From the Vault: The Art of Escape
By Jarrett Zeman
Henry Brown’s escape was immortalized in a lithograph titled “The Resurrection of Henry Brown.”
COURTESY IMAGES / MARBLEHEAD MUSEUM
On March 23, 1849, Henry Brown attempted one of the most daring escapes on the Underground Railroad. Brown paid a white shoemaker in Manchester, Virginia, to drill him inside a crate measuring three-feet long, two-feet wide and two-feet deep. Brown crouched uncomfortably inside the crate and breathed through three air holes, beginning a harrowing 27-hour journey to freedom.
Brown traveled by train, steamboat, ferry and wagon, remaining still and quiet to avoid detection. The sailors and train conductors failed to handle his package with care. They turned the crate upside down and forced Brown to endure hours of silent agony with his face pressed against the lid.
Brown’s box arrived safely at the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society. The men rapped on the box and asked Brown if he was still alive. As Brown described it, “When they heard I was alive they managed to break open the box, and then came my resurrection from the grave of slavery. I rose a free man.”
Brown went on the lecture circuit as Henry “Box” Brown, regaling audiences with the tale of his escape. He moved to England in 1850 to evade slave hunters, but he returned to tour America as a magician.
The Marblehead Lyceum, the fourth building from left in this image, stood at 69 Washington St. from 1844 to 1951.
He performed at the Marblehead Lyceum on Washington Street Oct. 30, 1875, with his white wife and daughter. The biracial family openly flouted social convention as it toured the country. By the 1870s, 35 states had passed laws banning interracial marriage, and Massachusetts had its own ban until 1843.
At the Lyceum, Brown performed a magic trick with the famous box he had escaped in. Volunteers from the audience tied his daughter up in a bag and checked that the knots were tight. Brown placed his daughter inside the box and closed the lid. Within minutes, she opened the lid, holding the bag triumphantly in her right hand. Twenty-six years after her father’s escape from slavery, Annie Brown symbolically escaped from the same box.
Brown finished the show by hypnotizing white audience members. Brown ordered them to perform silly tricks, like hopping on one foot and barking. After years of submitting to a slave master, Brown took control of his white audiences across America.
Jarrett Zeman is the assistant director of the Marblehead Museum. “From the Vault” is a partnership between the Marblehead Museum and the Current.
