Edenton, NC. – Educators, Historians, Students, and Heritage Travel Lovers will find the recent development of a new website featuring the life of Fugitive Slave, Activist Abolitionist, Author, Harriet Ann Jacobs, a wonderful resource. The website was made possible through the collaborative efforts of Historic Edenton State Historic Site and the Chowan County Tourism Development Authority with matching funds received from the National Parks Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program.

One of Edenton’s most peaceful and tranquil locations today, Colonial Park, was named as a site on the Maritime Underground Railroad in the fall of 2005. During the antebellum period this site was the town’s harbor and industrial center with wharves, shipyards, and steamboat ferry docks. It bustled with the activity of slave and free black fisherman, ferrymen and carpenters. These black maritime laborers were a part of a relatively independent black maritime culture which extended throughout the southern Atlantic coast. It was the black maritime community which helped bring Jacobs and many others to freedom.

The Historic Edenton Visitor Center has a permanent exhibit about Harriet Jacobs and offers guided and self-guided walking tours about her life. The publication of the www.harrietjacobs.org website will enhance this existing interpretation of Jacobs’ life and will help make her story available to a much wider and diverse audience.

Jacobs’ autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, originally published in 1861, is available for purchase at the Visitor Center as well as The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, edited by Jean Fagan-Yellin.