Ford Underground Railroad Station
Erie, Erie County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
In the early 1800s, Emma Howell, a Black woman freed from slavery, and her husband James Ford, who liberated himself, owned the property at Parade and 12th streets and operated it as an Underground Railroad station. Prior to Emancipation, it was known to freedom seekers as a place for shelter and safe passage. Erie’s location on Lake Erie, proximity to Canada, and network of abolitionists made it a crucial way station for many freedom seekers.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the early 1800s, Emma Howell, a Black woman freed from slavery, and her husband James Ford, who had liberated himself, owned property at Parade and 12th streets in Erie and ran it as a station on the Underground Railroad. To freedom seekers it was a known place of shelter on the last leg north. Erie's perch on Lake Erie, its nearness to Canada, and its web of abolitionists made it a vital crossing point on the road to freedom.
Why it matters
The Fords' home is a reminder that the Underground Railroad was built by ordinary Black families who risked everything, and that the fight for freedom ran straight through Pennsylvania's lakeshore.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the decades before the Civil War, the United States was a country half slave and half free, and the line between the two was anything but a wall. Enslaved people ran for freedom whenever they could, and a secret, informal network grew up to help them, the Underground Railroad, made of safe houses, hidden routes, and people willing to break the law to shelter those fleeing bondage.
Geography shaped everything. For a freedom seeker in the early 1800s, the goal was often not just the free states but Canada, beyond the reach of American slave catchers. That made the Great Lakes region, and the shore of Lake Erie in particular, a critical last stretch of the journey north.
Erie, Pennsylvania, sat right on that lake, close to Canada and woven into a network of abolitionists. For someone who had come hundreds of dangerous miles, a place like Erie could be the doorway to the final crossing to freedom.
People & events
At the corner of Parade and 12th streets in Erie, a Black couple opened their home to that struggle. Emma Howell, a Black woman who had been freed from slavery, and her husband James Ford, who had liberated himself, owned the property and ran it as an Underground Railroad station.
Their home was known to freedom seekers as a place of shelter and safe passage, a haven on the last, tense leg of the journey north. To offer that kind of help was to take a real and personal risk, especially for a Black family whose own hard-won freedom could never be taken for granted in that era.
That is what makes their story so powerful. Emma Howell had known slavery and escaped it; James Ford had freed himself. Rather than simply guard their own safety, they turned their house into a link in the chain that carried others toward the same freedom they had claimed for themselves.
Its place in the American story
We often imagine the Underground Railroad through a few famous names, but its real strength lay in countless ordinary people, and especially in Black families, who did the quiet, dangerous work of sheltering others. The Ford station is a reminder that the fight against slavery was carried on the shoulders of people whose names most of us never learned.
Erie's role also shows how the whole free North functioned as a corridor to liberty. The city's spot on Lake Erie, its nearness to Canada, and its community of abolitionists made it a crucial way station, and Pennsylvania's lakeshore became one of the routes along which freedom was actually reached, not just imagined.
Above all, this site anchors a national story in a specific home and a specific couple. The struggle for freedom was not abstract. It ran through kitchens and back rooms and the courage of people like Emma Howell and James Ford, who risked what they had built to help strangers become free.
If you visit
This marker stands in Erie, near the corner of Parade and 12th streets, in a city whose lakeshore setting is central to the story it tells. Look out toward Lake Erie and let the geography sink in: for freedom seekers, that water was the near edge of a new life, with Canada waiting beyond it.
Come ready to slow down and imagine. There may be little to see beyond the marker itself, but that is part of its power, a reminder that history was made in everyday places by everyday people whose bravery left no grand monument.
If you're tracing the Underground Railroad or Erie's role in the road to freedom, this is a meaningful stop. Stand where a freed woman and a self-liberated man once opened their door to others, and honor the courage it took to make a home into a haven.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Emma Howell
- · James Ford
Themes & tags
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