The 'Liberty line' in Lawrence
Lawrence Journal-World,
Sunday, February 22, 1987
Story by Nancy Smith
AMTRAK trains still make two stops in Lawrence each day, but 120 years ago, another railroad wended its way through the city.
No iron tracks marked its route, but the famous Underground Railroad helped runaway slaves journey to freedom in Canada. They hopscotched between private homes and other hiding places on their way north, aided by people with strong anti-slavery convictions.
Escape to Lawrence was considered as good as freedom, according to one account of those days. Records show Lawrence was part of the best-financed branch of the mysterious transportation system sometimes called the Liberty Line.
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The map above shows underground routes through eastern Kansas.
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It also was one of the stops abolitionist John Brown made on what historian William Siebert described as one Brown's "boldest adventures, one of the boldest indeed in the history of the Underground Railroad."
First organized about 1838 in Philadelphia, the Underground Railroad slowly spread from the East Coast all the way west to Kansas Territory, where it reportedly got established about 1855, mainly to help slaves fleeing Missouri.
HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS on Brown's trip in the winter of 1858-59 are readily available including an account by Brown himself, but overall written records on the railroad's operation are scarce locally.
Steve Jansen, directory of Elizabeth M. Watkins Community Museum, said evidence of the Underground Railroad's operation here is scant partly because it was illegal. It violated the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which called for both fines and imprisonment of people who helped runaway slaves. Slave hunters, who were paid $200 for each returned slave, proved ruthless in their quests.
Those who helped black people escape to freedom put little in writing to incriminate themselves. To succeed, the universal working orders on the Underground were 'silence and no questions asked.'
Also, Jansen said, the term 'Underground Railroad' is taken too literally by many people today. It was not a smoking, whistling iron horse running on real iron rails above or below ground.
"Some people think the railroad here consisted of tunnels under the 600 block of Massachusetts and over the Elgin (Woody) baseball field near the hospital, but that wasn't the case either."
THE RAILROAD was made up of people's homes and outbuildings, Jansen said. The community museum's collection contains some solid documentation on the places and people who hid runaway slaves. Oral history points to a few others.
Along with some information gleaned from local historians and libraries, and the Kansas State Historical Society, a sketchy picture of Lawrence's "U.G.R.R.'s" operation, as it was offten referred to, comes into focus.
The most important local hiding place probably was the big stone Grover barn - today preserved as part of Fire Station No. 4 at 2819 Stone Barn terrace.
A paper on that barn titled "Significance as an Underground Railroad Depot" by Craig Crosswhite is in Watkins' collection, and information from local historian Katie Armitage reveals some of the building's abolition-era secrets.
Crosswhite wrote that the abolitionist sprit permeated Lawrence from the earliest days of it founding in the summer of 1854. "The New England Emigrant Aid Society specifically saw its purpose as establishing a bastion of ant-slavery sentiment near the border of pro-slavery state Missouri."
JOEL GROVER, a New Yorker, came to Lawrence in September 1854 with the second party sponsored by the New England Emigrand Aid society out of Massachusetts.
"It is rare," Crosswhite wrote, "to find personal accounts of participation in the underground railroad in Kansas in the 1850s...(but) there is a rich oral tradition still alive that states that the barn that Joel Grover built in 1858 was used as such a station.
The barn served primarily as a "last stop" locally, he said. "Fugitives, who were often hidden in various persons' homes in town, could be brought to Grover's when the time was near to send a group on to Topeka or Valley Falls without anyone observing the activity.
Crosswhite uncovered two oral history accounts of such activity. One was taken in the 1890s by Zu Adams of the state historical society from Elizabeth Abbott, wife of Major James A. Abbott, a well-known free-state leader of the 1850s.
The other was from Mrs. S. B. Prentiss whose father aided fugitives. Mrs. Prentiss' story was published by the Kansas City Star in 1929 a s part of a series celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Kansas Territorial Act.
MRS. ABBOTT told how two teen-age boys stayed at their Lawrence home, and how the youngest, 14, determined to go outdoors after several days of hiding in the house. "It seemed pitiful to see their desire for liberty," she said.
Perhaps because of the risky excursion outdoors, both boys were taken that night to "the next stopping place," which Mrs. Abbott said she thought was Joel Grover's barn.
