Rokeby Museum is one of the best-documented Underground Railroad sites in the country. It was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in recognition of its outstanding history in 1997.

Rowland Thomas and Rachel Gilpin Robinson were devout Quakers and radical abolitionists, and they harbored many fugitive slaves at their family home and farm during the decades of the 1830s and 1840s. Among the thousands of letters in the family's correspondence collection are several that mention fugitive slaves by name and in some detail.

What follows is an essay relating the story of the Underground Railroad at Rokeby. A more complete and footnoted version will be published in Vermont History later this year.

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