Terre Haute — In a day when skin color differentiated the masters from the slaves, many people took a chance by putting their lives in the hands of strangers, traveling hundreds of miles north through the Wabash Valley in search of freedom.
More information about Vigo County’s role in that system comes to light each day, but because of the extreme secrecy of the Underground Railroad, it’s unsure if its entire, storied history ever will be revealed.
What is known
The Underground Railroad had various routes that ran north from the slave states to Canada or south to Mexico. Because of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, it wasn’t enough for slaves to flee to free states in the north because the act enabled them to be hunted and, when found, brought back to their southern masters.
Also, the act stipulated that anyone caught helping slaves could be fined up to $1,000 and imprisoned for six months for each fugitive, and fugitive slaves were denied jury trials.
Overall, between 40,000 and 100,000 people used the railroad to escape. According to a 1976 article in The Spectator, about 2,000 came through Indiana each year between 1830 and 1850.
“This system was backed by plenty of finance and very brilliant men,” according to a 1932 Indianapolis Sunday Star article. “The agents posed as men of various professions, such as barbers, peddlers, and surveyors … Their success was great and as an explanation for the number of slaves that were aided to freedom [it was determined] there must be an underground railway.”
Thus how the system got its name.
Three routes that ran through Indiana to Michigan and eventually Canada were guided by the North Star: the most frequented and famous is on the east side, which runs through Fountain City, where Levi Coffin lived at what is know as the “Grand Central Station” of the Underground Railroad; the central route that crossed the Ohio River; and the riskiest route, on the west side of the state along the Wabash River.
Runaway slaves usually traveled at night alone or in small groups in false bottoms of hay wagons with the help of Quakers, American Indians or former slaves. Depending on the route taken, their journey northward may have taken slaves through waterways, back roads, swamps, forests, mountains and fields.
Staying concealed during the day, many hid in barns, cellars, boxes and wagons. They also hid in manmade tunnels, false cupboards or hidden basement rooms in churches and homes until nightfall offered less-risky passage.
Because the Wabash Valley route was so dangerous, Morton A. Lewis, a teacher of 41 years at various black schools in Terre Haute, wrote that anyone who made it as far as Terre Haute “could consider themselves 9/10 free.”
Stops along the way — Steele home
There are at least five official and unofficial “stations” to the Underground Railroad in Vigo County.
People arriving in Terre Haute usually started the Wabash route at Evansville and followed the river north to Vincennes. The Vincennes Trail, or the only road from Vincennes to Terre Haute, went through the Steele property, according to an old letter from Nelle Fillbook Steele, owner and resident of the Steele home, to a field worker on the Federal Writers’ Projects, Eva Melson.
It was purchased from a Jones family in the early 1920s, according to a 1995 Tribune-Star article.
The home, which was two miles south of Terre Haute near what would become U.S. 41 and one mile west, was built in the early 1800s. It was the second brick house in Honey Creek Township and the third brick house built in Vigo County, Steele wrote.
The two-story home was built against a hill with a short, secret stairway leading to rooms where slaves hid, stated the Sunday Star article. Because of the stairway, the outside measurement of a certain room didn’t match the inside, Lewis wrote, allowing for hidden rooms.
A fire destroyed the home in 1939, according to a 1994 Tribune-Star article.
Next stop — Allen Chapel
Heading up the Wabash River from the Steele home, escaped slaves would stop at Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church at what is now First and Crawford streets.
The church, considered a major stop on the railroad with a tunnel underneath it leading to the river, was built in 1839. It was founded by William Paul Quinn as the first organized congregation and only church for blacks in Terre Haute.
Quinn was born in Calcutta, India, in 1788. Although raised in the Hindu religion, he was converted to Christianity by Quaker missionaries. He became licensed to preach in 1812, according to Marlene Lu’s “Walkin’ the Wabash: An Exploration into the Underground Railroad in West Central Indiana.”
By 1844, Quinn had started 47 churches with 2,000 members in the Wabash Valley basin. He also organized 50 Sunday schools, 40 temperance societies and 17 camp meetings.
Terre Haute’s own A.M.E. Church was home in 1869 to the first subscription schools for blacks in the Midwest. It was started by the Rev. Hiram Rhodes Revels, who began to pastor at the church in 1850. Parents who sent their children to the church’s school paid 25 cents a week.
Revels admitted to helping slaves through the railroad in a 1974 Negro History Bulletin article.
“I sedulously refrained from doing anything that would incite slaves to run away from their masters,” he said. “It being understood that my object was to preach the gospel to them and improve their moral and spiritual condition. But, when in free states, I always assisted the fugitive to make [an] escape.”
He later became the first black elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, taking the seat belonging to the former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, stated an Allen Chapel publication.
A bigger church was built in 1870 at the current location of Third and Crawford streets.
During the worst tornado in Vigo County history, lightning struck the church and it burned in 1913. Before a new church could be built, services were conducted in a tent across the street from the church in a lot owned by Charles T. Hyte, according to a 1976 Spectator article.
Fire-damaged pews were salvaged and can be seen in the current church.
Next stop — Preston house
What was thought to be one of Terre Haute’s most haunted places — the Preston house — is an unofficial stop along the Underground Railroad at Poplar and 131/2 streets.
