On 21 December 1848, a young white-passing man going by the name ‘Mr Johnson’ boarded a train in Macon, Georgia, assisted by his enslaved manservant. With his slight frame, eyes shaded by green-tinged spectacles, and arm in a sling, this young man cut an unusual figure. But what no one else in the carriage knew was that Mr Johnson and his servant had a secret.
They were not, in fact, master and slave, but wife and husband – Ellen and William Craft. In a bid to flee enslavement, the Crafts had donned disguises and were embarking on an epic 1,000-mile journey across America. It was, William later recalled, a “desperate leap for liberty”.
Listen on the podcast: A audacious escape from slaveryThe Crafts’ story began in Macon, Georgia, where both had been enslaved since birth. Ellen’s first enslaver had been her own biological father, and by 1848, she was ‘owned’ by the husband of her half-sister, forced to work as a maid and seamstress. Meanwhile, William had struck an agreement with his enslaver to hire himself out as a skilled cabinetmaker.
“Disappointingly, there’s no record of how the couple first met, but we do know that they thought about the idea of escape before they were even married,” says historian Ilyon Woo, who in 2024 appeared on the HistoryExtra podcast to discuss the Crafts’ extraordinary journey, which she reconstructed in her book Master Slave Husband Wife.Having seen loved ones torn apart by slavery, Ellen was initially hesitant to start.