From Liberty to Freedom: The Basil Dorsey Story
Basil Dorsey was born to an enslaved mother in 1810 in Libertytown of Frederick County, Maryland, a slave state. His birth name was Ephraim Costly. He was enslaved by Sabrick Sollers.
Dorsey had been promised freedom upon Sollers’ death, but when it came on July 17, 1834, Dorsey was instead purchased by Sollers’ son, Thomas, for $300. On May 14, 1836, Dorsey and his three brothers escaped on foot to Pennsylvania, a free state.
Dorsey settled on a Pennsylvania farm owned by Robert Purvis, a wealthy abolitionist leader who was Black. He proved a faithful ally to the Dorsey brothers.
A few months later in July 1837, Basil Dorsey was captured and jailed. While imprisoned, Dorsey stated, “I will cut my throat in the Court House, I will not go back to slavery," Purvis later remembered.
Defended by a lawyer retained by Purvis, Dorsey won his case on a technicality. To avoid recapture, Purvis quickly helped him flee Pennsylvania to New York City.
In New York, Dorsey was introduced to Joshua Leavitt, editor of the anti- slavery journal, The Emancipator. Leavitt arranged for Dorsey, his wife Louisa, and children to live on his family's property in Charlemont, Massachusetts.
While In New York, Dorsey met abolitionist David Ruggles, secretary of the New York Committee of Vigilance, editor of the abolitionist newsmagazine, Mirror of Liberty, and owner of the first known black-owned bookstore in the U.S. Ruggles helped over 600 self-emancipated blacks like Dorsey resettle in free states or go onto Canada.
Dorsey and his family lived on Leavitt’s or his brother's farms for six or seven years- from around 1838 to 1844.
His wife Louisa died on November 7, 1838, two months after the birth of their third child, Charles Robert Dorsey.
Dorsey continued to fight for equality. He became a member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Dorsey once refused to move out of a "Whites Only" car on a train traveling from Albany to Rochester with Deacon Leavitt.
In 1844, Dorsey moved his family to what is now the Village of Florence, where the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community based on equality, had been established. Though there is no record of him joining as a member, we know Dorsey purchased goods at the community store.
On November 12, 1849, Dorsey bought land and built his first house in Bensonville, the name for Florence at the time. By 1850, Dorsey was one of 35 African Americans living on what is now Nonotuck Street.
By 1850, forty-year-old Dorsey was remarried to nineteen-year-old Cynthia Jones, an African-American woman whose parents were from Pittsfield. They lived in the house on Nonotuck Street with his four-month-old baby, Louisa, and Dorsey's other children, Charles and John. With them lived the Jacob Benson family of Maryland, themselves likely freedom-seekers.
On October 15, 1850, In response to the Fugitive Slave Law, Dorsey, with nine other self-proclaimed fugitives from slavery, published a call for local residents to come to their aid and resist any effort to return them to the South.
Worried that his travels as a teamster for the village put him at risk for kidnapping and rendition, local citizens raised $150 to purchase Dorsey’s freedom which was affected in May 1851, fifteen years after his escape.
On March 1, 1852, Dorsey and his family purchased this house, now 4 Florence Road, along with six acres of land.
Basil Dorsey died in Florence on February 15, 1872. He is buried alongside family members in the Park Street Cemetery in Florence, one of only a few integrated cemeteries of the time.
While unfortunately, no image has been found of Basil Dorsey, there is this photo of his brother Thomas Dorsey, who remained in Philadelphia and became a prominent caterer and anti-slavery activist. We look for shadows of Basil in his brother’s likeness.
Thank you to the Mass Humanities for enabling this work!
