Reprinted by permission of Bill Matthews, editor and publisher of Back Home In Kentucky, where this story first appeared in the January/February 2004 issue, and also the authors' permission. Dr. Myers and Dr. Gillaspie are husband and wife.
That Kentucky would be a state filled with stations and conductors and secret crossings for the Underground Railroad should not be surprising. After all, most of the state's northern border looked out over the free states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, over four hundred miles of river frontage bordering territory where there were no men, women and children bound by the chains of slavery.
Often purposely shrouded in mystery, the Underground Railroad, not an actual railroad at all, was a series of secret stops where fugitive slaves could find assistance toward reaching either Canada, where they could not be pursued because the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 did not have jurisdiction there, or to one of the free states of the North where a runaway slave could hide, many times under the protection of supporters in the community who were staunch and active Abolitionists.
Legend has it that the Underground Railroad received its name from a frustrated master in northern Kentucky who, upon losing several slaves, remarked that there must "be an underground railroad to Cincinnati" the way his slaves so easily escaped. The fugitive slaves ran away for a variety of reasons. Aby Jones of Madison County, Kentucky concluded that "slavery is, I believe, the most abominable system that ever men were subjected to. Although my treatment was not severe, I never could form a good opinion of slavery. I believe it is ruinous to the mind of man, in that it keeps the key of knowledge from him: it is stupefying to man."
Alfred T. Jones left his master because he learned that his master was going to back out of a deal to allow Jones to buy his own freedom. When he learned that his master was going to sell him to another man, Jones says, "I wrote myself a pass-it was not spelled correctly, but nobody supposed that a slave could write at all." And he was on his way.
What fugitive slaves all had in common, however, was the simple right to be free. As Jones says, Canada seemed to be his destination: "I wished then to emigrate to some place where I could be really a free man... I came here, and am only sorry that I did not come here years before I did."
At night, runaways followed the "sign of the drinking gourd," their name for the Big Dipper. With the North Star serving as a guide, they found places to rest and hide, often called "safe houses." These included houses and barns with secret doors and passages or caves where fugitive slaves could get food, shelter, directions, and even disguises, all in their quest to elude the many bounty hunters who made it their business to track runaways and return them to their masters bound in tight-fitting chains.
J. Blaine Hudson in Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland lists secret signals like passwords, birdcalls, a series of certain kinds of knocks on the door, lamps and candles in a certain window, ribbons tied around trees, broken branches and other secret signs, and handshakes, all as ways that the runaway could tell that the occupants of the home would help them in their escape.
Many times these Good Samaritans who were defying the law would be white, but freed African Americans also had much to do with providing runaways with needed assistance, a fact not too often acknowledged by historians. Certain churches in Kentucky also assisted runaways. Some Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and many Quakers were actively involved in the process of civil disobedience by coming to the aid of these frightened and unsure seekers of freedom. Some from the North, particularly in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, were more involved than others in rescuing slaves even after they themselves had been successful in finding freedom.
Most notable of these former runaways who had found freedom in Canada was Kentuckian Josiah Henson, who was the model for Uncle Tom in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and who continued to help Kentucky slaves escape even after he had been successful.
Hudson estimates that before 1850 in Kentucky, 373 slaves ran away from their masters, while after 1850, when the rush really took hold, 383 made their way to freedom, for a total of 756 fugitive slaves, a seemingly small figure until owners calculated the losses in dollars and cents in "property" and loss of work.
Meade County, down river from Louisville some fifty miles, serves as a case in point to look at the way the Underground Railroad operated in the rural areas of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. According to historian James E. Copeland, by 1860, Meade County was 22.66% black, a little above the state's average of 21% for the same time. Meade County also mirrored the state in range of opinions on slavery with some of the county, particularly in the Doe Run area, being strongly anti-slavery, with residents receiving much of their enthusiasm and devotion from their churches.
In other parts of the county in places where extensive agriculture was possible, pro-slavery farmers made great use of slaves to grow hemp and tobacco, the money crops that grew statewide. Although there were a number of African American volunteers in the county, Meade County was one of the lowest counties in the state in the category of percentage of white Union volunteers, sending, as of December 31, 1864, a mere 229, much lower than the surrounding counties. Breckinridge County, for example, sent 733 white Union volunteers and Hardin County had 496, figures more in line with state averages.
Part of the Meade County's lower figure was due to differences in population, but there was obvious Southern sentiment in the county, as evidenced by Meade County's sending a representative to the Russellville Convention that ultimately led to Kentucky's admission as a state in the Confederate States of America with a star on the Stars and Bars.
