Underground Railroad Free Press
News & Views on the Underground Railroad • Vol. XVIIII, no. 105, January 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. Readership is about 26,000.
In This Issue
Michigan May Have Had the First Integrated School
A Well-hidden Escape Route Gets Remembered
The View from Maysville, Kentucky
Join 170 other operating Underground Railroad Programs on Free Press Lynx
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One of Earliest Integrated Schools Is Being Preserved
By Jennifer Ray
Chair, Board of Directors, Friends of Brownsville School
www.brownsvilleshool.org
Free Press is grateful to Cathy LaPointe, Treasurer of the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County, Michigan, for referring us to this article. Reprinted with permission.
“Brownsville #1” as it is known locally stands unassumingly at 20559 Osborn Street, Cassopolis, Michigan. Greek Revival in style and constructed of wood, Brownsville #1 is typical of thousands of America’s mid-nineteenth century one-room schools. While researchers continue to seek Brownsville #1’s exact date of construction, evidence exists to support about 1840. The Report of the Superintendent for Public Instructionshows that District School #1 in Calvin Township reported attendance and financial statistics for the year 1841. And 1850 census records show both Black and White students attending school there. By 1860, five public one-room schools existed in Calvin Township where Brownsville #1 is located. Many citations in the literature attest to these schools being integrated. Though unremarkable physically, Brownsville #1 has a meaningful story to tell. The first of the five to open, Brownsville #1 is certainly one of the earliest and longest integrated public one-room schools in Michigan—perhaps the country.
Cass County’s Calvin, Penn, and Porter Townships (known as Young’s Prairie). Over 1,500 freedom seekers were assisted by Quaker, Black, and other stationmasters, and conductors here. Many freedom seekers journeyed on to Canada due to the Fugitive Slave Act. However, some settled on Young’s Prairie and seized opportunities to work, participate in the community, and educate their children. Word spread of this safe haven in southwest Michigan. In the mid 1840s – 1850s, free Black families began moving north and settling Young's Prairie, mostly Calvin Township. Cass County’s 1860 plat map shows over one hundred Black-owned properties. Free Black people established churches and thriving farms, became respected members of the community, assisted freedom seekers, and sent their children to school. legacy of the Underground Railroad operating in Cass County in the 1830s, 1850s, Brownsville #1 embodies the story of this.
This assemblage of Quakers, freedom seekers, and free Black people became neighbors who cooperated with, assisted, and respected each other. Integration of Brownsville #1 and several other public one-room schools of Young’s Prairie happened quite naturally, a direct consequence of the Underground Railroad’s presence. To honor and celebrate this legacy, the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County (URSCC) a non-profit, purchased Brownsville School in November 2022. The school had been part of the Wooden family farm since the 1960s and for a short time was used to store grain. The band around the building shored it up against the weight of the grain. Odd looking indeed, the band has helped keep the building intact over the many years it has sat empty. Longtime residents of the area, Wooden family members were both students and teachers at Brownsville #1.
The family is grateful that this humble building’s new owners appreciate its rich and meaningful history. To enable Brownsville #1 to stand proudly and continue to impart wisdom, URSCC plans to repair and preserve the many remaining original elements of the building. Initial preservation efforts will focus on the foundation, roof, floors, and windows. And, yes—the band will be removed. URSCC hopes to complete these preservation projects by mid 2024. At that time, Brownsville #1 will open to the public. Under strong and sturdy hand-hewn beams, Brownsville #1’s new “students” will view photos of Brownsville #1 and other integrated public one-room schools of Cass County. Documents chronicling Brownsville’s history will be available to read. Currently, URSCC is in the process of making a documentary about the Underground Railroad and its legacy in Cass County. This film will include interviews with former Brownsville students and former students at the other integrated schools of Young’s Prairie. It will debut at Brownsville #1 during Underground Railroad Days, July 2024.
If you would like to receive preservation updates via e-mail, become a friend of Friends of Brownsville School (FBS), a committee of URSCC, at www.brownsvilleschool.org. Friends of Brownsville School is dedicated to assisting URSCC with research and preservation. For more information about Underground Railroad Society of Cass County, Michigan please visit www.urscc.org.
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Catoctin Trail, An Underground Railroad Mountain Route
Peter H. Michael, 2008
This article is adapted from and entry in the author’s book Guide to Freedom, Rediscovering the Underground Railroad in One United States County (2008).
