Elisha (1794-1891) and Cynthia Lapham Roberts (1797-1875)
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Elisha (1794-1891) and Cynthia Lapham Roberts (1797-1875)
Elisha Roberts purchased 80 acres on the Grand River Trail from Elijah Botsford in 1857. This location allowed freedom seekers to be quickly moved to Franklin, Southfield, and Pontiac on their way to safe passage north through Oakland County via the Underground Railroad network.
Elisha Roberts was an active abolitionist who lived in Livonia area until 1857, when he purchased property in Farmington Township. He and wife Cynthia Lapham were Quakers, with religious and family ties to prominent Underground Railroad activists in Michigan and New York. After the war, Roberts recounted how he had sheltered a desperate freedom seeker on his property, but could not provide him cash. Instead, Roberts gave him a poem he had written about enslaved people escaping to Canada. Years later, the man found and thanked Roberts, relating how through selling the poem he was able to prosper in Canada.
The Roberts property in Farmington was purchased in 1857. It was just west of town on the Grand River Trail, which was heavily used by the Underground Railroad Network in Farmington and neighboring Livonia. Roberts, never wealthy, often gave freedom seekers what money he had to help them pay for passage across the river into Canada. [Map detail, Oakland County, Beers, (1872).]
Like many early abolitionist settlers, Ethan Roberts (1794-1891) and his wife Cynthia (1797-1875) Lapham Roberts were a team. Cynthia was the daughter of Asa Lapham, a central figure in the Michigan’s Quaker community who was himself closely tied to activist Quaker abolitionists back in northern New York, his original home.1 Cynthia and Elisha, like other Quaker relatives, migrated to early Michigan with their young families. They settled in the Livonia area just outside the boundary of Oakland County by 1835, when their daughter Mary was born.2 The Lapham family was large and intermarried with other Quaker families, creating a large network with religious and family ties that later worked closely together to resist slavery. (In fact, there were two Cynthia Laphams; Cynthia Lapham Roberts had a niece Cynthia Lapham Walton, and both lived in the Farmington area at the same time,3)
Elisha and Cynthia raised their family in Livonia and attended Quaker meetings in Farmington, but in the 1840s, the Quaker community dwindled due to internal divisions, and many members began attending Farmington’s Universalist Church instead.4 Even so, the abolitionist values of the extended family continued to dominate. Cross-border collaboration between anti-slavery activists in the Livonia and Farmington communities was a powerful force in supporting the Underground Railroad activities in the area, especially after 1850. Roberts also participated in early community organizing and politics on the anti-slavery platform.5
Lillian Drake Avery photo courtesy Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society.
In the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century, Oakland County historian Lilian Drake Avery began to interview surviving settlers and collect local history, gathering letters and documents to help preserve their stories, several of which she published in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections. She also wrote a book about growing up in Farmington that was published by the Oakland County Historical and Pioneer Society, including an entire section on the area’s Underground Railroad history. In it, she identifies Elisha Roberts as part of the UGRR network, and recounts a story he told her of having helped a freedom seeker at his farm, but having no money to give him to help the man. Instead, he offered a copy of a poem that Roberts had written about the bondage of slavery, which the man took with him. Years later, the same man approached Roberts in Detroit to thank him. He told Roberts that he sold copies of Roberts’ poem after arriving in Canada, generating enough income for him to prosper. Avery reprinted Roberts’ poem in its entirety, excerpts of which follow.
During Avery’s interview of Roberts, he recounted the following:
“About the time the fugitive slave law was passed, I was considerable stirred up and wrote a poem about what I thought.” No one would print it, even with payment. “[T]hey all said they didn’t dare. Finally a fellow, who had a small hand press set it up and I had a few copies struck off to pass among my friends.” (p.65)6
Though I am in the cotton field Hard toiling now a slave, The driver’s lash no more I’ll feel But prove myself a brave. The dipper points to the north star That star now beckons me Saying: Arise and break your bond And flee to Canada.
Chorus O, Slaveholders, that hand, that hand of thine Can no more bruise my tender flesh, that flesh I claim as mine.
The eagle is a cruel bird, She feeds on feeble prey; The lion is a noble beast To him I’ll bend my way. I now have started on the track I will risk my master’s scowl, I hear him calling to his dogs, I hear his blood hounds howl.
Young eagles now I call on you To give me bare one dime, That I may cross the raging stream And pass beyond the line. I have raised the cotton plant for you To keep you from the cold, I have raised the sugar cane also To fill with sweets your bowl.
I have to toil, to sweat, and bleed, And labor hard for you, To cultivate a filthy weed, For you to smoke and chew. Our fathers toiled and died for you In anguish, grief and woe, That you might dye your garments blue With baneful indigo.
I now am on Victoria’s shore, Victoria’s on her throne, My flesh no more shall stream no gore, My limbs are now my own; I will bless the Lord’s most gracious name, I will bless him with my soul, He has broke my prison and my chains, And freed my heart from gall.
Your cup is full unto the brim Of all iniquity And if you would break off your sins, First let your slaves go free. Or tattered must your stripes appear And pale will grow your stars, They will be dimmed and blotted out By grief and bitter tears.7
Even in free states, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed southern bounty hunters to arrest and re-enslave freedom seekers. This made it necessary to get to Canada, which was especially difficult in the north, where swift rivers and large bodies of water made the crossing dangerous.
In Detroit, freedom seekers were smuggled across the river by Underground Railroad network operatives. But when Detroit was heavily watched, Oakland County became a safe alternative. Freedom seekers were hidden in barns, haystacks, and outbuildings in the rural countryside during the day, and moved under cover of night along major roads like the Saginaw Road (aka Woodward Avenue) to Pontiac and further north. The goal was to get to Lapeer, and then to Port Huron, where crossing to Sarnia was less heavily watched.
Oakland County’s Underground Railroad network was made up of abolitionists, farmers, merchants, and everyday people who refused to give in to the institution of slavery.
(Map graphic above by Birmingham Museum after Joseph Farmer Map of Michigan, 1842.)
After the Civil War ended, Elisha and Cynthia Roberts continued to live in Farmington with a simple farm lifestyle that belied their significance in the abolitionist movement. Their role in the Underground Railroad network was an important part of a unified effort by everyday people to resist the institution of slavery, even though it was illegal to do so and risked heavy fines. Through the Roberts’ family and religious connections, they did what they could to provide shelter and support to help their fellow man in the quest for the right to freedom from enslavement. They are buried in Clementville Cemetery in Livonia.
For More Information
Fox, Jean M. and Cameron, John B. A Farmington Childhood: The Watercolors of Lillian Drake Avery, Farmington Hills, Michigan: Farmington Hills Historical Commission, 1985. (Available in the archives of the Birmingham Museum, Farmington Historical Society, and Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society.)
Avery, Lillian Drake. “The Underground Railroad in Oakland County,” (1915) (reprinted in Fox and Cameron as Appendix B). Available as .pdf courtesy Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society.
Acknowledgements
Primary research on Cynthia Lapham and Elisha Roberts contributed by Leslie Pielack, Birmingham Museum
Reprinted from Lillan Drake Avery’s article, “The Underground Railroad in Oakland County,” written for the Michigan Pioneer & Historical Society, and reprinted as Appendix B in Jean M. Fox and John B. Cameron, A Farmington Childhood: The Watercolors of Lillian Drake Avery, Farmington Hills, Michigan: Farmington Hills Historical Commission, 1985, 65. ↩︎