Ivan McDougale in Slavery in Kentucky puts the average number of slaves owned by Kentucky slaveholders in 1850 at about five. The average, of course, does not discount that some in Meade County could have owned fewer than the average, while others would have owned more.
The Woolfolk plantation between Brandenburg and Battletown featured a large enough slave quarters to accommodate the family of several slaves. Other farms in the county also had places especially set aside for the slaves, many of which were torn down after emancipation.
It is interesting to note that the slave quarters on the Woolfolk plantation was just a few steps away from a beautiful panoramic view of southern Indiana. In fact, slaves could stand in their yard and see freedom's land lying out just a few hundred yards before them.
Some slaves in Kentucky could read and write, although they were the exception rather than the rule. Hudson refers, for example, to a slave from Meade County named Martin who ran away from the county in 1848, who was described in handbills as a slave who "reads and writes tolerably well."
Although not known to the general public now, Meade County featured at least three important places associated with the Underground Railroad. These spots were like many throughout northern Kentucky whose stories have just begun to be told in the last few years.
The first two crossing points in the county are attested to by numerous historians who have written about Kentucky's role in the Underground Railroad, including Hudson and William M. Cockrum's History of the Underground Railroad and Larry Gara's The Liberty Line, two extensive and well-respected treatments of the national Underground Railroad.
The first crossing in the county of the Ohio River was located just upstream from the Paradise Bottom area in lower Meade County, opposite Indian Creek in southern Harrison County, Indiana. Because this was a time well before dams were in place to help regulate the depth of the precarious river, possibly the river was particularly shallow at this point, But perhaps more importantly, a January 11, 1978 article in the Corydon Democrat records that the Moyar home in New Amsterdam, Indiana, now torn down, was described as a "safe house" located about a mile or two upstream from the creek. Mrs. Beulah Winders of New Amsterdam remembered a story told to her about one young runaway girl who opened her blouse to show where the mistress of the slave girl had "put a boiling hot egg against her breast as punishment for some misdeed."
The crossing was also probably significant because slaves could follow the meandering Indian Creek to Corydon, Indiana where they could find willing people who would guide them on their way to freedom. Runaways trekked eventually into Wayne County, or to Brownstown, Indiana, where, Cockrum says, "they had an innumerable hosts of friends among the Quakers." From there, the runaways would be transported to the western portion of Ohio where they would cross Lake Erie into Canada.
Cockrum lists this Indian Creek crossing as one of the "two or three places in front of Louisville" where "probably more negroes crossed the Ohio River...than any place else from the mouth of the Wabash to Cincinnati." Hudson says that because of where Meade County is located, with miles of frontage into Harrison County, Indiana, the crossing "served as an alternate slave escape route for African Americans fleeing from the Bluegrass region and from far western Kentucky," a route that fed ultimately into main routes which met other branches from Louisville and Madison, Indiana.
Hudson records that a white man from Louisville named Charles Crossgrove reported in 1856 that his slave, Monroe, aged 28, whom Crossgrove had purchased from W.H. Richardson from near Brandenburg, jumped from the steamboat Ella into the river about fifteen miles below and swam to the Indiana shore, indicating that the fugitive slave probably knew about this crossing point.
Corydon, Hudson explains, was an interesting stop on the Underground Railroad. It contained many white settlers that vehemently objected to having a freed black family plopped down in their midst, but at the same time this was after all free territory where a black man could actually buy land and settle down. Local historian Earl O. Saulman of Corydon lists Ambrose Parker and his brother George as two ex-slaves from Meade County who settled in the city.
According to Saulman, there were two "safe houses" in the city itself: one in a barn on Mulberry Street, and another in the basement of a barn located next to where the Post Office is now located.
These antebellum times were quite curious. Some people in the southern portions of Illinois and Indiana mirrored distinct Southern sympathies, since many of their ancestors had moved north from Kentucky often in search of valid deeds to their land. Yet mixed into the population, too, were people who had strong feelings against slavery, settlers who had moved to the region from upper New England and upstate New York. Abraham Lincoln was often accused of giving different speeches in southern Illinois than he did in northern Illinois when he was running for senator against the Little Giant, Stephen A. Douglas, the eventual winner in the contest. The charge was that the Great Emancipator toned down his anti-slavery rhetoric the farther south he got in the state.
