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Chillson House
300 W. Midland St.
Built before the Civil War by a justice of the peace and founder of
a local Methodist church, the Chillson House was reported in county
histories as having sheltered fugitive slaves. Bay City was on an
Underground Railroad route that sent slaves to Canada through the
Saginaw Bay, making it one of the most northern outposts for this
activity. The city was first settled by James G. Birney, a
nationally-recognized abolitionist.
The house is now Eichorn
Antiques.
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Schooner Gerrit Smith
Saginaw River
Off the west bank of Veteran's Memorial Park
The Schooner Gerrit Smith was rumored to have carried fugitive
slaves to Canada. The ship is named after a wealthy New York abolition
financier, who narrowly escaped prosecution for funding John Brown's
raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859. Smith is also thought to have
financed the failed escape from Washington, D.C. on the Pearl in
1848. He was the Liberty Party's unsuccessful candidate for president in
1848 and 1852.
Smith originally financed a
brick house near City Hall at 10th and Adams, but it is not known that
he ever lived there. The wreckage of the 70-foot Schooner Gerritt Smith,
built in New York in 1855, lies here, among skeletons of large wooden
barges and freighters of the Davidson Shipbuilding Company.
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