Underground Railroad Free Press
News and views on the Underground Railroad • Vol. XX, no. 111, January 2025
Published bimonthly since 2006, we bring together organizations and people interested in the historical and the contemporary Underground Railroad. Free Press is the home of Lynx, the central registry of contemporary Underground Railroad organizations and the Free Press prizes awarded annually for leadership, preservation, and the advancement of knowledge, the community's highest honors. Underground Railroad Free Press is emailed free of charge around the 15th of odd-numbered months. Reach us at http://urrfreepress.com/contact.html.
An Anniversary
With this issue, Underground Railroad Free Press begins its twentieth year of publication. We have enjoyed every minute of it. Our publisher loves putting out Free Press but he is getting old and slow and now spends way too much time reading his piles of books and single-handedly supporting the local medical profession. It is getting close to the time to pass the torch so let us know your ideas about what would be a good transition for Free Press and who might be good for the job. Get in touch at info@urrfreepress.com for information on Free Press or questions.
In This Issue
Official recognition by Illinois
A name change
Two book signings
Grey hair rules
A Free Press Prize winner goes digital
List of Official Statewide Programs Grows by One
Efforts in cataloguing Underground Railroad safehouses, routes, and people are the key to filling out the history of the noble enterprise and putting it on the map for the first time. Much of the cataloguing has been done at the local level on the scale of region, county, city or town but less by states. Examples at the county level are Cass County, Michigan; Frederick County, Maryland; and the best, Chautauqua County, New York. Indiana, Maryland and a few other states have either a formal government program devoted to the Underground Railroad or some form of state recognition. Now Illinois is on track. After nearly a year of work, a proposal by a taskforce of state legislators and historians to create an Illinois Freedom Trails Commission will be submitted to the Illinois legislature to explore the paths taken to freedom and to memorialize the stops along Illinois routes.
More from Illinois
Chicago's Little Calumet Underground Railroad Project will be changing its name to the Midwest Underground Railroad Network as of February 21. The organization's email address will remain as tonfarmugrr@gmail.com. The Midwest Underground Railroad Network invites the public to meet its members that evening at a Black history celebration hosted at the First Reformed Church, 15924 South Park Avenue, Holland, Illinois.
Underground Railroad Book Signing . . .
On February 20, Heritage Frederick, the historical society of Frederick County, Maryland, will host a book signing by author Scott Shane who will speak on his book Flee North: A Forgotten Hero and the Fight for Freedom in Slavery's Borderland, which tells a true story of the Underground Railroad and the domestic slave trade in the Chesapeake Bay region. Shane will also deliver Heritage Frederick's annual Parsons Newman lecture that evening. Flee North was named one of the 10 best books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly and one of its top 20 by Amazon. Scott Shane was a reporter for 15 years at The New York Times, where he was twice a member of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes. Register at https://frederickhistory.org/event/parsons-newman-lecture/.
. . . and Another
On Saturday, February 8, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, will present author Andrew Diemer, an associate professor of history at Towson University, in a lecture and book-signing of his biography, Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad. Diemer’s compelling narrative provides an in-depth look into the life of William Still, a New Jersey-born abolitionist who worked for the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, assisted nearly 1,000 people to freedom, and wrote one of the definitive works on the Underground Railroad. Register at Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad with Andrew K. Diemer | National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Grey Hair Rules
In Free Press's latest reader survey, we saw the following age distribution of respondents.
In the survey report published in Free Press, we encouraged our subscribers and our other readers to reach out to young people in the effort to introduce them to the Underground Railroad. This was "no brainer" advice. Of course, our counsel remains the same: tell your children and grandchildren about the Underground Railroad.
But we unintentionally left out of our report recognition of the ripest market for fostering Underground Railroad interest, the middle-aged and elderly market segments which you see heavily represented in the chart above. The demonstrated interest of those who are 60+ puts their age cohort in the best position to spread interest in the Underground Railroad.
They are already doing it. One question in the same survey asked, "How many others do you notify when Free Press issues become available, or provide Free Press to, or send the link to the latest issue to?" Nearly 60 percent of subscribers forward Free Press or notifications of new issues to others. Those doing so notify an average of 7.5 nonsubscribers, reaching 21,700 additional readers beyond the Free Press subscriber base. Two respondents reported forwarding each issue to 1,000 or more others. We thank you!
So, we now make an additional appeal to you. Please continue your very effective sharing and consider expanding it. The Underground Railroad is the bedrock American moral example which all Americans need to understand, especially in 2025. Free Press thanks the many readers for those they have added as new Free Press subscribers who we have welcomed and given life-time subscriptions.
If there are more friends or others you would like to receive Underground Railroad Free Press, please provide their email addresses to begin receiving Free Press. We do not share email addresses or charge for Free Press and Substack, our publication vendor, doesn't either.
Free Press Prize Winner's New Blog
In 2008, writer Tom Calarco became the first winner of the annual Free Press Hortense Simmons Memorial Prize for the Advancement of Knowledge in the international Underground Railroad Community. Calarco was awarded his prize for his groundbreaking books revealing the Underground Railroad from New York City to the Adirondacks. Since then, he and his work have been mentioned several times in Free Press.