Although local lore has it that there was a crossing where the Ohio River bends at Rock Haven in upper Meade County, the second attested crossing was at Brandenburg, where a ferry ran to the Indiana side. Here, a runaway could stow away on the ferry and soon be on the way to the North. This escape route also fed into the traffic of slaves heading for Corydon, and then onto Brownstown.
One particular series of incidents illustrates the problems that surrounded almost every escape of a slave from Kentucky, or from other places in the Deep South. Many runaways crossed Kentucky on their way north since the Commonwealth is located directly north of much of the lower South.
On September 25, 1857, as Hudson tells the story, a slave named Charles ran away from his owner, Henry A. Ditto from Brandenburg. It was reported that Charles got some help from David Bell, who was the owner and operator of the Brandenburg ferry, along with his son, Charlie. Also assisting was Oswald Wright, a "free person of color," who lived in Corydon. Supposedly, the Bell family were known to be "Abolitionists" from the New Albany, Indiana area, while Wright had moved to Corydon from Maryland.
As the story goes, the Bells delivered Charles to Wright, who then took him on to Brownstown, Indiana, and on his way to freedom. Mr. Ditto believed that the Bells had something to do with Charles's escape, especially since a C.E. Johnson met Wright in Brownstown and admitted that he had assisted Charles in his escape. Johnson, of course, quickly told Ditto about his meeting with Wright.
That was too much for Ditto. He soon organized a posse, crossed the river, and kidnapped the two Bells and Wright, and threw them into the Brandenburg jail charging them with "assisting slaves to escape" and "furnishing a forged pass " that aided in the escape. After their trial had been postponed time after time, probably to prolong the suffering, the Bells and Wright were still in jail in 1858, when Bells' two other sons, Horace and John, decided they were going to get their father and brother out of jail one way or another.
Saulman picks up the story from there: In May of 1858, with most of Brandenburg at a picnic, including the jailor, Horace and John Bell forced the Brandenburg jail guard to open the cell doors and free the Bell father and their brother Charlie. The four headed for a skiff and scurried as quickly as possible out into the Ohio, but soon they were discovered, and gunfire filled the air.
Horace, however, decided he was going to insure their escape. While the other three were rowing as fast as possible, Horace "stood up in the boat with a revolver in each hand and by keeping up a rapid fire he held the pursuers at bay until the party reached the Indiana shore."
Oswald Wright, however, was left to languish in the Meade County jail. He was later convicted of aiding the escape of a slave and spent five years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary. Charles, the escaped slave, eventually, with the Bells' aid, made it to Canada and ultimately to California. Almost twenty-four years later, The Louisville Commercial, a newspaper of the age, had it that Horace Bell was captured later and served time in the Meade County jail before returning eventually to California, too.
Yet another county connection with the Underground Railroad may not be as exciting, but it is equally important, especially for a fugitive slave looking for shelter. According to Seymour family tradition and Reverend Kenneth Lile in his history of the Louisville Conference of the United Methodist Church, Meade County had its own station on the Underground Railroad, a cavern off the Flaherty road called Negro Basin Cave. Lucille Seymour and her son, Bud, recount stories passed down in the family who described this cave as having two large rooms with a small stream running through it, which provided runaways with a source of water.
The cave's entrance is described as "unimpressive" with a diameter of about five feet, making it just inconspicuous enough for those searching for runaways. The owners of the land then, the Pleasant family, were devoted Methodists in the Brandenburg congregation, and were reported to be active also in the Underground Railroad by supplying runaways their last stop on their flight to freedom. If this were a stop on the railroad, it would certainly fit the patterns of places where slave could hide with little fear of detection. It was away from the traffic of suspecting slave owners, while it was also a location convenient enough to those ministering to the fugitive slaves. And, of course, it would be close enough to Brandenburg to make flight into southern Indiana possible under the cover of darkness.
Unfortunately, the conductors and passengers of the Underground Railroad left few written records. It would, of course, have been foolish for conductors to keep detailed accounts that could be used against them in a court, because technically they were breaking the law by harboring and aiding fugitive slaves. But the tales told in the oral tradition are as exciting and, at times, as heart-warming as any novel, because, most of all, they are stories about real people who desired to be free so intently that they and their helpers risked their lives in pursuit of that freedom.
Author's note: Our thanks to Lucille and Bud Seymour, Faye Shaffer, Earl O. Saulman, and Jackie Carpenter from the Corydon Democrat for all their help and inspiration for this article.