The anti-slavery work that Quakers William and Deborah Parrish Wright carried out for decades during the 19th century at their home in Columbia has been recognized by the National Park Service. The privately-owned property is now designated as a site on the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

The application for the home's inclusion in the Network to Freedom was prepared by Lancaster historian Randolph Harris and submitted in January by Harris and fellow representatives of the Underground Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. The private, nonprofit organization plans to create a 10,000-square-foot interactive facility that will combine the rehabilitation of an existing historic building on Locust Street with a newly constructed wing. With a mission to educate travelers and local people alike, and to continue researching the heritage of the Underground Railroad across the commonwealth, the museum is projected to open to visitors in 2029 or 2030 with a cost in excess of $20 million.

The William and Deborah Wright Home, on South Second Street, was built in 1795 and was a key property in a chain of safe houses that formed along Pennsylvania's southeastern border counties during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The network extended west into Adams and Franklin counties and east to the counties of Chester and Delaware, and to Philadelphia. It began with William and Deborah, along with William's sister Susanna and her husband, Jonathan Mifflin, who lived on a farm in York County.

Both families harbored formerly enslaved people in their homes. They also transported freedom seekers in ingenious ways and took legal action to challenge enslavers in their community. The Wright family opened its nearby croplands and orchards to settlement by freedom seekers, beginning around 1820, establishing the core of Columbia's free black population and a place of refuge for later arrivals.

The Wrights also worked secretly with William Whipper and Stephen Smith, Columbia's wealthy black lumber merchants, who used their private railroad cars to transport freedom seekers. The influential extended Wright family in Columbia came to the aid of Smith when racist mobs looted and burned his business office during riots during the summer of 1834.

The William and Deborah Wright Home is a private residence owned by Sarah and Mark Stewart, who purchased the property in the spring of 2021. They moved to Columbia after raising their children in a historic home in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The Stewarts are just the sixth family to own the house.

Mark, a nonfiction author and editor, has museum experience, and after settling in Columbia, he helped to reconstitute the development group for the Underground Railroad museum, plans for which had been derailed by the pandemic. In 2023, he joined the board of the museum.

Lancaster and York counties boast a variety of sites in the Network to Freedom, including the Jonathan and Susanna Mifflin farm and home in Hellam Township, York County; the ruins of the Columbia and Wrightsville Bridge across the Susquehanna River; and the remains of the Pennsylvania Canal on the riverfront in Columbia Borough. The Mifflin farm is a project of the Susquehanna National Heritage Area, a collaborator and supporter of the proposed Underground Railroad museum.

To learn more about plans for the museum, visit http://www.ugrrmuseumpa.org or call 717-461-3491.