National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom

National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom commemorates the stories of freedom seekers

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The St. Charles History Museum, formerly the St. Charles Heritage Center is a 501 (c)3 not for profit organization, base...
08/05/2026

The St. Charles History Museum, formerly the St. Charles Heritage Center is a 501 (c)3 not for profit organization, based in St. Charles, Illinois. The Museum’s goals are to collect, preserve and present the long, rich history of St. Charles, the “Pride of the Fox Valley.”

The museum strives to share stories, engage the community and spread awareness of local and regional history through interactive exhibits, educational programs, articles and social media. It also contains a vast collection of documents that support Underground Railroad activity in the area. The town served as a hotbed of abolitionist activity and saw a strong contingency who participated on the Underground Railroad.

It is believed that St. Charles became a major junction for Freedom Seekers due to its proximity to Chicago and infrastructure. In 1842, a route on the Underground Railroad was planned through St. Charles and hundreds of Freedom Seekers made their way through town. Additionally, several freedom seeking families settled in St. Charles.

The Museum hopes to document the important role St. Charles played during the anti-slavery movement and highlight the forgotten stories of Freedom Seekers and abolitionists, alike.

Image: St Charles History Museum

Denver’s Riverside Cemetery is the final resting place of three historic figures with connections to the Underground Rai...
07/30/2026

Denver’s Riverside Cemetery is the final resting place of three historic figures with connections to the Underground Railroad. Henry Wagoner, Barney Ford and Silas Soule.

Barney Ford, a freedom seeker who fled enslavement in 1848, journeyed to Chicago to become a member of the black community there and began a career as an entrepreneur and civil rights leader, a path which ultimately led him to being a hotelier and restaurateur in Denver.

Born a free black man, Henry Wagoner was a civil rights leader in Chicago in the 1850’s. Along with Ford, Wagoner founded that city’s Vigilance Committee in September of 1850. Wagoner famously aided John Brown by hiding thirteen freedom seekers in his Chicago mill in 1859 before their journey north to Canada.

Meanwhile, Silas Soule, a veteran of “Bleeding Kansas” worked with John Brown in Lawrence and was a member of a group that executed a daring jailbreak. Together, their gravesites commemorate a legacy of abolitionism and civil rights leadership.

Image: Riverside Cemetery Marker

# Chicago

The Batavia, Illinois property of Reverend John and Lucinda Cross represents one of the few extant physical artifacts as...
07/28/2026

The Batavia, Illinois property of Reverend John and Lucinda Cross represents one of the few extant physical artifacts associated with a central figure of the mid-nineteenth-century Underground Railroad network.

Upon arriving in Illinois in 1839, the Cross family immediately began aiding freedom seekers, an effort that forced them to relocate frequently. By 1855, the family had settled in Batavia, Illinois and in 1858 purchased property in the "Institute Addition” of town. By this point in time, John Cross had a storied legacy acting as the equivalent of “Johnny Appleseed” in establishing a Northwestern Network to Freedom.

He made multiple trips across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, using Christian unity as a lynchpin to bolster these efforts. It was said that Cross personally hand selected the agents, routes and safehouses leading to Illinois and “established what is believed to be the first continuous line of underground railroad in the United States…from Quincy to Canada.” The Cross family would move to Iowa in 1860 but maintained ownership of their Batavia property until early 1869.

Image 1: Image of home

First-person narratives, newspapers, court records and abolitionist correspondence document Portsmouth, Ohio’s Steamboat...
07/23/2026

First-person narratives, newspapers, court records and abolitionist correspondence document Portsmouth, Ohio’s Steamboat Landing as an important Gateway to Freedom within the Underground Railroad of the Upper Ohio Valley.

In the 1830’s Portsmouth emerged as a destination for freedom seekers escaping enslavement in western Kentucky, points further downriver and the Big Sandy River Valley of eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. Among those who passed through Portsmouth were nationally significant freedom seekers Lewis Clarke, Henry Bibb, Henry Goings and Josiah Henson, all of whom later emerged as leaders within the abolitionist movement in the United States and Canada.

Clarke, Bibb and Goings described arriving at Portsmouth by steamboat before continuing north via inland routes, while Henson used the Landing as a transfer point for rescue missions back into slave states. Together, this evidence, along with documentation of other lesser-known and unnamed freedom seekers who arrived in the city via steamboat, demonstrates that Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing served as a destination, escape site and intermodal transportation hub within an international Underground Railroad network extending from Appalachia to Canada.

