Daniel Kaufman
South Middleton Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
An Underground Railroad agent from 1835 to 1847, when he was sued by a Maryland slave owner. He was ultimately fined $4,000 in 1852, in a case that drew wide attention. Kaufman had provided food and transportation to fugitive slaves passing through this area; his barn and a densely wooded area nearby furnished shelter. In 1845, Kaufman laid out the village of Boiling Springs, and he built his 301 Front Street home in 1880.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
For more than a decade beginning in 1835, Daniel Kaufman risked ruin to help enslaved people fleeing north through Cumberland County. His barn and the dense woods nearby sheltered fugitives to whom he gave food and transport. In 1852 a Maryland slaveholder won a widely watched lawsuit against him, and Kaufman was fined the enormous sum of $4,000 for his defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law. He also founded the village of Boiling Springs.
Why it matters
Kaufman's story shows the personal cost ordinary citizens paid to resist slavery on the Underground Railroad, and how those lawsuits sharpened the national conflict that led to civil war.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the decades before the Civil War, southern Pennsylvania was a borderland in the most literal sense. Just across the Mason–Dixon Line lay Maryland, a slave state; on the Pennsylvania side, slavery had been abolished. For a person escaping bondage, crossing that line meant crossing from a place where they were considered property to a place where, in theory, they were free.
But freedom in Pennsylvania was never simple or safe. Federal law reached across the border. The Fugitive Slave Act — and its far harsher 1850 revision — required that escaped people be returned to those who claimed them, and made it a crime to help them stay free. Cumberland County, close to the line, sat squarely in the path of people moving north, and in the path of the slave-catchers pursuing them.
Into that dangerous middle ground stepped ordinary local citizens who decided that the law and their conscience pointed in opposite directions — and chose conscience.
People & events
Daniel Kaufman was one of those citizens. From 1835 onward he served as an agent of the Underground Railroad, giving food and transportation to people fleeing slavery through this area. His barn and a stretch of dense nearby woods became waystations — shelter for the hunted, offered at real personal risk.
That risk came due. A Maryland slaveholder sued him, and after years of litigation Kaufman was ultimately fined $4,000 in 1852 — a staggering sum then, enough to ruin most men — for the crime of helping human beings escape captivity. The case drew wide attention precisely because it dramatized what the law demanded and what a decent person might refuse to give.
Kaufman was more than a lone dissenter, too. In 1845 he laid out the village of Boiling Springs, planting a community that still exists, and in 1880 he built his home at 301 Front Street. His life reads as that of a builder in every sense — of a town, and of a secret network that carried people toward freedom.
Its place in the American story
Kaufman's story puts a face and a price tag on resistance to slavery. The Underground Railroad can sound almost romantic from a distance, but here it comes down to specifics: a barn, a woodlot, a wagon, and a $4,000 judgment against a man who wouldn't stop helping.
Cases like his did national work. Every widely watched lawsuit over a fugitive sharpened the argument tearing the country apart — forcing northerners to confront a federal law that commanded them to participate in slavery, and hardening southern insistence that the law be enforced. These local courtrooms were where the coming war was rehearsed.
His defiance also belongs to a larger truth: the Underground Railroad worked because unremarkable people in unremarkable places decided the stakes were worth their own security. The system had no headquarters. It ran on individual conscience, one barn and one crossing at a time.
If you visit
Boiling Springs is a genuinely lovely place to walk, built around its namesake springs and pond, and it carries an extra layer of meaning once you know a man who risked everything for freedom also laid out its streets. Move slowly and think about the geography: nearness to the Maryland line made this both a haven and a hunting ground.
Let the landscape do some of the storytelling. Dense woods and a working farm's outbuildings were not scenery to a person fleeing north — they were the difference between capture and escape. The marker asks you to see an ordinary rural setting as the high-stakes terrain it once was.
The area sits within easy reach of Cumberland County's Civil War–era sites, so Kaufman's story fits naturally into a day of tracing how this borderland lived on the fault line of the nation's greatest crisis. Come ready to reflect, not just to look.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Ye Olde Sulphur Spa Historical Society9.5 mi away
- Appalachian Trail Museum12.4 mi away
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Daniel Kaufman
Related events
- · Underground Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bethel A.M.E. Church
Carlisle, PA · est. 2009
Founded around 1820, Bethel A.M.E. was among the first African American congregations west of the Susquehanna, taking root as free Black communities built their own institutions in the early republic. The church became a station on the Underground Railroad, and its members included abolitionists John Peck and John B. Vashon, while national A.M.E. leaders like Bishop Daniel Payne were tied to its life. Here faith and the freedom struggle were inseparable.
Underground Railroad
Harrisburg, PA · est. 2000
In the 1850s a Harrisburg neighborhood known as Tanner's Alley served as a vital link on the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers found shelter a block apart in the homes of Joseph Bustill and William Jones, while the nearby Wesley Union AME Zion Church hosted the era's fiercest voices against slavery—Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison both spoke there. It was a hub of Black community and antislavery organizing on the road north.
C. DeLores Tucker (1927-2005)
Harrisburg, PA · est. 2006
C. DeLores Tucker rose through the civil rights movement to become, in Pennsylvania, the first African American woman to serve as a Secretary of State anywhere in the nation. From that office she championed the state Equal Rights Amendment, affirmative action, voter registration by mail, and lowering the voting age to eighteen. Later she led a high-profile campaign against music lyrics she saw as demeaning to women, African Americans, and children.
William Howard Day
Swatara Township, PA · est. 1997
Born free in New York, the man honored here devoted his life to the fight against slavery, lecturing across the United States, Canada, and Britain on behalf of the enslaved and free Black communities. After the Civil War he settled in Harrisburg, edited a newspaper, and served as a leader in the A.M.E. Zion Church. In 1878 he broke a barrier by becoming the first African American elected to the city's school board, later serving as its president.