Charles Nalle of Culpeper, Virginia, was forcibly liberated by Harriet Tubman and others in Troy, NY on April 27, 1860.
On that day, just a few months after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, a group of blacks and whites, including Harriet Tubman, came together to free fugitive slave Charles Nalle from slave catchers bent on returning him to Culpepper, Virginia.
The incident in Troy began when Charles Nalle was betrayed to his southern master by Horace Averill (for whom the village of Averill Park was later named) while trying to seek Averill’s help to write letters in an effort to free his family.
Nalle then moved to Troy and found work with Uri Gilbert, of the Gilbert Car manufacturing Company in West Troy (now Watervliet), and began living with the family of William Henry, a black grocer, and also a member of local Vigilance Committee.
Nalle was arrested at a Troy bakery and taken to the District Circuit Court at State and First Streets. Hundreds of people rushed to the court house and Nalle’s jailers took him to a judge’s office in Albany County, with the crowd in hot pursuit.
The crowd stormed the office, and were fired on by police who wounded several people, but Nalle was put in a wagon and escaped to Schenectady County, spending a month on the run.
Local people raised $650 to buy Nalle’s freedom from his master, a man who was also his younger half-brother, and he and his family were reunited three months after his escape.
They lived in Troy for another seven years. After the war, the Nalles moved to Washington DC to be closer to relatives and died there in 1875.
On Saturday April 25th the James Connolly Social Club in Troy will host its 6th Annual “Tubman/Nalle Walking History Tour” exploring the 1860 rescue of Charles Nalle by Harriet Tubman and local abolitionists.
Participants should meet at 4:30 pm in Sage Park (near corner of Congress and 1st Street) on the steps of Goldberg Auditorium/Bush Memorial Center.
The tour covers a little over a mile, participants are welcomed to walk or drive. Following the conclusion of the tour (a little after 6 pm) club members and their invited guests are welcome to the club for a drink and informal discussion at 386 1st Street.
Nalle’s story is told in Scott Christianson’s book, Freeing Charles: The Struggle to Free a Slave on the Eve of the Civil War (University of Illinois Press; January 22, 2010).
Read more about Troy at New York Almanack.
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