 In the heart of Philadelphia, a runaway mother desperately held her infant son close as she matched wits with a ruthless slave catcher. The mother, born Betsy Galloway, escaped from her enslavement in Maryland in 1845 with the help of a free man named William Thompson. Galloway soon married Thompson, changed her name to Catherine Thompson, and eventually settled in Burlington County, New Jersey, where she gave birth to a son, Joel, in 1847.