George DeBaptiste’s Grave

If Detroit was the last door to freedom, George DeBaptiste helped hold it open. Born free in Virginia, DeBaptiste came to Detroit and became a superintendent of the city’s Underground Railroad, personally helping hundreds of enslaved people reach Canada — some aboard his own steamship, the T. Whitney. He co-founded Detroit’s first civil-rights organization, helped raise the first Michigan Colored Regiment for the Civil War, and in his youth had served as valet to President William Henry Harrison.

He rests at Elmwood, one of more than forty people here connected to the Underground Railroad — the ties that earned the cemetery national recognition as a Network to Freedom site. A true Detroit hero. High on our list.