Biography
Delia Ann Webster was a Vermont-born teacher and abolitionist who worked with Calvin Fairbank to carry Lewis Hayden, his wife Harriet, and their son Joseph from slavery in Lexington, Kentucky, to freedom in Ohio in September 1844. Kentucky authorities arrested Webster and Fairbank after they returned. A jury convicted Webster of assisting enslaved people to escape and sentenced her to two years of hard labor. She entered the Kentucky State Penitentiary on January 10, 1845, and Governor William Owsley pardoned her on February 24 after forty-five days. Webster later returned to Kentucky and operated an Underground Railroad station on a farm above the Ohio River despite threats and additional prosecutions.
