About Henry "Box" Brown

Box Brown Imports is affectionately named after

Henry "Box" Brown

Born a slave in Louisa, Virginia in 1815, Henry Brown was brought to Richmond, Virginia to work in a tobacco factory and was separated from his wife, who was a slave, on a neighboring plantation.  In 1848, his wife and children were sold to a plantation in North Carolina.  Henry “Box” Brown resolved to escape slavery, and with the help of a fellow church member, had himself shipped in a box from Richmond, VA. to Philadelphia, PA.  The box was 3’ long, 2’ wide, 2’8” tall, and had a small hole for air.  The box was strapped and nailed shut and labeled “dry goods, this side up.”

The box traveled by a variety of wagons, railroads, steamships, and ferries before being delivered to the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society.  In 1849, Henry Brown had artists build a moving panorama about slavery which he used in a show called “Mirror of Slavery.”  With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, he fled to England.  Brown returned to the United States in 1875 and performed as a magician using the original box.

To learn more about Henry “Box” Brown 

read his autobiography.