Fulton County had Underground Railroad stations
By Shirley Willard, Fulton County Historian

The Underground Railroads are now called Freedom Trails. Escaped slaves crossed Indiana and Fulton County on their way to freedom in Michigan or Canada. Historians and African-American groups have been researching Underground Railroads (UGRR) and the "stations" or safe houses across Indiana and other northern states. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources – Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology began in 1999 researching Indiana’s Freedom Trails, asking all counties to contribute help in research.
February is Black History Month, which began in 1926 as "Negro History Week," started by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who was born to former slaves. So in honor of Black History Month, I want to share with you the information I sent to Indiana’s Freedom Trails.
Fulton County had several homes near Akron, Rochester and Kewanna that served as safe havens or Underground Railroad stations. The abolitionists and Quakers helped runaway slaves in their fleeing to northern states and Canada by hiding them during daylight hours and transporting them at night on to the next station. The Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 required that escaped slaves be returned to their owners and stated that it was a crime to help a slave escape. After the 1850 Fugitive Slave Laws was passed by Congress, the amount of activity on the UGRR increased, despite the heavy penalties imposed by the law on anyone who helped runaway slaves. It is estimated that some 50,000 slaves made it to freedom through the UGRR from 1840-1860.

The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, published in 1968, has a map showing "Routes Through Indiana and Michigan in 1848." It shows one route through Rochester. It shows two places where the UGRR crossed into Michigan: one between South Bend and Niles, and another north of Fort Wayne and Auburn.
UGRR stations included houses, barns, haymows, straw stacks that were hollowed out, corncribs, woodsheds, secret chambers, and smokehouses. The runaway slaves were hidden in attics, root cellars, basements, closets, and secret rooms. Caves and swamps made great natural hiding places. Unfortunately for today’s historians, not much was written about them. It was a very dangerous undertaking, and sometimes the slaves and the people trying to help them were killed by slave hunters who came to catch the runaways. Only a few Fulton County residents involved with the actual stations wrote anything that has been preserved. However, the old county histories did record the names of some individuals who helped the escaping slaves in their flight from the South to freedom in Michigan or Canada.

I found references to seven different safe houses, or UGRR stations, where escaping slaves were given shelter and then escorted on the next evening to another safe house further north. Akron had three.
1. Dr. Joseph Sippy house in Akron, located on Rochester Street east of the stoplight where parking lot is now, east of Lake City Bank and Akron Floral & Gift Shop. Samuel Essick operated an Underground Railroad station in the stables of his tannery at Gilead in Miami County. About 11 o’clock at night, his son Michael Essick later reported, he and father Samuel led them by a trail in the woods to Akron where they were housed another day by Dr. Sippy, founder of Akron in 1836. I would like to suggest that Akron erect a historical marker for Dr. Sippy in the parking lot, as they plan to turn it into a small park. Be sure to mention the Underground Railroad!
2. John Ball house at Akron, located northwest of Akron near Ball one-room school at 100 N and 1075 E, where David Starner lives now. John’s son, Ancil B. Ball, wrote his memories, published in Home Folks c. 1910: "When I was a boy I used to see one or two Negroes come down from our loft in the evening, to get into a wagon with a white driver and go north toward the Canadian line. Dr. Sippy and my father both kept ‘underground’ stations."
3. Alexander Curtis house, located on the south side of Indiana 14 about a mile west of Akron, a three-story brick farmhouse, pictured in the 1883 Fulton County Historical Atlas. Curtis and his brother Nathaniel came from North Carolina and were Quakers. According to Nathaniel Curtis’ great- granddaughter Frances Curtis Bond, their safe haven was in a concealed room in the dug-out basement of his farm house. Not only slaves but also immigrants who were escaping from their oppressive countries were helped, as they looked for better lives in the USA. The house still stands and is lived in by Margaret and Roma Webb. The house has two fireplaces in the basement but the Webb’s know of no hidden room. Perhaps the UGRR station was the house that existed there before the present house. Henry Barnhart’s History of Fulton County states that Curtis had a double log cabin with large fireplace, later replaced by a commodious house. Either house or both might have served as UGRR stations.

