page_title: George DeBaptiste
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: George DeBaptiste / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of DeBaptiste from 1887. Richard DeBaptiste (November 11, 1831 - April 21, 1901) was a Baptist minister in Chicago, Illinois.
context_page_description: George DeBaptiste was a prominent African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad in southern Indiana and Detroit, Michigan. Born free in Virginia, he moved as a young man to the free state of Indiana. In 1840, he served as valet and then White House steward for US President William Henry Harrison, who was from that state. In the 1830s and 1840s DeBaptiste was an active conductor in Madison, Indiana. Located along the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, this town was a destination for refugee slaves seeking escape from slavery.
  DeBaptiste moved to Detroit, Michigan in 1846. While Michigan was a free state, refugee slaves often preferred to continue to Canada to get beyond the reach of United States fugitive slave laws. DeBaptiste was considered the president of the local underground railroad group. During this period, he purchased a lake steamboat for carrying fugitives across the Detroit River to Amherstburg, Ontario. Historians have estimated that DeBaptiste and close collaborator William Lambert secured passage of hundreds of slaves, of the estimated 30,000 slaves who settled in Canada.
context_section_description: George DeBaptiste was born about 1815 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Different sources identify different parents, and they differ on whether George was born free. The encyclopedia, The Underground Railroad (2015), names John Debaptist and Frances "Franky" as his parents. They were both said to have been born into slavery, but had gained freedom before their son George was born. Because his mother was free, George was born free. Betty DeRamus names George DeBaptiste and Maria as the boy's parents. She said that George legally owned Maria and their son, but set them free on March 12, 1823. William J. Simmons and Henry McNeal Turner, writing in 1887, identified the young George DeBaptiste as brother to Richard DeBaptiste, who became a noted minister in Chicago, and as son of William and Eliza DeBaptiste.
  George learned the barbering trade in Richmond, Virginia. In his mid-teens he married Marie Lucinda Lee, a slave, and purchased her freedom with his earnings as a free black. On January 22, 1835, DeBaptiste obtained a free movement pass for the state of Virginia in the office of Hustings in Richmond, Virginia. It described him as, "a mulatto boy, about five feet seven and a half inches high, and about twenty years of age, who was born free." He later said he used the certificate 33 times to help slaves escape.
caption: Richard DeBaptiste, George's close relative
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