National Park Service Underground Railway Network to Freedom, Maritime Underground Railroad Site, Waterfront Park, located at the foot of South Broad Street. The Maritime Underground Railroad was composed of a network of African American watermen who worked with individuals of other races and occupations to identify sympathetic seamen to arrange passage on ships for freedom-seekers escaping enslavement. Few written accounts of this network exist, whereas Harriet Jacobs, a woman born into slavery in Edenton, who escaped to become a well-known abolitionist and author is here and well documented in her 1861 autobiography, “Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl”.

The site is open to the public without charge and included in the Harriet Jacobs Tour and Black History Tour offered at Historic Edenton, State Historic Site.