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Together, a shallow river crossing, a hidden maroon community of freedom finders, a chain of safe-houses strung along a mountaintop trail, and a secure destination made for a safer-than-usual escape route for freedom seekers crossing the Potomac River into Frederick County, Maryland. This partially documented route runs along the crest of Catoctin Mountain, a long Appalachian ridge that spans the 45-mile neck of western Maryland and extends into Virginia to the south and Pennsylvania to the north. Heading west, Catoctin Mountain is the first mountain encountered in the Appalachian Range in Maryland. The mountain summits at 1,903 feet near the Camp David presidential retreat in Frederick County.
As he later stated in his autobiography, freedom seeker Charles Bentley in 1841 crossed the Potomac River at Point of Rocks in Frederick County and “went up alongside Catoctin Mountain.”
Freedom seeker John Thompson, who later recounted his escape in his autobiography, said of his 1856 passage across the Potomac and through Frederick County, "At night a free colored man took us through unfrequented paths, to escape the vigilance of the overseer, until he said he could go no further, as, if we were taken and he found in our company, it would ruin him." Thompson, too, crossed the Potomac at Point of Rocks at the foot of Catoctin Mountain.
The first documented Underground Railroad site encountered after crossing the Potomac into Frederick County is the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal which runs closely parallel to the river for the canal’s 185-mile length. Rather than crossing the canal and proceeding north, some walked the Canal's tow path west into the deeper Appalachians before turning north in less populated country and crossing into Pennsylvania, a free state. James Curry, a freedom seeker from Person County, North Carolina, wrote of his walking the Canal's tow path through Frederick County in his flight to freedom in 1843. Other freedom seekers were apprehended at Ferry Hill along the canal.
Crossing at Point of Rocks where the river runs wide and shallow, then crossing the canal, led Bentley, Thompson and others—or they could have been guided—to Hall Town, an African-American maroon community hidden in deep woods high up the eastern slope of Catoctin Mountain two miles from the river. Hall Town hung on until 1912 when the last of its people came down from its deep backwoods perch to the verdant Monocacy Valley below. A few old stone foundations and a chimney remain if you know where to find them. The author has visited the hard-to-find Hall Town site. Local resident Charles Crum, Sr., who has lived his entire life between Hall Town and Mountville, says that the trail between the two still existed, though faintly, when he hiked it as a teen in the 1960s.
Given the secretiveness of Hall Town, it is likely that freedom seekers reaching it had been given directions after crossing the Potomac or while still in Virginia, suggesting the presence of organized assistance in the area.
Three miles further along the mountain, the trail came to Mountville, a long-established African American hamlet, which is still thriving. Continuing north along the rising crest of Catoctin Mountain, freedom seekers encountered a string of locations identified as having been active in aiding freedom seekers. Hayes Spring, Bussard Flat, Markley Fields, and the Coates Cabin, are all located near Garfield and Wolfsville, Maryland.
In 2001, Mark Lewis of Garfield, Frederick County, wrote of the account told to him by Charles E. Misner, an African-American who lived all his life near Garfield. Mr. Misner was born in 1862 and died in 1948 at 86. Mr. Misner told Mr. Lewis that Mr. Misner’s family aided freedom seekers from the early 1800s until the end of the Civil War, and that "the slaves would gather in Markley Fields in the Catoctin Mountains at a place known as Bussard Flat . . . before making their last dash to freedom over the Mason-Dixon Line. This place was called 'the fountain' or Hays Spring." These places are about eight miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line and Pennsylvania.
The 35-mile trek from the Potomac River to Pennsylvania along the Catoctin Trail would have taken a fast walker two days, a moderate walker, three. The terrain is rugged, and the route is gently uphill all the way. The last few miles of the route cover today’s Appalachian Trail. The reward was the freedom seeker's entering a free state, finding relatively more safety for the first time, and tasting freedom itself.
Once in Pennsylvania and leaving the Catoctin trail, another sixteen miles along Pennsylvania's southeast corridor Underground Railroad route took freedom seekers to the home near Littlestown of prominent Quaker Underground Railroad safe-house operators William (1788-1865) and Phebe (1790-1873) Wright. The Wrights are said to have assisted as many as an estimated thousand freedom seekers from 1819 through the end of the Civil War. These included Dr. J.W.C. Pennington, who credits the Wrights with teaching him to read and write during his six-month refuge with them, assistance that enabled him to become a Presbyterian pastor and author of several books, most notably The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849), his narrative of escape from slavery in Maryland.
