From its very first moments in print on March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a smashing success. While the book is wonderful, it is even more interesting to know that the book is based on at least one real person, Josiah Henson.
Born into slavery near Port Tobacco, Maryland, around 1789, Henson’s father was sold south and separated from his family. Henson was later separated from his mother and sold Adam Robb of Rockville, while his mother was sold to Isaac Riley. Eventually they were reunited on the farm of Isaac Riley. The story of Henson attempting to buy his freedom and that of his wife and children is truly painful (and too long to recount here.) Thwarted at every turn as the price of his freedom kept getting raised, he eventually escaped to Canada with his family.
Upper Canada had become a refuge for slaves who had escaped from the United States after 1793, when Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe ;passed "An Act to prevent the further introduction of Slaves, and limit the Term of Contracts for Servitude within this Province. The legislation did not immediately end slavery in the colony, but it did prevent the importation of slaves. As a result, any U.S. slave who set foot in what would eventually become Ontario, was free.
Once he was free in Canada, he helped to establish a settlement of freed slaves, spoke as an abolitionist, became a Methodist preacher, an officer in the Canadian militia, met with Queen Victoria while in London, and was featured on a stamp in Canada. He returned from Canada to the United States several times as a conductor on the underground railroad between 1831 and 1865. He published three books, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), Truth Stranger Than Fiction, Father Henson's Story of His Own Life (1858) and Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (1876.)
The actual cabin in which Henson and other slaves on Isaac Riley's farm were housed on Isaac Riley's farm no longer exists; it was demolished along with other outbuildings in the 1950s when much of the former Riley plantation was developed into housing. The Riley family home, however, remains and is currently in a residential development in Rockville. After remaining in the hands of private owners for nearly two centuries, on January 6, 2006, the Montgomery Planning Board agreed to purchase the property and the acre of land on which it stands for $1,000,000 (~$1.31 million in 2021).
The Josiah Henson Museum and Park, containing the Riley house is open to the public. The site contains exhibits and a visitor center. There are ongoing archaelogical exhibitions trying to find where Josiah Henson may have lived on the site. It is located at 11420 Old Georgetown Road, in Rockville, MD.
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