The Atkinson Family
Upper Dublin Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Abolitionists Thomas and Hannah Atkinson and other members of Upper Dublin Friends Meeting conducted an Underground Railroad station at the farm next door. Individuals who escaped slavery are buried in the meetinghouse cemetery. Son Wilmer created the award-winning Farm Journal magazine in 1877. Circulated nationally, it has been a primary source of practical information for farm families and has promoted agricultural innovation and advocacy for farmers.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On a farm beside the Upper Dublin Friends Meeting, Quaker abolitionists Thomas and Hannah Atkinson and their neighbors ran a station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom-seekers—some of whom now rest in the meetinghouse cemetery. The family's antislavery conviction was matched by a gift for enterprise: son Wilmer Atkinson founded the influential Farm Journal in 1877. Circulated nationally, the magazine became a trusted source of practical knowledge and advocacy for American farm families.
Why it matters
The Atkinsons link two great American currents—Quaker resistance to slavery and the rise of agricultural journalism that connected and empowered the nation's farmers.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle decades of the 1800s, the rolling farmland of Montgomery County lay only a day's ride from Philadelphia, one of the great engines of American reform. This was Quaker country, settled by members of the Religious Society of Friends whose meetinghouses anchored their communities the way a courthouse anchored a county seat. The Friends had wrestled with the question of slavery longer than almost anyone in the young republic, and by the antebellum years many of them had moved from quiet disapproval to open resistance.
Upper Dublin Township was farm country, but it was not isolated country. Roads ran toward the city and toward the free soil beyond, and the households strung along them formed an informal geography that mattered enormously to people fleeing bondage. A working farm — with its barns, outbuildings, and neighbors who could be trusted to look the other way — was exactly the kind of place where a person traveling in secret could pause, rest, and be pointed toward the next safe door.
Against this backdrop, a single family and its Meeting could bridge two very different American stories: the moral struggle against slavery, and the practical, forward-looking spirit of agricultural improvement that would define the region for generations after emancipation.
People & events
Thomas and Hannah Atkinson were abolitionists in the fullest sense — not merely people who disapproved of slavery, but people who acted, at real risk, to undo it. Alongside other members of the Upper Dublin Friends Meeting, they helped run a station of the Underground Railroad on the farm next door, offering shelter to men and women who had freed themselves and were making their way north.
That quiet work left a lasting mark on the ground itself. Some of the individuals who escaped slavery and passed through this community never traveled on; they lived out their lives here and were laid to rest in the meetinghouse cemetery. It is a sobering reminder that the Underground Railroad was not an abstraction but a network of actual homes, actual neighbors, and actual people whose freedom depended on the courage of families like the Atkinsons.
The family's story did not end with resistance. Their son Wilmer Atkinson grew up in this household of conviction and turned his energy toward the farming life he knew. In 1877 he founded Farm Journal, a periodical written for ordinary farm families, and built it into one of the most widely read agricultural publications in the country.
Its place in the American story
The Atkinsons sit at the crossing point of two great currents in nineteenth-century America. One was the long Quaker campaign against slavery — a moral movement that helped push the entire nation toward emancipation, carried forward in thousands of small acts of shelter and defiance like the ones on this farm. The other was the rise of agricultural journalism, which knit a scattered, rural nation together with shared, practical knowledge.
When Wilmer Atkinson launched Farm Journal, he was joining a wave of publications that treated farmers not as backward laborers but as citizens who deserved reliable information and a voice. Circulated nationally, the magazine became a trusted companion in farmhouses far from any city, offering practical guidance and advocating for the interests of the people who fed the country.
Seen together, the two chapters of this family's story trace a straight line of American character: a belief that people matter, whether that means risking your farm to protect a stranger's freedom, or spending a lifetime helping working families do their work a little better.
If you visit
The marker stands in Upper Dublin Township, in the leafy suburban countryside north of Philadelphia, where the old Quaker landscape still shows through the modern one. Come with the understanding that the story here is layered: a family home, a neighboring farm that served as a refuge, and a Meeting that bound them together.
The most moving thing to seek out is the sense of the meetinghouse cemetery — the knowledge that among the graves rest people who escaped slavery and found, at last, a place to remain. Stand quietly and let that register. Few roadside stops connect you so directly to the human reality of the Underground Railroad.
This is an easy addition to a day spent exploring the historic Quaker communities and rolling farm country of Montgomery County. Pair it with an unhurried drive along the older roads, and let yourself imagine both the danger that once moved through this landscape by night and the quiet ambition that later sent a farm-country magazine into homes across the nation.
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
- National Constitution Center14.5 mi away · 525 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA
- African American Museum in Philadelphia14.5 mi away · 701 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Betsy Ross House14.7 mi away · 239 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Independence Visitor Center14.7 mi away · 599 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Illadelph Glass Gallery14.7 mi away · 68 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Muse Gallery14.7 mi away · 52 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA
Attractions
- Discovery Center at East Park Reservoir12.4 mi away
- Harbison's Dairy Milk Bottle12.8 mi away
- Pennsylvania Railroad, Connecting Railway Bridge12.8 mi away
- Philadelphia Zoo13.1 mi away
- Rocky Steps13.6 mi away
- Philly Gun Range13.9 mi away · North Percy Street
Food & drink
- Independence Mall Cafe14.7 mi away · 50 North Independence Mall East, Philadelphia
- Burger King14.7 mi away
- Dunkin'14.7 mi away · 634 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA
- La Colombe Coffee Roasters14.7 mi away
- Philly Pretzel Factory14.8 mi away
- Time & Peace14.8 mi away · 36 South 7th Street, Philadelphia, PA
Places to stay
- Days Inn Philadelphia Convention Center - Philadelphia14.3 mi away · 1227 Race Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Four Points by Sheraton Philadelphia City Center14.3 mi away · 1201 Race Street, Philadelphia
- Clarion Suites Philadelphia14.4 mi away · 1010 Race Street, Philadelphia
- Sleep Inn Center City14.4 mi away · 1020 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, PA
- Home2 Suites by Hilton Philadelphia - Convention Center, PA14.5 mi away · 1200 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA
- The Notary Hotel14.5 mi away · 21 North Juniper Street, Philadelphia
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Related people
- · Thomas Atkinson
- · Hannah Atkinson
- · Wilmer Atkinson
Related events
- · Underground Railroad
Themes & tags
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