![]() ![]() It thanks their friend George Thompson, the recent Liberal M.P. In 1860 their book (with just his name as author) Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom was published in London. On 9 October 1852 the Leeds Mercury copied the Anti-Slavery Reporter to note that the Crafts had started a second year of instruction, having studied “various branches of useful knowledge” including reading, writing, and arithmatic and that the school was run by the Misses Lushington. ![]() ![]() The Bristol Mercury of 30 August 1851 (copying the London Morning Advertiser) noted that the Crafts had enrolled as pupils at Ockham, and that he was instructing boys in carpentry and Ellen was teaching handicrafts to the girls. ![]() His entry by Jerome Farrell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography suggests he taught manual skills at Ockham School, and that he and Ellen learned to read and write there. He had been trained as a carpenter in Georgia. Village historian Mary Watson believes that William Craft worked at the school as the caretaker. The brick buildings, now private accommodation, still stand. Lushington’s daughters Frances (Fanny) and Alice ran the school, and passed it to be managed by the National (Anglican) School in the 1870s. Her early death left the school to be supported by widower Lord Lovelace, no doubt with contributions from Ada’s mother Lady Byron, also a philanthropist, who died in 1860. It was so popular, despite the fees and rules on clothing, that accommodation was erected for boarders. The village had benefited from the charity of Lady Ada Lovelace (daughter of poet Lord Byron, and enthusiast for the ideas of Charles Babbage the computer pioneer) in the 1830s when she established a school: not the normal single room village school, but one with workshops and a gymnasium, a pioneer technical school to train children, based on the ideas of Philipp von Fellenberg, a Swiss. They made very public appearances in anti-slavery activities around England, often with William Wells Brown: where they must have met Stephen Lushington (1782-1873) a brilliant lawyer, member of parliament 1832-41, and a ferocious anti-slavery campaigner who had lived at Ockham Park from the late 1840s. In November 1850 they sailed from Canada to Liverpool. Ellen had the colouring of her white father, which was used to advantage in 1848 when, dressed as man and with William as her slave attendant, they escaped north. They lived in London.Įllen Smith and William Craft had been slaves in Georgia since their births in the mid-1820s. Their father was noted as being “on a Mission to Africa”. On 26 April 1863 two more Craft children were baptised: Stephen Brougham Dennoce Craft and Alice Isabella Ellen Craft. The register of baptisms records that on 2 January 1853 the rector supervised the baptism of Charles Estlin Phillips, son of William and Ellen Craft, ‘fugitive slaves’. The house and its stables in close proximity to the church is not unusual in England, but the village of Ockham has a fascinating black connection. The twelth century church of All Saints is close to Ockham Priory, a grand house rebuilt to an 18th century plan after destruction by fire in 1948. ![]()
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