The independence of Caroline Quarlls...

I came across this story while I was writing my recent release, The Caretaker. It's one of the most incredible real-life stories I've ever read - a tale of resilience, bravery and the beauty of human solidarity...

This is the only known image of Caroline Quarlls, who was born in St. Louis, in 1825.

 

Her mother was Maria, an enslaved woman. Her father was Robert Pryor Quarlls, the son of her mother's enslaver, Dr. Robert Quarlls. 

 

Caroline grew up in her father's house, along with her white half-siblings. By all accounts, she looked very much like them, with light skin that allowed her to pass as white. (Though of course, as an enslaved girl, she was treated as a servant, not as part of the family.) Later in life, she described the harsh treatment she received in her father's house, including being whipped and "deprived of her freedom."

 

By 1842, both of Caroline's parents had died, and she had passed into the service of her father's sister, Mrs. Hall. Her aunt continued the cruelty that Caroline had known her entire life, at one point cutting off all of Caroline's hair as a punishment. 

 

But sixteen-year-old Caroline had had enough. 

 

On July 4th, 1842, she threw a bundle of clothes out the window, retrieved them on the street, then - using the hubbub of the Independence Day celebration as her cover - she made her escape. 

 

Using money she'd saved from sewing and other paid work, she purchased a steamboat ticket from St. Louis to Alton, Illinois, and from there a stagecoach to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

 

In Milwaukee, Caroline finally felt safe enough to stop running. Wisconsin was a free territory, and Milwaukee offered the solidarity of a small community of free Black people. The city was rough, but it was growing, with plenty of opportunity for work.

 

Robert Titball, a barber who had himself once been enslaved, offered to let her stay at his house until she got on her feet.

 

Things were looking up. 

 

But then, after only about a week, the reward posters appeared. 

 

Caroline's enslavers were looking for her, and the reward for her capture was a huge sum: $300 - a years' wages for most working people. 

 

The temptation proved too much for Robert Titball. He went to the Milwaukee lawyer who represented Caroline's enslavers and offered to bring him to her. 

 

The agent acted quickly, setting off with Titball to capture Caroline before anyone caught wind of what was happening. But by sheer chance, a young abolitionist named Asahel Finch did catch wind. He rushed to Titball's house to warn Caroline and in the nick of time, she escaped, hiding in an old wooden sugar barrel as the slavecatchers searched the neighborhood. 

 

Later that night, Asahel came back for Caroline, and he brough her to a farm just outside the city. From there, local abolitionists took her to the house of Samuel and Lucinda Daugherty, thirty miles away in Prairieville (current day Waukesha.) 

 

Caroline stayed with the Daughterys for three weeks as multiple groups of bounty hunters - intent on that $300 reward - scoured the countryside for her, "armed with pistols, whiskey, and warrants."

 

One afternoon, agents arrived at the Daughtery's house with a search warrant. Caroline escaped to the cellar, then scrambled up through the narrow potato chute, crawling between rows of corn and successfully hiding until nightfall, when the search was finally called off.  

 

By this time, it was clear that she could not stay in Milwaukee. There were just too many people looking for her.

 

If she was to be safe, she'd need to escape into Canada. 

 

Enter Lyman Goodnow, a forty-three year old bachelor who owned a quarry in Prairieville. 

 

Lyman hated slavery, and as he had no wife or children to care for, he volunteered to take Caroline to Canada. 

 

The pair left Prairieville in the dead of night with $20, a borrowed horse and wagon, a pillowcase filled with food, and a letter asking for help from any abolitionist. Lyman drove, and Caroline rode in back, hidden under a load of hay and a buffalo robe. 

 

Together, they journeyed south to Chicago, into Indiana and around the bottom of Lake Michigan, then up through Michigan and finally, in October, across the Detroit River into Canada - a total of five hundred miles, and five weeks of travel.

 

They hid by day and drove by night, finding refuge with abolitionists of all stripes, and staying in all kinds of places from claim shanties to grand houses and Quaker settlements.

What a journey this must have been, in an open wagon, through all kinds of weather, always looking over ones shoulder for bounty hunters... 

 

But they made it. 

 

After seeing Caroline safely into Canada, Lyman turned back for Wisconsin. He married two years later, and he lived in Prairieville until his death in 1884.

 

Caroline settled in Sandwich, Ontario. She learned to read and write, and eventually married a widower named Allen Watkins, also an escaped slave. They had six children. 

 

In 1880, she wrote to Lyman:

 

Caroline died in Ontario in 1888 or 1892. Her decedents still live in Canada today.

---