page_title: Delia Webster
section_title: Lexington, Kentucky
hierarchical_section_title: Delia Webster / Lexington, Kentucky
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of abolitionist Lewis Hayden
context_page_description: Delia Ann Webster was an American teacher, author, businesswoman and abolitionist in Kentucky who, with Calvin Fairbank, aided many slaves, including Lewis Hayden, his wife Harriet, and their son Joseph to escape to Ohio. She was convicted and sentenced to two years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Frankfort for aiding the Haydens' escape, but pardoned after two months.
  In 1854, Webster bought a farm along the Ohio River in Trimble County, Kentucky with the financial help of Boston abolitionists, and operated it as a station on the Underground Railroad. She was arrested a second time for her efforts to aid fugitive slaves, but the trial was discharged. Soon after, her home and farm were vandalized and subject to arson. Unable to pay for its expenses and her loan, she lost it to creditors. She then moved to Indiana.
  In 1996, she was honored as one of the Kentucky Women Remembered. A watercolor hangs in her honor in the Kentucky Capitol Building in their exhibit.
context_section_description: Webster traveled to Lexington, Kentucky in 1843. She decided to stay there to teach art and was a co-founder of the Lexington Female Academy.
  Webster's abolitionist efforts in Lexington were described in a 1921 article in Indiana Magazine of History:
  She came to be hated by the slave masters as well as feared by them. While nothing could be established against her, she was constantly under suspicion and was subjected to threats intermingled with much persecution. With all this opposition, she continued her work just the same, traveling from one locality to another, always coming in contact with slaves and teaching them the avenues of escape and very frequently aiding them directly in the work herself.
  She often worked with Methodist minister, Calvin Fairbank. It was said that "Northern Kentucky suffered greatly for her effective work."
  In 1844, Webster and Rev. Calvin Fairbanks assisted three slaves, the Haydens, in their escape to Ohio, where they transported them by wagon. Their role was discovered, and she and Fairbanks were arrested. They were tried separately. She was tried and sentenced in 1845, to "2 years hard labor in the Kentucky Penitentiary for aiding and abducting slaves." On February 24, 1845, Webster was pardoned by Governor John J. Crittenden, at the urging of the penitentiary warden, Newton B. Craig. To earn her freedom, she declared that she was not an abolitionist.Special Term of the Fayette County Court, Richard A. Buckner, Jr., presiding, December 17, 1844:  Commonwealth vs Delia A. Webster and Calvin Fairbanks: Indictment for stealing negro boy Louis, the property of Thomas Grant & Co. Louis was the son of Lewis Hayden and wife, the property of Patterson Bain/Patrick Bain.
  According to a 1911 account:
  Miss Delia Webster is the lady who was sentenced to the State penitentiary for abducting our silly old servants into Ohio. But the jury of Kentucky noblemen who returned the verdict -- being married men, and long used to forgiving a woman anything -- petitioned the governor to pardon Miss Delia on the ground that she belongs to the sect that can do no wrong -- and be punished for it. Whereupon the governor, seasoned to the like large experience, pardoned the lady.
  Webster went to live with her parents after her release in February 1845. She wrote about the events in Kentucky Jurisprudence: A History of the Trial of Miss Delia A. Webster (1845).
caption: Lewis Hayden, 19th-century portrait, ex-slave, abolitionist, businessman, Republican Party representative from Boston to the Massachusetts state legislature in 1873.
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