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Hannah Jones Smalls participated with her husband Robert Smalls in a plan to escape Charleston to gain freedom in Beaufort, South Carolina. In the early morning of May 13, 1862 Robert Smalls saw an opportunity to capture The Planter, a Confederate ship on which he worked as a skilled pilot. With his wife and children and other crew and their families aboard, Smalls steered the ship through the Charleston Harbor. Once they approached the Union blockade, the crew took down the Confederate flag and hoisted the white sheet that Hannah had brought from the hotel where she worked. With reward money from the capture of the ship, Smalls was able to purchase at a tax sale in 1863 the house of his former owner, Henry McKee. Hannah raised their children in this house, at 501 Prince Street, where she lived until her death in 1883.