True Life Tuesday: Henry Box Brown

 
This is another story that I feel would make a great movie. Henry Brown was born into slavery sometime in 1815. He was born at a plantation named Hermitage in Louisa County, Virginia. He was very religious and stated that his mother instilled Christian values in him at a young age. It is believed that he had at least a brother and sister as he mentions them in his autobiography. At 15 he was sent to work in a tobacco factory in Richmond, Virginia. While there he married a fellow slave named Nancy and they had 3 children. He paid his master to make sure his family was not soled but his master betrayed him and sold them to another master.

After the sale of his family he decided to attempt an escape. He decided to send himself in a carton to a free state via the Adams Express Company. This company was used by abolitionists because of their discreetness. He paid $86 ($3150 in 2023) to James C.A. Smith, a free black man. Smith met with members of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society. The society advised Smith that he should mail Brown to Passmore Williamson, a Quaker merchant who was also a society member. On the day of his escape Brown burned his hand to the bone with sulfuric acid to get out of work. The trip began on March 29, 1849 and took a total of 27 hours.

Brown eventually made his way to Massachusetts where he became a speaker for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Here he was given the nickname Box at a convention in Boston in May, 1849. While he was in Boston he published his autobiography in 1849 and it was reprinted in Manchester, England in 1851. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850 he decided to move to England for his own safety due to his notoriety. He worked on the British show circuit for 25 years. He had a short lived acting career and also worked as a magician, mesmerist and conjuror. 

In 1855 he married Jane Floyd, the white daughter of a Cornish tin worker. He returned with his family to the US in 1875 and eventually settled in Toronto. He died there on June 15, 1897. He has several memorials dedicated to him in Philadelphia and Virginia. He has also been the subject of plays, novels and children's books. Also he had a street in the Corktown area of Toronto named after him on February 1, 2024.