Buckingham almshouse, circa 1865
The Drinking Gourd recounts the escape from Maryland by enslaved Benjamin Jones.
The play opens with a miniature Jones running through the woods across the upper stage. Behind him with lanterns and dogs are bounty hunters who fire and wound him. The curtain then rises to what will be Ben’s final stop on the Underground Railroad, the Buckingham home of Quaker abolitionists. It is in this scene that Ben talks of his tortured past.
Fearing for his safety, he hides in a cave on Buckingham Mountain and finds work maintaining the chapel there. While on the mountain Ben meets three innocent forest creatures: Brother Raccoon, Brother Fox and Silly Rabbit. His new friends are edified, engaged and entertained by Ben’s story of traveling to Pennsylvania on some kind of “underground railroad.”
Then trouble starts when Jones disappears after a notice is posted offering a $200 reward for his capture and return to Maryland. He is, indeed, captured and returned to be sold, but during the auction a Quaker ally arrives and offers a price that no one will match.
Once back in Pennsylvania, Ben Jones makes his home the Buckingham almshouse, where he stays until his death.
The chapel where he worked and the almshouse where he lived still exist today. For information about Penn’s Wood Puppet Theater, contact Susan Tafel at 215-441-4154, or visit Youtube @PennsWoodsPuppets.