Image 1: Portsmouth, Ohio’s Steamboat Landing (26 July 2019).Photograph by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.
Image 2: Portsmouth, Ohio’s Steamboat Landing (December 2025)
Image 3: Post Card of Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing (c. 1910)

The importance of family, friendship, faith and freedom are threads that bind the stories of enslaved people highlighted...
07/21/2026

The importance of family, friendship, faith and freedom are threads that bind the stories of enslaved people highlighted in the following story. On March 17, 1864, eight enslaved men from Meramec Township sought their freedom by escaping to enlist in the U.S. Colored Troops at Benton Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri.

The eight freedom seekers included: brothers Elijah and Stapleton Madison, brothers Lewis and Robert Brown, Henry Hicks, Richard Hughes, Alfred Smith and Reuben West. These men were interrelated by blood and friendship across four enslavers’ families, Robert G. Coleman, William
Coleman, Robert Tyler and Henry Tyler.

By voluntarily enlisting, they became part of the 68th Regiment, though their freedom came at a heavy cost. Two of the men died from illness, two were discharged due to injuries suffered in battle, and the remaining four served out their terms before returning to the area after the war.

At the conclusion of the war, the former enslaved men and their families formed their own congregation, purchased and renamed Mt Pleasant Colored Baptist Church and Cemetery to Mt Pleasant Colored Baptist Church, on October 8, 1872. Originally built in 1841 by their enslaved ancestors, the church stands as a profound physical testament to the sacrifices and triumphs these families endured to achieve their freedom.

Image 1: Civil War US Colored Infantry Headstones for Corporal Elijah Madison
Image 2: Civil War US Colored Infantry Headstones for Pvt. Henry Hicks
Image 3: Front Steps into Church Where Only Remnants of Foundation Remain

In the 1850s, a woman and her infant child escaped across the Ohio River to Quaker Bottom, later known as Proctorville, ...
07/16/2026

In the 1850s, a woman and her infant child escaped across the Ohio River to Quaker Bottom, later known as Proctorville, Ohio and were taken inland to the Red Hill Settlement, a rural free Black community located in the hills behind the river settlement. There, they were sheltered by Lewis Brooks and his family.

While the freedom seekers were hidden on the Brooks’ property, a group of slave catchers tracked them to the farm. In a nighttime confrontation, Brooks shot and killed one of the men, preventing their recapture and underscoring the grave risks assumed by Black conductors aiding those seeking freedom. Brooks’ Underground Railroad activity was documented in the 1890s by Rev. Jacob Cummings and Wilbur H. Siebert and his 1896 obituary affirmed that “Lewis Brooks’ home back of Proctorville was a station on ‘the underground railway,’ and many were the fugitive slaves who received assistance there, in the hour of great peril.”

Today, the primary surviving site associated with Brooks and the Red Hill Settlement is Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church. Organized in 1866 as the Red Hill settlement expanded after emancipation, the church counted Brooks and his family among its founders, along with Rev. Thomas Walker Fry. Fry was later succeeded in the pulpit by Brooks’s son-in-law, Addison Haley, himself a freedom seeker who found refuge at Red Hill c.1862. Its membership and leadership, including former conductors and freedom seekers, established Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church as a place of refuge, resistance and Black community building. From the “mountain top” of Red Hill, the freedom seeker could see the Promised Land.

Image 1: Mount Pisgah Baptist Church (2025).Photograph by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.
Image 2: Mount Pisgah Cemetery (2025).Photograph by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.
Image 3: Mount Pisgah Cemetery (2025).Photograph by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.

Built in 1820, the Johnston House served as the Burlington, Ohio, post office from 1840 to 1887. It stands today as the ...
07/14/2026

Built in 1820, the Johnston House served as the Burlington, Ohio, post office from 1840 to 1887. It stands today as the most significant surviving site for interpreting the village’s historic, in*******al Underground Railroad network.

Situated on the northern banks of the Ohio River across from West Virginia (then Virginia), Burlington established a thriving Black community early in its history. In the 1890s, longtime Black resident Gabe N. Johnson (1824–1899) provided crucial testimony to historian Wilbur H. Siebert, detailing a network of residents who aided freedom seekers passing through the village. Johnson identified fellow Black resident Phillip Lynch (c. 1812–1888) and several white allies as key collaborators, including village physician and postmaster Dr. Camillus Hall (1812–1890).

