The New Bedford Historical Society is training volunteers to serve as guides for a walking tour of Underground Railroad sites in downtown New Bedford. I signed up, and attended the first training session this evening.

Tonight we got an overview of where we’ll take people on this walking tour. Generally, we’ll start out at the New Bedford YMCA, which stands on the site where Frederick Douglass and his wife Anna first came in to New Bedford on the stage coach, accompanied by two New Bedford Quakers who helped the fugitives on the last leg of their trip. Then we’ll take people to 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Plaza, named in honor of the first all-black regiment that fought for the North in the Civil War. From there, we’ll lead people up to the site of Liberty Hall, where many an abolitionist spoke. Of course we’ll show off the statue of Lewis Temple next to the library — he was the African American who revolutionized the American whaling industry by inventing the toggle harpoon, which increased catches fourfold.

And we’ll wind up at the Nathan and Polly Jones House, home of two of New Bedford’s most active black abolitionists, who welcomed Frederick Douglass when he first arrived here in 1838. New Bedford’s connection with Douglass is, of course, the center of this walking tour. Douglass, perhaps the greatest African American of the 19th C., first found freedom here in New Bedford — earned the first wages that he got to keep for himself — saw with amazement that the schools in New Bedford were integrated — walked and breathed for the first time as a free man. What a compelling story, really the most interesting moment in New Bedford’s history.