North Star Over Trimble: Henry Bibb’s Journey to Freedom
Trimble County in Northern Kentucky represented strategic terrain on the Underground Railroad during the antebellum years as it bordered two free states. It was also well-connected transportation node adjacent to the Ohio River bordering Indiana, and ten miles past the mouth of the Kentucky River. Trimble was the operating area for Delia Webster, the “Petticoat Abolitionist” who helped several slaves escape before she was banished from the Commonwealth. In the county seat of Bedford, a slave named Henry Bibb also escaped, and with his newfound freedom he joined forces with Frederick Douglass in favor of abolitionism.
Prior to ultimately gaining his freedom, Henry escaped multiple times, including once from a Cherokee slaveholder in Oklahoma. He was repeatedly recaptured in his return trips to Trimble to rescue his wife, Malinda. In more than one instance, Henry was betrayed by fellow slaves working with slavecatchers.
In each escape, Bibb was guided by generations of wisdom in celestial navigation, piloted by Polaris, the North Star. As he reminisced:
“I walked with bold courage, trusting in the arm of Omnipotence; guided by the unchangeable North Star by night, and inspired by an elevated thought that I was fleeing from a land of slavery and oppression, bidding farewell to hand cuffs, whips, thumb-screws and chains.”
In another escape, he recounted:
“So I traveled all that day square off from the road through the wild forest without any knowledge of the country whatever; for I had nothing to travel by but the sun by day, and the moon and stars by night.”
It is widely known that the Big Dipper asterism in the Big Bear (Ursa Major) points towards the North Star at the tip of the handle of the Little Bear (Ursa Minor). Polaris also reveals an equally valuable piece of information in that the angle between it and the horizon equals the observer’s latitude. With Trimble County sitting at 38 degrees north, Henry would have seen the North Star slightly below the middle of the sky. And it would only get higher above the trees the further north he escaped.
Henry made his final escape to freedom in 1842, settling in Detroit. He then travelled throughout the United States with Frederick Douglass and other notable abolitionists to highlight the evils of slavery. Even still, he yearned to reunite with his family, which led him on a perilous 1845 return trip to Trimble. He took a steamship, and upon landing at Madison, Indiana across the Ohio River from his old home, he suffered a deluge of emotions. Amidst the unspeakable joy of reuniting with his aged mother after not knowing if she was still alive, he received devastating news that Malinda was sold as a mistress to a slaveowner.
“From that time I gave her into the hands of an all-wise Providence. As she was then living with another man, I could no longer regard her as my wife. After all the sacrifices, sufferings, and risks which I had run, striving to rescue her from the grasp of slavery; every prospect and hope was cut off. She has ever since been regarded as theoretically and practically dead to me as a wife, for she was living in a state of adultery, according to the law of God and man.”
From that point, Henry no longer considered Malinda his wife, and the North Star shined only for him.
Despite being a free man, Henry was still in danger of being recaptured through the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. That year he moved to Canada with his new wife, Mary, where they founded the first Black newspaper in Canada, Voice of the Fugitive. He continued to support the Underground Railroad passage from Detroit into Canada. (Not surprisingly, Frederick Douglass named his newspaper the North Star.) Henry wrote a memoirs of his experiences as a slave and a free man. Among the most poignant sections were the letters he wrote to his former master.
“DEAR SIR: I am happy to inform you that you are not mistaken in the man whom you sold as property, and received pay for as such. But I thank God that I am not property now, but am regarded as a man like yourself, and although I live far north, I am enjoying a comfortable living by my own industry. If you should ever chance to be traveling this way, and will call on me, I will use you better than you did me while you held me as a slave. Think not that I have any malice against you, for the cruel treatment which you inflicted on me while I was in your power. As it was the custom of your country, to treat your fellow men as you did me and my little family, I can freely forgive you.”
Henry Bibb died in 1854, before the United States was torn apart in the Civil War. Although he did not live to see the end of slavery in his native country, he was a bright star in the long arc towards freedom and equality.
Learn more about Trimble County (where Joseph B. Stewart was born) in the upcoming book Almost in Reach of Fame: Joseph B. Stewart, the Bourbon Giant who Chased Lincoln’s Assassin and Caught Scandal.
Sources:
Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself (New York, 1849).
Afua Ava Pamela Cooper, “‘Doing Battle in Freedom’s Cause’: Henry Bibb, Abolitionism, Face Uplift, and Black Manhood, 1842-1854” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2000).