To assist Siebert’s research, Johnson also interviewed Eliza Stewart (1828–?) of Poke Patch, a Black community in the furnace region of Lawrence and Gallia Counties. Stewart described how Black conductors, including her husband, John J. Stewart (1819–1892) and her brother-in-law, Rev. William Stewart (1798–1858), guided freedom seekers from Burlington to Poke Patch by way of Macedonia Hill, a settlement home to Ohio’s oldest Black Baptist church.

Image 1: Johnston House and General Store- Burlington Post Office - South Side - 2025. Photo by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.
Image 2: Johnston House and General Store- Burlington Post Office - South Side - Historic Site Photograph 1890
Image 3: Johnston House and General Store- Burlington Post Office - South Side - Historic Site Photograph 1976

The grave of freedom seeker James Matthews (c. 1810-1886) is located in the Hallowell Village Cemetery, in Hallowell, Ma...
07/09/2026

The grave of freedom seeker James Matthews (c. 1810-1886) is located in the Hallowell Village Cemetery, in Hallowell, Maine. Matthews was enslaved in the Four Hole Swamp Region of South Carolina and self-emancipated in 1837, making his way north by ship to Boston and then to Hallowell, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In 1838, his story was shared publicly through a series of anonymous interviews published in the Advocate of Freedom, a local antislavery newspaper printed in Brunswick, Maine and circulated in Hallowell. These interviews, transcribed by Hallowell resident J. C. Lovejoy, positioned Matthews’ testimony within a broader community committed to antislavery activism and aid to freedom seekers.

When Matthews died in 1886, the Hallowell community paid for his burial and gravestone, marking a collective recognition of his life and struggle for freedom. His grave lies along Monument Avenue within the village cemetery, a public and enduring site of remembrance that reflects the community’s role in supporting freedom seekers and preserving their histories. The Hallowell community has also honored him with placement on their official town mural depicting their local history.

Image 1: James Matthews (1810-1886) headstone
Image 2: Artist Chris Cart's Historic Hallowell Mural in Maine.
Image 3: Close up of James Matthews

Huston’s Corner, located at the southwest corner of Second and Court Streets in Portsmouth, Ohio, is nominated as a comm...
07/07/2026

Huston’s Corner, located at the southwest corner of Second and Court Streets in Portsmouth, Ohio, is nominated as a commemorative site because it marks the 1848 - 1851 residence of James M. Ashley, a documented Underground Railroad conductor during his time in Scioto County. Beginning in the early 1840s, Ashley assisted freedom seekers escaping from Greenup County, Kentucky, across the Ohio River and conducted them to established Underground Railroad stations in Scioto County.

From Ashley's time as a young man in Portsmouth in the 1840s and early 1850s to his later years in Toledo, Ohio, where he became a friend of AME Bishop Benjamin Arnet and was elected to Congress, Ashley remained active in directly assisting freedom seekers. In Congress, Ashley would orchestrate the repeal of the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Today, Ashley is known as the “Forgotten Emancipator” and as Portsmouth, Ohio's greatest abolitionist and most notable Underground Railroad conductor.

On September 16, 2025, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, the Scioto Historical Project at Shawnee State University and the City of Portsmouth erected a historical marker at this location to interpret Ashley’s national leadership role in the abolition of slavery and to recognize Ashley’s direct action on behalf of freedom seekers, whom he helped to freedom while living in the Portsmouth area.

Image 1: Huston's Corner, residence of James M. Ashley, 1848-1851. Photo from 1876.
Image 2: Portrait of James M. Ashley. Library of Congress.

In January 1858, 18-year-old Archy Lee escaped enslavement in Mississippi and sought refuge at Sacramento’s Hackett Hous...
07/02/2026

In January 1858, 18-year-old Archy Lee escaped enslavement in Mississippi and sought refuge at Sacramento’s Hackett House, a Black-owned hotel. His subsequent arrest sparked a landmark legal battle over the Fugitive Slave Act in California, a free state.

California’s Black community, led by the Colored Convention, mobilized a massive advocacy and fundraising network for Lee’s defense. On April 14, 1858, a U.S. Federal Commissioner ruled Lee free.

As the site of Lee’s initial refuge and legal support, the Hackett House stands as a primary example of resistance to enslavement in the West.

Image: Newspaper Clipping with Hackett House Mentioned. Caption - "A Fugitive Slave Case" The Sacramento Bee, January 8, 1858

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