Biography
Elijah Anderson was a free Black blacksmith and one of the Underground Railroad’s most active conductors along the Ohio River. He claimed to have helped roughly eight hundred people reach freedom while working from Madison, Indiana, and another thousand from Lawrenceburg. Kentucky officers arrested him aboard the steamboat Superior on December 17, 1856. After an initial acquittal, authorities immediately rearrested him, held and tortured him for months while demanding the names of collaborators, and convicted him of helping an enslaved man named George escape. Anderson received eight years and eight months in the Kentucky State Penitentiary. He was found dead in his cell on March 4, 1861, the day one account says he was due to be released.
