Today is the commemoration of Juneteenth (June Nineteenth) – the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas first heard from Union Army soldiers that they were free – and had been since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation almost 2.5 years before.
Before the US Civil War, many souls who self-emancipated from slavery in the US South made a stop in Stoneham on the Underground Railroad – a network of homes and other safe stops for ‘runaway’ slaves on their way to freedom in Canada. One of the stops was in downtown Stoneham in the home pictured here, owned by Deacon Abijah Bryant. It lay on Main Street just across from the Congregational Church. The house shows how rapidly things began to change after the American Revolution, since while Abijah was an ardent abolitionist, his grandfathers and several uncles had enslaved people right here in Stoneham.
After the war, Stoneham was also home to a man who took his fate into his own hands. Charles Cephas (1844-1908) was most likely escaping slavery when he joined the US Navy during the Civil War. Cephas (1844-1908) served as a Landsman aboard the USS Ohio and the USS Sacramento. His service paid off for him.
Cephas stayed in Massachusetts after his ship ended its war service in Boston, moving to Stoneham, where he married Sarah Hill in 1867. He never returned home to his native Virginia to live, instead making a career and raising a family in the North. He is buried in the soldiers’ circle near the Civil War monument in Lindenwood Cemetery.