Josiah Henson

Josiah Henson was born into brutal enslavement in Maryland. In 1830, after being cheated out of his purchased manumission papers, Henson escaped along the Underground Railroad with his wife and two young children on his back, crossing into Upper Canada on October 28, 1830.

Settling near Dresden, Ontario, Henson co-founded the Dawn Settlement, an intentional community and British American Institute that provided freed Black refugees with vocational training, agriculture, and sawmills. Henson personally traveled back into the American South multiple times, guiding 118 enslaved people to Canadian freedom. His autobiography famously inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.