There were four more UGRR stations in Fulton County, which will be my subject tomorrow.

Underground Railroad now called Freedom Trails
By Shirley Willard, Fulton County Historian
Nearly every week I get e-mails about Indiana Freedom Trails, today’s name for the Underground Railroads (UGRR). In 1998 the US Congress decided that the National Park Service should establish the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. They challenged the State Historic Preservations Offices to do statewide research to identify every UGRR site. Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources – Division of Historic Preservation & Archaeology was the only state to take up this challenge because no money was offered to do the work. Jeannie Regan-Dinius is the Special Projects Coordinator, who e-mails me faithfully with news of meetings. Jeannie says they created the Indiana Freedom Trails in 1999. Their office organized volunteers from throughout the state to research this topic. Over the years, this group has developed into its own force so now they have the Indiana Freedom Trails and the DHPA’s UGRR Initiative. They work jointly to do research and to educate Hoosiers about the UGRR.

A few of the UGRR stations are now Indiana State Historic Sites, operated by the DNR-DHPA. Levi Coffin’s house, Fountain City, is known as the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad. Conner Prairie, Fishers, produces a program "Follow the North Star" to give a living history experience to people who walk at night and relive the terror of escaping slavery. Lick Creek, Paola, in the Hoosier National Forest, had a settlement of black people. Speed Cabin, Crawfordsville, is another station on the UGRR.
The Freedom Trails branch out across Indiana, all leading north to freedom, and the number of Indiana’s UGRR stations is unknown but estimated to be in the hundreds.

In my last column I told about three Underground Railroad stations at Akron. There were four other UGRR stations or connections in Fulton County.

1. Jerry Barbour house in Rochester. Nobody seems to know where this house was. There was a black man who had a barber shop - was this the same person who operated the UGRR?
2. Tom and Jane Mogle house near Kewanna. Located on the southwest corner of 400 S and 500 W, this house was on a route of the UGRR that ended in Calvin, Michigan. The Mogles hid slaves in an upstairs room. The door to the room was camouflaged. It had no woodwork and was papered to look like part of the wall. There black escapees were led under the eaves and through a small opening to a chamber over the kitchen. The room could hold six people; the beds were pallets on the floor. When it was time for the guests to move on, the farmers would link together and hide the slaves under hay and take them to the next station, which was somewhere in the Bremen area, according to Mogle descendant, Mildred Tomlinson in Fulton County Historical Society Quarterly in 1974.
3. Sherrard house at Green Oak four miles south of Rochester on Old 31. Henry Sherrard Sr. and wife Opal bought the house and moved there in 1925. The house was torn down in 1997. Sherrard wrote in FCHS Quarterly, 1973, that the leg of the escaped slave’s trip to Green Oak began from a daytime sanctuary in a brick house on the north side of Mexico, Indiana, and the Dunkert Church, another UGRR station. There was only one entrance to Sherarrd’s basement and its door contained a peephole for security against unwanted callers. There also was a hole bored in the living room floor above the basement. It was covered by a rug during the day, but uncovered when owners of the house wanted to communicate with the fugitive slaves. Sherrard had been told that the escaped slaves were taken to Plymouth or Bremen. Their abstract indicates that the house was built between 1842 and 1845 when the farm was owned by Cyrus and Jeremiah Smith, so they were probably the ones who operated the UGRR. Jeremiah died in 1856 and his son Eli bought out his siblings, so Eli might have operated the UGRR too. Sherrard’s daughter, Betty Thousand, recalls that someone told her parents that some slaves died while there and were buried under the barn so that the livestock would hide the graves with hoof prints. The old two-story barn was located southwest of the house and is long gone too.

4. Christopher Campbell, Leiters Ford. Campbell came to Fulton County in 1853. He was known as a "Black Republican" because of his sympathy for the colored people and help with the UGRR through Fulton County. It is not known if he had a safe house or helped others by escorting slaves at night.

When the government passed bad laws, Americans fought against them, first underground, and then openly, as in the Civil War. After the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the war, the Underground Railroad was no longer needed and many of its stations were forgotten. But Indiana’s Freedom Trails is determined that this part of Indiana’s history not be forgotten.