Fugitives: Thornton and Lucie Blackburn
This story of lawbreaking, border hopping, & cop bashing was first printed in the book Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland by J. Blaine Hudson (available as an eBook on shadow libraries or as a paper copy).
Thornton and Lucie Blackburn were two notable fugitives from Louisville in the early 1830s. Thornton Blackburn was born about 1814 in Maysville, Kentucky. He moved to Louisville with his owners in 1830 and escaped on July 3, 1831. In the fugitive slave advertisement placed after his flight, Blackburn was described as “about 5 feet, 9 or 10 inches high; stout made, and of a yellow complexion; light eyes, and of good address.”[1] His wife, Lucie Blackburn—called “Ruth” or “Ruthie”— described herself as “a Creole from the West Indies.” She was purchased by Virgil McKnight, later President of the Bank of Kentucky, only a few weeks before she fled with her husband.[2] The possibility that Lucie would be sold to settle the estate of her former owner might have precipitated their flight.
The Blackburns crossed the Ohio River to Jeffersonville and, posing as free people of color, boarded the steamboat Versailles. Disembarking at Cincinnati, they traveled to Sandusky, Ohio, by stage coach and reached Detroit on July 18, 1831. The relative ease with which they escaped suggests that they had a sound plan, possibly contacts in Jeffersonville and Cincinnati—and that they had funds.
They remained in Detroit, living humbly but happily by all accounts, until discovered by a member of the Oldham family in 1833. They were arrested and jailed, and a trial ensued to determine whether or not the couple should be returned to bondage in Kentucky. The presiding judge ruled in favor of their owner(s). However, Detroit’s free black community refused to accept this decision and “took matters into their own hands.” First, Mrs. George French and Mrs. Madison Mason, wives of ministers of Detroit’s “Black Baptist Church” were allowed to visit Lucie Blackburn. While unobserved, Mrs. French changed clothing with Lucie, who then escaped the jail in this disguise and was “spirited … across the Detroit River and into Canada.”[3]
Not surprisingly, Lucie’s escape tightened the restrictions on her husband. On June 17, when he was bound in chains for his long return journey to Kentucky, the black and now also many white citizens of Detroit became so incensed that four hundred of them marched on the jail where he was held captive. They wrested Thornton from custody after beating the Sheriff so severely that he died of his injuries a year later. Thornton was then placed in a wagon and a wild race began toward the Detroit River with a posse in hot pursuit. Thornton’s entourage thought it best to abandon their wagon and hastened through the forest to the riverbank on foot. There, one of Thornton’s eight rescuers sacrificed his gold watch to pay his passage across the river.[4]
The Blackburns settled eventually in Toronto and became pillars of the Canadian anti-slavery movement.[5] Interestingly, the “Blackburn case” remained in the Kentucky court system long after the Blackburns left the United States. In McFarland v. McKnight (June 1846), several related suits were brought
… against the owners and master of the steamboat, Versailles for having taken on board, in the Circuit of Jefferson … a female slave called Ruthy … and a man slave (her husband) called Thornton Blackburn…. The owners of the slaves resided in Louisville, the slaves ran away from their owners … and were taken on board and registered as passengers on the books of the Versailles, conveyed on board to Cincinnati, and there landed, whereby they have been lost to their owners.[6]
- Louisville Public Advertiser, July 7, 1831.
- Karolyn E. Smardz, “There We Were in Darkness, Here We Are in Light: “Kentucky Slaves and the Promised Land,” in Craig Thompson Friend, The Buzzel About Kentucky: Settling the Promised Land (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999): 243–248.
- Ibid., 249–250.
- Ibid., 250–251.
- Ibid., 254–255; Karolyn E. Smardz, “From Louisville to the Promised Land: The Story of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn,” unpublished paper prepared for the Kentucky African American Heritage Commission, April 2000.
- Smardz, 1999: 382
(A note on the notes: “Ibid.” just means “same source as the last note.”)
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