Underground Railroad Free Press
News and views on the Underground Railroad • Vol. XX, no. 114, July 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. Subscribe or reach us at http://urrfreepress.com/contact.html.
In This Issue
Nominate Now: Annual Free Press Prizes Coming Up
Get Recognized in Free Press Lynx
One Family’s Story: Decades of Cave Refuge for Freedom Seekers
An Important Collection Finds a Home
Midwest Underground Railroad on a Roll
2025 Free Press Prizes Announced in September Issue
The prizes are the most esteemed honor bestowed in the international Underground Railroad community. The three annual awards recognize the most outstanding contributions to contemporary Underground Railroad work in leadership, preservation, and advancement of knowledge. The prizes promote awareness and appreciation of contemporary Underground Railroad work to the general public, elected and other officials, governments, and key decision-makers by publicizing prizes, winners, and what they accomplished. Prize eligibility is extended to individual and organizational nominees from any nation. Click one of the following to nominate.
Knowledge
Preservation
Leadership
Register Your Organization
Free Press Lynx is the central international registry of contemporary organizations and programs involved with the Underground Railroad. Lynx lists over 160 institutions large and small across the United States, Canada and elsewhere that are involved in various aspects of the contemporary Underground Railroad. To add your organization, program or Underground Railroad site to Lynx, email us here with name, address and contact information of the organization or program.
Lynx does not include places of enslavement, capture, arrest, trial, lynching or other places that were opposed to the Underground Railroad. The National Park Service's Network to Freedom program maintains a listing that includes such.
A Major Addition to Accounts of Gaining Freedom
One day recently while at lunch with my friend Jo Butler, she showed the table a picture of a recently completed painting depicting the hope of liberation from slavery of her ancestors, brothers Isham and Blaney Butler. The painting is of three children looking out at a promising sunrise from the cave where they had been living lifelong. After the Civil War, the brothers finally left the cave at ages 26 and 37.
Ms. Butler then told us the brothers’ remarkable life stories. The sons, whose enslaved mother had fled north on the Underground Railroad, were being raised by their grandfather, a carpenter who lived and worked in the North Carolina cave. Following the rule of the time, since the mother was a slave, so were the children. However, the mother’s enslaver was unaware that the children existed, which meant they dare not leave the cave for fear of capture. Isham and Blaney Butler had escaped from slavery but not on the Underground Railroad and were not yet free.
In 1984, the Butler family began deeply researching its ancestry, uncovering documents, gravesites, and existing handed-down stories. Since then, a remarkably full family history has emerged. Over the last few years, Jo Butler’s brother, Maceo “Ty” Butler, has compiled the work into an important written family history that belongs in any Underground Railroad compendium. In this, he was aided by his daughter, Dr. Serena Butler-Johnson of the psychology faculty at the University of the District of Columbia, and by cousins Tera and MacArthur Culbreth.
Mr. Butler took his production a step further by commissioning renowned painter Margaret Huddy to paint the work shown here. A nationally-known, award-winning artist, her work is in public and private collections worldwide, including the Supreme Court of the United States and The White House. Visit https://www.huddy.com for a look.
We thank Mr. Butler who has generously provided his family history to Free Press subscribers. Click here to read.
Jo Butler is a retired United Nations officer and attorney who now spends her time entrancing her lunch mates and aiding an Ethiopian village where she once worked.
Much of What We Know Is from Individual Community Researchers
Belva King, a local historian in Frederick County, Maryland where Underground Railroad Free Press is headquartered, is regarded as the region’s foremost safe-keeper of African Americana. Now 80, Ms. King has spent a lifetime recording oral histories, researching family genealogies, collecting artifacts, producing videos, and for many years publishing Belva’s Museum Artifacts newsletter. The newsletter has served as much of the glue of the region’s African American and broader community.
Shortly after Free Press’s founding is 2006, Ms. King came calling, quickly resulting in a close professional relationship and personal friendship. Any number of times, Free Press has published material provided by her. Just as often, Belva’s Museum Artifacts has featured Underground Railroad articles based on material provided by us. For nearly twenty years, this synergy has benefitted the readers of both publications.
For nearly that long, Ms. King has sought a responsible repository for her extensive collection and works. Free Press assisted in this search to no avail. We were delighted—and relieved—as the search recently succeeded when the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society agreed to be the permanent custodian of Ms. King’s work, digitize it, and make it publicly available, which it has done. https://catoctinfurnace.org/african-american-history-in-frederick-md-belvas-museum-artifacts/
Catoctin Furnace is a historic foundry located in Cunningham Falls State Park, Maryland. Operated as a blast furnace by 1776, the foundry provided cannonballs in the Revolutionary War. In 1973, the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society was formed to preserve the rich history of this early industrial village. https://catoctinfurnace.org
On July 5, 2025, The Frederick News-Post ran an article on the acquisition of the Belva King inventory by the Society. Read the article here, reprinted with our thanks and lightly edited for length. The article is from the newspaper’s Frederick Do-Gooder series, a monthly column highlighting people who are doing impressive work in the community.
The Midwest Rises in Discoveries and Programs
This summer, Illinois and Michigan are offering hikes and newly established Underground Railroad trails.
• In Illinois, Kate Williams-McWorter of the University of Illinois reports that the Illinois State Assembly passed a bill establishing a Freedom Trails Commission and that 429 suspected or confirmed Underground Railroad sites in the state have now been identified. This puts Illinois among the top ranks of states with identified or suspected safe-houses, routes, or other places.
As Professor Williams-McWorter tells Free Press, “In 2023 the state of Illinois formed a temporary Underground Railroad Task Force. At the same time, seven local community/history activists formed a Freedom Corridor along Interstate 72, east and west of the New Philadelphia National Historic Site. New Philadelphia was the first town platted and registered by a Black man. Founders Frank and Lucy McWorter freed 16 members of their family and created this abolitionist town on the prairie in 1836. Congress voted it into the National Park Service in 2022.”
• Also in Illinois, the always-busy Midwest Underground Railroad Network offers its Freedom Trail bus tour on Saturday, July 26. The tour will be partly by bus, partly by moderate hike. Participants are reminded to dress appropriately for the weather. Leading the outing on the history of the Underground Railroad in the region are Professor Larry McClellan, foremost authority on the Underground Railroad in northern Illinois, and the Network’s Tom Shepherd.
The tour will depart from Sandridge Nature Center, 15891 Paxton Avenue, South Holland, and last from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Pre-registration for this free event is required as seating is limited. Register here.
• In Michigan, the Underground Railroad Society of Cass County is sponsoring Village of Vandalia Underground Railroad Days on the weekend of July 12-13, just around the corner. This issue of Free Press is being released early to make subscribers aware of the event in time. See below for particulars or visit https://www.urscc.org
. Scroll down from there.
