cemetery under a plain stone which says simply” Eliza Ann Parker, wife of William Parker.” For over 70 years, she had been undisturbed in her slumber , but with the recent upsurge of Black history, students are now finding their way to her gravesite to give silent homage to the valiant Eliza Ann Parker, one of the heroines of the Chistiana Riots.

This appeared in the 1978 edition of the North Buxton Labour Day book.