Now Calarco has now launched an Underground Railroad website that we think you would enjoy. Check it out at https://undergroundrailroadconductor.com/ugrr-books/. Here is a recent sample of Tom's writing from his blog.
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Life is full of surprises, serendipitous occurrences that change your life, and sometimes even the course of history.
None more fitting was one day in 1850 when William Still was at his desk in the business office of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Twenty-eight years old, he was described as a “tall, neat, gentlemanly [man with] a smiling face.”
Both of his parents had been slaves. His mother escaped with his two of his older sisters before he was born. She left behind his brothers, Levin and Peter, who were eight and six, younger and less able to make the journey. More than forty years had passed but the brothers had not been forgotten. William would later write: “I shall never forget hearing my mother speak of the night when she fled. She went to the bed where her two boys were sleeping—kissed them—consigned them into the hands of God and took her departure for the land of liberty.”
His father, Levin Steel, had purchased his freedom and changed the family surname to Still in an effort to conceal his family from slave catchers.
As a boy William worked on his father’s farm, He left home at the age of 20 and worked as a farm hand before moving to Philadelphia in 1844 where he worked as a handyman. In 1847, he learned that they needed a janitor at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society office and he got the job. Before long he was given greater responsibilities that put him behind a desk as the face of the society.
It seemed like just another day when two black gentlemen came into the office while he was at work, writing some correspondence. One of them said that he was asked by Mrs. Bias, the wife of Dr. Bias, a leading member of the city’s Underground Railroad, to bring the other man there. She thought he might be able to help the man find his family members.
The men sat down in front of William’s desk and the other man looked at him with an expression of concern. He spoke softly and slowly. He said he was staying at Mrs. Bias’ rooming house and that he was looking for his family. He and his brother, Levin, had been kidnapped as boys. His mother’s name was Sydney and his father Levin, and they said he was born near the Delaware River, along which Philadelphia rested.
“What is your name?” William asked.
“Peter,” he said.
William stopped the man before he could speak further. He told the other man that he could leave and that he would see to it that Peter got back to the rooming house. Peter was troubled and apprehensive. He wanted to leave, too. He wasn’t sure he could trust William. But the other man his urged him to stay, assuring him that he was safe there.
William looked wide-eyed at Peter. He asked him to continue his story.
He and his brother were sold to a slaveholder in Kentucky, whose plantation neighbored that of Senator Henry Clay, he continued. Later they were purchased by another slaveholder and sent to Alabama. Some years afterward, Levin passed from an illness and after decades of toil as a slave for a number of masters, Peter was purchased by a benevolent slaveholder, who allowed him to earn money to pay for his freedom. However, he had a wife and three children still in slavery in Alabama.
Peter paused and there was silence. William got up from his chair and crossed his arms. Peter certainly looked about the right age. It had been 43 years since he had been kidnapped. Finally, William looked him in the eye and said the most shocking words Peter had ever heard.
“Suppose I should tell you that I am your brother?”
Peter was dubious. Nevertheless, after much discussion, it seemed that they indeed were brothers. Yet, there was an even more wonderful revelation, Peter’s mother was actually still alive!
As William walked back with Peter to the boarding house, he asked Peter to stay with him and his family, and Mrs. Bias urged him to go. Peter was reluctant. He still was skeptical that these people were his relations, thinking that they would take advantage of him in this place where he was a total stranger. Nevertheless, what followed in the next days were a series of tearful reunions. After meeting with his three sisters, one of whom had been born after his mother fled and other younger brother, who was a doctor, he was taken to the New Jersey farm where his seventy-five year-old mother lived. One can only imagine what they felt on first seeing each other.
In spite of it all, Peter’s life was not complete. He could not be truly happy until his family was free. He thought that perhaps they could find someone to rescue them. Carrying this hope with him, he returned to Alabama under the guise that he was still a slave. He stopped first in Cincinnati where his former master’s brother was able to write him a pass, declaring that he was his slave and had permission to freely travel and work in the South. This was necessary because slaves who had been emancipated were not permitted to live there. He stayed for a couple of months, working odd jobs as he did in the past, and meeting secretly with his family, disclosing his plan.
Before he left, he asked his wife Vina to give him an article of clothing that he could give to their rescuers as a sign that Peter had sent them. She gave him a gingham cape. Peter also revealed the plan to William Handy, a minister and slave on the plantation of the Bernard McKiernan plantation, his family’s master, who agreed to help.
When Peter returned to Philadelphia, his story of life as a slave and finding his long lost family, “The Kidnapped and the Ransomed,” was published in the Pennsylvania Freeman. To his surprise, a man contacted the antislavery office and said he wanted to help Peter bring his family out of slavery. His only request was to be paid for his expenses. His name was Seth Concklin.
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Calarco intends to follow up this with the story of Conklin's mission.
Wow! Surprise, surprise! Thank you, Peter.
By the way, I've created an ebook which contains the three sections of the story that include the tragic mission, and the conclusion of how Peter was reunited his wife and children, and how it led William Still to write his book.