Johnson House Historic Site

This guide to Johnson House Historic Site in Philadelphia opens with the legend of a quilt hung on the clothesline behind the house, a signal some say once told nineteenth-century travelers whether Germantown Avenue was safe. It introduces Samuel and Jennett Johnson, a Quaker couple whose weekly silent worship shaped their decision to shelter people escaping slavery after it became a federal crime in 1850. You'll hear how historians view that quilt legend today, and how the network connected to William Still and Philadelphia's Anti-Slavery Society. Stand at the back entrance the Johnsons once used, where visitors waited in the dark for a sign to let them in.