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Peter Mott House Underground Railroad Museum

Lawnside, NJ
Freedom and Resistance

Built around 1845 by Peter Mott, a free Black farmer and Sunday school superintendent at Mount Pisgah AME Church, this house served as an Underground Railroad station in the free Black settlement then known as Snow Hill (later Free Haven). Mott and his wife Elizabeth Ann Thomas Mott sheltered freedom seekers passing through on routes toward Haddonfield, Moorestown, and points north, working alongside Philadelphia's William Still. The surrounding community grew into Lawnside, which in 1926 became the first independent, self-governing Black municipality north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Saved from demolition in 1992 after local historian Clarence Still, a descendant of William Still, raised the alarm, the restored house opened as a museum in 2001.

Counter-Narrative

The myth this site refutes: that enslaved and oppressed people accepted their condition. Every stone here is evidence of refusal.

Associated People

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Sources

Lawnside Historical Society, National Park Service Network to Freedom

Sites in Conversation

"Shared theme: Freedom and Resistance"

"Shared theme: Freedom and Resistance"

"Shared theme: Freedom and Resistance"