Today, one can get a close idea of the ruggedness and beauty that freedom seekers experienced walking the Catoctin Trail, which is no longer continuous, by hiking the Maryland section of the Appalachian Trail along the ridgeline of South Mountain five miles to the west. In fact, the two trails merge and become one just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Because of easier terrain, the broad Monocacy Plain would have seen more Underground Railroad traffic through Frederick County than did the Catoctin Trail but the latter carried its share.
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The Underground Railroad in Ripley, Ohio
By Lee Riedel
This article first appeared in the January 1, 2024, issue of the Blue and Gray Dispatch. Reprinted here with thanks. The author is executive director of the Blue and Gray Education Society whose mission is preserving Civil War history. We thank Delores Walter for suggesting that Free Press reprint the article.
Ripley
Traveling along the Ohio River, you will discover many old and nondescript towns. One is Ripley, Ohio. In the mid-19th century, it was the portal of freedom for hundreds of fugitive slaves seeking freedom.
Today, Ripley is a treasure trove of history that is detailed in a splendid auto tour book by Dewey Scott, titled Ripley, Ohio, Underground Railroad Sites. The 50-page, locally published book is comb-bound and filled with the essence of more than twenty-five sites tied to the antebellum period when enslaved individuals crossed the Ohio River. In the book, the author highlights the Parker House which, today, houses a wonderful museum.
John P. Parker House
John P. Parker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in the year 1827. His mother was Black, and she was a slave. His father was white. John was sold at age eight, separated from his mother; he never saw her again. Parker was moved to Mobile, Alabama, to be purchased by a doctor. The doctor had two sons who taught John to read by borrowing books from their father’s library. John also learned a trade, as a teenager, that of a foundry worker.
Using the skills he acquired in the foundry, he worked and was permitted to keep some of his earnings. With these saved earnings, he was able to purchase his freedom in the year 1845.
John left Mobile, Alabama, and ended up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1848. He was told of two girls that lived in Maysville, Kentucky, who were slaves and wanted to be free. John went to Maysville, rescued those girls, and took them to Ripley, Ohio, where he witnessed the workings of the Underground Railroad in Ripley firsthand. He knew at this point this was his calling. He later married Miranda Bolden, bought property, and settled in this house in Ripley, Ohio. He became an active member of the abolitionist’s movement and Underground Railroad. He not only was he a conductor, but he was also an extractor. He would cross over into Kentucky and bring slaves back to Ohio. If caught while performing this work in Kentucky, he would have been hanged or resold into slavery. John Parker was never caught, nor did he ever lose a fugitive.
Eliza Harris and Ripley
A biracial woman hearing her child was to be sold and separated from the rest of the family. Desperately she took her two-year-old and made an escape from her Dover, Kentucky, home. Thinking the Ohio River was still frozen, she made her way to the shore opposite Ripley, Ohio. The ice was breaking up and moving. Eliza was being pursued; she took a piece of wood (fence rail), and with a length of rope tied it to her waist and started across the ice. Legend has it, she fell in three times. On the north bank, a man named Chauncey Shaw watched the ordeal develop and helped pull Eliza and her child out of the freezing river. He stated, “Anyone that wants their freedom that bad, deserves it.” Chauncey Shaw was reported to be a slave catcher, ruffian, and town drunk. … The story was told to Harriett Beecher Stowe on her visit to her husband in Ripley. She included it in her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The event took place in 1838, and the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852.
Your trip to Ripley can easily be teamed with a trip to Maysville, where BGES has designed a walking tour that includes Underground Railroad sites on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. That walking tour can be found in The Civil War: A Traveler's Guide (National Geographic 2016.
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Lynx Awaits You
Free Press Lynx is the central registry of active Underground Railroad organizations, programs, and sites open to the public. Lynx was founded by Underground Railroad Free Press in 2006 to give the international Underground Railroad community formal organization and a nexus. If you haven’t already, add your organization to the Lynx roster of more than 160 other Underground Railroad organizations and get your name in front of the public. Visit http://urrfreepress.com/lynx.html and use the email link on that page.