George Dewees built the house in 1832. According to a 1992 Wabash Valley Magazine article, stories say Dewees killed his wife and bricked her up in the fireplace before their divorce could be finalized. No one ever took it apart to find any truth to the rumors, but Vigo County Historian Mike McCormick said he was able disprove that story.
“She survived him and inherited from him,” McCormick said. “ … She was living three or four years after his death, maybe much longer.”
Dewees’ will was probated in Louisiana and McCormick obtained those papers, he said.
Another story said the house had tunnels leading from the basement, and a cave-in killed a group of fugitive slaves traveling through them. Spirits of the slaves can be heard singing hymns, according to “Walkin’ the Wabash.”
Mrs. Richard VanAllen and her husband acquired the property from the last member of the Preston family to reside in the home, McCormick said.
VanAllen said she didn’t remember any tunnels, and a Preston descendent had told her she didn’t think it was used as a station.
However, there were two fireplaces on the east side of the house with four feet between the fireplace and the outside wall, VanAllen said.
“There could have been room for a hiding place there, but we don’t know that was what it was used for,” she said. “ … As far as I know it was not used for [an Underground Railroad station, but], that doesn’t mean it wasn’t.”
Next stop — Anderson home/Markle Mill
Heading to the east side of the county, another unofficial stop, the Anderson home, sat on Haythorne Avenue, one mile west of Hunt Street, also known as Stop Ten Road, in Lost Creek.
Lewis wrote that George Anderson’s grandson, Paul, said his grandfather transported fugitives in a two-horse wagon to the next stop, Markle Mill.
Although there hasn’t been enough conclusive evidence to prove the mill’s role in the railroad and make it eligible for federal restoration funds, many believe it was the last stop before fleeing slaves headed into Parke County.
It is at Park Avenue and Mill Dam Road in Otter Creek Township.
Abraham Markle constructed the mill in 1817 on part of the 750 acres given to him from the government for his service in the War of 1812. He also added a distillery, blacksmith shop and sawmill before he died in 1826, according to “Walkin’ the Wabash.”
Frederick Markle, Abraham’s son, took over operations, expanding the mill and developing a stagecoach line that ran between Terre Haute and Lafayette.
A Terre Haute organization, the “Home Guards,” led by Frederick Markle, hosted nightly secret meetings at the mill. Men from a 25-mile radius attended, according to “Walkin’ the Wabash,” but for what purpose it is not known.
While it was very dangerous for a non-member to approach the site during the meetings, it’s doubtful the group played a direct role in the Underground Railroad. It did, however, make it safer for others, “Walkin’ the Wabash” stated.
In 1848 Frederick Markle and his wife, Sarah, built a new brick house on the same site of the original “simple frame” home across the street from the mill. The base of the house had four-foot thick walls, which tapered to one foot at ground level. An office for the mill was added to the house as well as 12 strategically placed fireplaces. A tunnel allegedly connected the house and dam, Lu wrote in “Walkin’ the Wabash.”
An old section of the mill later was used to store Union forces’ ammunition during the Civil War.
On Sept. 20, 1938, only the stone foundation, cement dam and loading ramp were left after a fire destroyed everything else at the mill.
Mark Catin, assistant director of Indiana State University’s Anthropology Laboratory, which studied the mill, said in a 2004 Tribune-Star article the original dam was wood and didn’t contain a tunnel.
George Hamilton IV of Jacksonville, Fla., lived there from 1934 to 1950 while his father was the caretaker for the land, according to the 2004 article.
He said a probable area for the Underground Railroad was a small cave about 11/2 miles from what is now Markle Mill Park entrance. He didn’t remember any other tunnels except what was used to pass water through the mills.
His sister, Lena Poole, said her father found some utensils and pots in the cave, the article reported.
Last stop?
“The location of most Underground Railroad stations, of the Civil War period, in this count, was a secret and will probably remain so,” wrote Lewis. “Personal knowledge of the local Underground Railroad stations is very difficult to find, after a lapse of one hundred years.”
Relating to what Lewis wrote is the story of one more possible stop, the former home of Indiana State University’s then-President William A. Jones. That site is a couple miles northeast of Otter Creek School and north of Shrine Hill and the Sony DADC factory.
The grandparents of Andrew Conner, executive director of Downtown Terre Haute Inc., bought the house in the 1950s. His aunt and uncle live there now, he said.
Conner said his family has no documented proof that the house was a stop along the Underground Railroad, but it was built during the right era and it’s on the path between Markle Mill and Parke County.
“There’s just one wall that seems to be extra thick between the kitchen and the living room,” Conner said. “My guess is that it may have been a fireplace originally and maybe it was sealed up later because they didn’t need it, or maybe it was sealed up to create a hiding place, or maybe both.”
It’s been covered up by the brick walls and years of wall paper and paint, he said.
“When you look at the wall in profile, it’s really thick,” Conner said.
He said the wall is about three feet thick, and that doesn’t make sense for an interior wall.
“To look at it now, it just looks like a regular wall of an old house,” he said. “ … It’s a hopeful piece of evidence we have to cling to because we’d like to think it was a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
McCormick said stories like this aren’t uncommon because of the secrecy behind the railroad.
“Unless it’s handed down from generation to generation, the story about the Underground Railroad is a secret story,” he said.
Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812)231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.
Black History Month
February 11, 2007
Black History Month: Valley’s role on Underground Railroad still being revealed
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