Abraham Shadd, a prominent abolitionist who lived in West Chester for two decades, was recently honored in Delaware with a historic marker unveiled outside government offices in Wilmington, writes Cris Barrish for WHYY.

Shadd, who was born in 1801, was a cobbler who ran a shoemaking shop started by his father in Wilmington.

He was involved in the American Anti-Slavery Society and served as a leading delegate at the national convention of freed Black men in Philadelphia.

In 1833, he moved to West Chester in part to escape persecution for his work on the Underground Railroad.

“He, being a Black man, had to be very secretive about being abolitionist because he wouldn’t have been fined; he would have been probably killed if he had been caught,’’ said Janmichael Shadd Graine, his great-great-great-great grandson.

He continued working on freeing slaves from his new home until 1850, when he moved to Ontario, Canada, with his wife Harriet and their 13 children, to evade the possibility of being captured and he and his family subsequently being enslaved.

He later became one of Canada’s first Black elected officials. He died in 1882.

Read more about abolitionist Abraham Shadd, who lived in West Chester, at WHYY.