of Matilda Hicks and her family, but in the early 1860s they moved to Hidalgo county, where they settled and lived as a family. He was a white southerner and she was an enslaved woman, who had been childhood sweethearts in Alabama. He was the son of her slaveholder, who helped a group of seven families in 1857 and others cross into Mexico. Silvia Hector Webber was born enslaved in West Florida and in 1819 was sold to a slaveholder in Clark County, Arkansas. The slaveholders's son, John Cryer, illegally brought Silvia to Mexican Texas in 1828, four years after Mexico had deemed the slave trade into Mexican territory against the law. Silvia, however, with the help of John Webber secured her and her 3 children's freedom papers in 1834. Together Silvia and John lived an antislavery life and often harbored fugitives from slavery in their ranch and house. Silvia was known to transport freedom seekers, on a ferry she licensed at her ranch, onto freedom in Mexico. John Ferdinand Webber, born in Vermont, lived along the Rio Grande with his wife, Silvia Hector Webber, and together were known to have helped enslaved people cross the Rio Grande. The Jacksons and Webbers, who both owned licensed ferry service, were well known among runaways. Arrival in Mexico Freedom seekers found that when they made it to Mexico, they lived with the knowledge that they could be illegally kidnapped by slave catchers or blackbirders. Slave hunters who tried to kidnap former slaves from Mexico could be taken to court or shot. There was little support from their new communities and few opportunities for employment. They did not have official paperwork that stated that they were free. They were, though, able to enter into indentured servitude contracts and join military colonies. Some people, after they settled in Mexico, returned to the United States to help family members escape and to guide them to Mexico. Colonies There were abolitionists from the north who petitioned the Mexican government to establish colonies for free and runaway blacks. Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker, lobbied for a colony to be established in what is now Texas during the early 1830s, but he was unable to do so when Texas legalized slavery when it separated from Mexico and became the Republic of Texas (1836). Black Seminoles successfully petitioned for land and established a colony in 1852. The land is still