Underground Railroad Free Press
News & Views on the Underground Railroad • Vol. XVIII, no. 100, March 2023
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 advancement of knowledge, the community's highest honors. Underground Railroad Free Press is emailed free of charge around the 15th of odd-numbered months.
In This Issue
A state senator steps in to save a prime Underground Railroad safehouse
In the 1700s, large-scale refugee rescue paralleled the Underground Railroad
A special exhibition helps to relive Black life at Button Farm
||| Fresh Hope for the “Most Endangered Underground Railroad Site”
After years of deterioration to a prized Underground Railroad safehouse caused by a city’s wrongly permitted storm drainage, restoration of the site is now under consideration by Nebraska’s state legislature.
The Mayhew Cabin in Nebraska City, Nebraska, the nation’s westernmost Underground Railroad site, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and has been the subject of articles in Underground Railroad Free Press, most recently in the January, 2023 issue. The cabin was used as a safehouse up through the Civil War and its owners also operated as Underground Railroad conductors. John Brown used the cabin and its tunnels as hideouts before his raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.
The Cabin and its museum are listed in the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The Network refers to the site as possibly the nation’s most endangered Network to Freedom site. Free Press knows of no other Underground Railroad site as threatened as is this one is at present.
After the City of Nebraska City authorized a new housing development to drain its runoff through pipes that were inadequate in size, storms would lead to underground back up that caused the foundation to erode beneath the Mayhew Cabin Museum, its bathrooms to overflow with sewage, and the cabin’s tunnel to flood. Repeated damage made the two buildings unusable and forced the property owner, the Mayhew Cabin Foundation, Inc., to close them. Despite clear proof that the city was at fault as owner of the drainpipes, which it tried to deny, the city government did little to remedy the problems. A lawsuit by the foundation against the city government ensued but was dismissed when the foundation’s attorney failed to perform.
This was the situation at the start of 2023 when state Senator Justin Wayne of Omaha became aware of the problem and introduced Legislature Bill 474, which, if passed, would authorize the State of Nebraska to offer to purchase the cabin and museum from the foundation, repair the two buildings, and upgrade the city’s drainage system. The bill also proposes to renovate historic Fort Robinson and create a Standing Bear Museum. In a turnaround of approach for Nebraska City, its mayor, Brian Bequette, has thrown his support behind the bill.
But something is amiss. Until Free Press asked its opinion of the legislature bill, the Mayhew Foundation was unaware of it because the foundation board had not been included in conversations leading to the bill. As of when this issue of Free Press was published, the property owner—the Mayhew Cabin Foundation, Inc.—had not been consulted. As foundation president Cathleen Van Winkle correctly states, “[The State] and the City of Nebraska City have no control over the running of the museum, nor do they have any ability to make decisions about the future of the property. The Mayhew Cabin is a nonprofit foundation overseen by a board of directors, and only the board of directors can make decisions concerning the museum.”
This unnecessary tug of war continues the unfortunate pattern of the City of Nebraska City’s uncalled-for hostility toward a valid constituent complaint, its unconstructive approach toward a serious problem that it created in the first place, and its affront toward its own National Historic Landmark.
Now with the constructive intercession of Senator Wayne’s initiative, it is time for the State, the City, and the Mayhew Foundation to put aside the past and work together to come to the best solution for the future of the much neglected the Mayhew site. What makes most sense to us is State ownership and perpetual upkeep of the site, and its inclusion into the Nebraska Game and Parks Department. The foundation’s long and faithful stewardship of the Mayhew Cabin and Museum deserve to be explicitly recognized in new signage and displays.
||| An Early Parallel Underground Railroad
Many regard the Underground Railroad as the noblest endeavor in United States history, both in colonial times and after nationhood. The Underground Railroad existed for 280 years—more than a quarter of a millennium—from 1585 when the first enslaved people from Africa arrived in the New World at the Spanish settlement of Saint Augustine, Florida, to the end of the Civil War in 1865. The inception of the Underground Railroad, though it would not have its name until 1842, would have been when an enslaved person first escaped from the Saint Augustine colony and was aided by any other person, most likely a Native American.
The Underground Railroad in English America began in 1619 or soon after this with the first shipment of enslaved Africans to the Jamestown, Virginia, colony when any of these captives escaped and was helped along the way. This kind of assistance occurred more and more frequently through the end of the Civil War when the Underground Railroad ceased to exist.
But in the early 1700s, another kind of North American Underground Railroad sprang up not involving Africans but Europeans, not south-to-north flight but east-west, and not from racial but religious persecution. By 1750, the flow amounted to tens of thousands annually and had established itself as a permanent American marvel that continues officially today. Tremendous in scope and nation-altering impact, the phenomenon never had a name until 1980 when the United States established the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program in the State Department's Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Beginning in 1704, a group of three Swiss humanitarians began planning for what would become a massive transcontinental refugee relcation project that would rescue thousands of European religious and war refugees, transport them to America via a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership between the three Swiss men and the British government, and resettle the refugees to six American colonies that the trio had created specifically to receive them. The first two of the trio’s refugee groups arrived in 1709 and 1710. By 1744, annual Swiss emigration to America had reached 12,000—almost entirely Mennonite religious refugees—and by 1760, 64,800 German-speaking immigrants including Swiss had arrived, with most settling at the trio’s six colonies.
The three were Georg Ritter, Johann Ochs and Francis Michael, all of whom devoted their entire careers to their extraordinarily visionary and successful humanitarian venture. Theirs has been one of the most under-told of American heroic stories. Now, Free Press Publisher Peter Michael’s biography First Explorer been published telling the story of the youngest of the trio, his ancestor Francis Michael, whose role was setting up the refugee colonies. Francis is also the earliest known explorer of inland eastern America including the Appalachians.
Learn more at http://FirstExplorer.us or order the book here.
||| New Tubman Statue Coming to Historic Button Farm
Beginning April 1, the Button Farm Living History Center will be hosting a traveling exhibition of Harriet Tubman: Journey to Freedom, sculptor Wesley Wofford’s recently completed statue. This moving tribute has traveled to major cities across the nation and depicts Tubman as a formidable force on the perilous Underground Railroad. Button farm will host the statue through May 30.
Due to expected popularity of the exhibit, registration is required for daily 10 AM tours. Click here for more information and to pre-register.
Aside from the statue, Button Farm itself is more than worth a visit. Purchased by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in the early 1970s, Button Farm now serves as home of The Menare Foundation, which operates the site. The farm’s Journey to Freedom Experience features self-guided tours, special programming, story-telling, performances, music, and more.
Button Farm is located at 16820 Black Rock Rd, Germantown, Maryland 20874. Call 240.579.5112 or email info@buttonfarm.org.