Along the Aquetong Creek just outside the center of New Hope, there is a quiet neighborhood where, in a period of the 19th century before the Civil War, free African Americans built a community with Mount Moriah Church at its center. By 1860, 8.2% of the people in New Hope were African American. In a time of pervasive racial discrimination, threats and violence, the people who lived there exercised their rights to raise families, worship, work, buy homes and send children to school. They were living just 65 miles northeast of the Mason-Dixon line—a 90-minute drive today—below which nearly 4 million of their fellow African Americans remained bound in slavery.

In New Hope, some African Americans were born free, while others were granted freedom or escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad. Slave catchers traveled north, tracking escaped slaves to abduct and involuntarily return them to slavery. Mount Moriah residents saw this terror and violence firsthand, when a man named Benjamin “Big Ben” Jones was beaten and captured on nearby Buckingham Mountain. Leaders in the local abolitionist movement purchased his freedom and brought him home.

Not all threats came from the South, however. Some local white residents had helped slave catchers find “Big Ben” Jones. In other incidents, newspapers reported that Black worshippers were assaulted during outdoor services in 1854, and a group celebrating passage of the 15th Amendment was violently attacked in 1870. An 1876 map of New Hope labeled the Mount Moriah neighborhood “Darkey Town.” Despite prejudice and violence, the Mount Moriah community continued to grow and thrive.

During Black History Month, we’re sharing this preview of our Untold Stories project, set to launch in March. We initiated research on Untold Stories last year to explore the history of people from diverse cultural backgrounds and walks of life that have shaped our towns and landscapes. In Part 2 of this preview, learn about Mount Moriah’s expanding population, church, and increasing economic prosperity.

(Picture location: West Mechanic Street, New Hope, Pennsylvania; Credit: Erin Murphy)