CELEBRATE FLINT, MI!! Historical Marker Celebration, 2005.
A view of the west side of the new marker on the Courthouse lawn. “Robert J. Cromwell” “Robert J. Cromwell escaped enslavement in the south in 1840. He settled in Flint around 1846 and opened a barbershop. That year Cromwell wrote a letter to his former enslaver, a man named Dunn, in an effort to purchase his daughter’s freedom. Dunn noted the Flint postmark and began searching for Cromwell. This advertisement, which appeared in the Flint Republican, confirmed for Dunn that Cromwell was indeed in Flint. Cromwell fled to Detroit. Dunn pursued him, but was foiled by African Americans and Irish American Cromwell sympathizers there. By 1851, an African American barber named Robert Cromwell had opened a shop in Chatham, Ontario.”