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Speaker Traces Chelsea Link: Elizabeth Blakely's Escape and Later Life
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Summary
At a Chelsea Black History Month program, NPS ranger Sean Quigley told how Elizabeth (Betsy) Blakely escaped by sea in 1848, later lived in Toronto, and ultimately returned to reside in Chelsea, where records list her at 84 Pearl Street.
At a Chelsea Black History Month event, National Park Service ranger Sean Quigley recounted the case of Elizabeth (often called Betsy) Blakely, a girl of about 15 or 16 who escaped enslavement from Wilmington, North Carolina, by boarding a ship bound for Boston in December 1848.
Quigley said Blakely survived a cramped, multiweek voyage and reached Boston, where abolitionists publicly welcomed her at an anti-slavery meeting held at Faneuil Hall. He quoted an abolitionist who spoke with her and recorded her reported remark, "I have 2 choices. Liberty or death," as capturing the stakes facing fugitives. According to Quigley, records indicate Blakely eventually moved to Toronto, later returned to Massachusetts and lived in Chelsea at 84 Pearl Street, where an investigator noted she lived into her mid-eighties.
Quigley connected Blakely's story to the broader maritime routes of escape and to local memory, saying her residence in Chelsea is a tangible local tie to the national history he described. The host closed the evening with announcements about additional Black History Month programming and invited local participation.
