In the heart of Philadelphia, a runaway mother desperately held her infant son close as she matched wits with a ruthless slave catcher.
The mother, Catherine Thompson, escaped slavery in Maryland, married a free man named William Thompson, and eventually settled in Burlington County, New Jersey. There she gave birth to her son, Joel, and in August 1850, received an invitation from a white man named James Frisby Price to visit him and his wife in Philadelphia. Catherine obliged, and she brought her infant son Joel with her to meet the Prices. But when she arrived at the Price household in Philadelphia, she found herself face-to-face with the notorious slave catcher, George Alberti, Jr.
Black Americans like Catherine Thompson faced a precarious freedom living in the antebellum North. Despite its history of abolitionism, including passing the nation’s first gradual emancipation act, the forces of slavery still lurked across the state of Pennsylvania, especially in the city of Philadelphia.
