(1744-1814)
This excerpt is from History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania by R.C. Smedley, M.D. (Lancaster, PA, 1883).
Jacob Lindley, who lived in New Garden, Chester county, near where the village of Avondale is now situated, and owned six hundred acres of land in that vicinity, was the first to give assistance to fugitives in Chester county, of whom we have been able to glean any account. He aided many on their way to freedom long before the Underground Railroad was established.
About the year 1801, a line was formed by a few friends from Elisha Tyson's, Baltimore, to his place, thence to Pughtown and Valley Forge as described in the account of Abraham Bonsall.
Jacob Lindley was sympathizing and affable in disposition, sensitive in feeling and energetic in action. He was a prominent and powerful minister in the Society of Friends, a man of extraordinary intelligence and ability, a pungent writer when he assailed either open vice or the sinister means used to deceive and wrong others for pecuniary gain.
He possessed a large and strong physique, and a voice of great volume. When addressing an assemblage, and powerfully moved by the earnestness of his feelings in rebuking sin in any phase or beneath any guise, or in pleading the rights of humanity, especially of the downtrodden, enslaved and oppressed African, he expressed himself in words and tone and manner so emphatic as to reach the most common understanding, or to touch the most adamantine heart. While he sent the poniard of conviction directly home to the hearts of the guilty, he was tender toward the feelings of the unintentionally erring, or those who strove to do right against adverse influences of a potential character difficult at times wholly to overcome.
His genuine kindness, and love for all the children of God, was a marked trait of his character. A respectable mechanic who had been the recipient of his hospitality remarked that "the house of Jacob Lindley and his wife was in one respect like the kingdom of Heaven, no profession or complexion being excluded."
Toward the close of his life he wrote: "Oh! surely I may say, I shudder and my tears involuntarily steal from my eyes, for my poor, oppressed, afflicted, tormented black brethren - hunted - frightened to see a white man - turned from every source of comfort that is worth living for in this stage of being. The tears, the groans, the sighs of these, have surely ascended to the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and as a thick cloud are awfully suspended over this land. I tenderly and tremblingly feel for the poor masters involved in this difficulty. I am awfully awakened into fear for our poor country." He was twice married; both wives being ministers of the gospel.
On the twelfth of Sixth mo. (June) 1814, he attended New Garden meeting, and spoke with his usual earnestness and power. During the course of his sermon he intimated "his conviction that there were those present who would not see the light of another day," and added, "perhaps it may be myself." That afternoon he was thrown out of a carriage upon his head, dislocating his neck. He was aged about seventy.