William Still was born near Medford, New Jersey in 1821 and died 1902. He was an Abolitionist, writer and businessman. His father, Levin Steel, was a former slave who had purchased his own freedom and he had changed his last name from Steel to Still to protect his wife, Sidney, who was an escaped slave from Maryland. William was the youngest of eighteen children. As a boy he worked on his father's farm as a woodcutter. He had very little formal schooling but he read and studied grammar on his own. At the age of 20 he left home and set out to find work on the nearby farms. In 1844 he found various jobs in Philadelphia including handyman and several household jobs.

In 1847, William got married to Leticia George who was the mother of his four children. He also found work in the office of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. His job was janitorial and clerical, but he got upgraded to the aiding of fugitives from slavery. While in that position he came upon his brother, an escaped slave, Peter Still. After he had found his brother, he kept a careful day-to-day record of the fugitives who were using the Underground Railroad. There were some problems with keeping these records because if they were to be found by white men, the whole Underground Railroad would be ruined. For that reason he didn't publish, The Underground Railroad until 1872.

He believed that Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown and other self-emancipated champions were the most eloquent advocated Negroes. Therefore his mission was to record his heroic deeds. "We very much need works on various topics from the pens of colored men to represent the race intellectually(1)," Still told one of his sales agents. His book became the "most widely circulated work on the Underground Railroad(2)." In 1876 he proudly put it on exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. It was a very strong reminder on the cruel condition of slavery.

Still's work with slavery did not end with his book; he also visited communities in Canada where the escaped slaves had settled. He also had a campaign, in 1859, to end racial discrimination on Philadelphia railroad cars.

1. www.undergroundrr.com/stillbiofr.html

2. www.undergroundrr.com/stillbiofr.html