Mrs. Prentiss' story centered on John Brown's famous, and last, foray in Kansas with about a dozen runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad to Canada. She recalled the group stayed at her family's cabin one night and then went on to "Mr. Grover's stone barn." where they hid for several more days.
Mrs. Prentiss was the great-aunt of Anne Hemphill, Rt.2, and raised Mrs. Hemphill's mother and aunt. Mrs. Hemphill said last week that her great-grandfather, Amasa Soule, came in the same Emigrant Aid party as Grover, and also was reported to have been active in the Underground Railroad. He hid runaway slaves at or near his cabin, which sat along a branch of Coal Creek in the Vinland area.
She said her grandfather, William Lloyd Garrison Soule, also was said to have been involved.
WATKINS' COLLECTION also contains a July 1859 photo of Dr. John Doy, a surgeon and "general manager" of the Lawrence "Underground Railroad depot," and the rescue party that freed him from the St. Joseph Jail. He had been imprisoned for about six months for allegedly abducting slaves in Missouri.
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John Doy, seated, is shown with his rescue group. The others in the party are(left to right) James B. Abbott, Joshua A. Pike, Jacob Senix, Joseph Gardner, Thomas Simmons, S.J. Willis, John E. Stewart, Charles Doy(son), Silas Soule and George Hay.
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The original Doy photo is on file at the state historical society, and among the rescuers pictured, is the Rev. John E. Stewart who ran a cattle operation south of Lawrence and was known as the "general traffic manager" of the local U.G.R.R.
Maj. James B. Abbott, another of Doy's rescuers, in an article in the state historical society's collection, described Lawrence as "the best advertised anti-slavery town in the world." And said Doy was falsely accused when he was jailed.
On that occasion, according to Abbott's account, 13 free blacks from Lawrence feared they would be abducted illegally by slave hunters and decided to move further north for safety. They were aided by Doy and his son.
All had their freedom papers, Abbott wrote, except for two, Wilson Hays and Charles Smith, who had worked as cooks at the Eldridge House "and were known to be free men."
THE RECORD shows Doy was "arrested" by armed border , including several from Douglas County, and taken with his son and the blacks to Weston, Mo., where the Doys were tried. The son was released, but the doctor ended up in jail at St. Joseph. No mention was made of what happended to the black people.
Doy himself is said to have recorded this episode in a little book, "The Narrative of John Doy of Lawrence, Kansas," published in New York City in 1860.
Richard Cordley, another early settler just out of Andover Theological Seminary in Iowa, also recorded his memories of the Underground Railroad in a book, titled "Pioneer Days In Kansas," which is on file at Watkins. Cordley was minister at the Plymouth Church and is the man for whom Cordley School is named.
In the chapter titled 'Lizzie and the Underground Railroad,' Cordley tells that in the summer of 1859, a family in his church named Monteith asked him to help them hide a slave named Lizzie.
"In my college days I had discussed the 'Fugitive Slave Law' in Lyceum and elsewhere," Cordley wrote. "I had denounced it as the outrage of outrages... I had declared that if a poor wanderer ever came to my house, I should take him in and never ask whether he were a slave or not.
"IT IS EASY to be brave a thousand miles away. But now I must face the question at short range...Theory and practice affect one very differently in a case like this. But I felt there was only one thing to do. So we told our friend to bring his charge to our house, and we would care for her as best we could.
Lizzie stayed with the Cordleys until autumn when she went back to the Monteiths.
"Our means did not allow a very elaborate table, but she knew how to make the most of everything,' Cordley recalled. "A simple but delicious cake which she made was known in our family and among our friends for years as 'Lizzie Cake.'
"We did not wonder that her master set a high price on her, or that he was anxious to recover his 'property.' She did not complain of cruel treatment from her owner, but she had a great horror of going back."
In late autumn, Cordley said, Monteith returned with Lizzie, saying her master had found her hiding place and the U.S. marshal and a posse were coming to "take her at all hazards."
The Cordleys hid her for the rest of that day and into the evening. Monteith had promised a wagon would come at 10 p.m. to carry her to "a place of safety," and the Cordleys spent a watchful evening until at 12:30 a.m., when the wagon arrived.
"WE NEVER KNEW where Lizzie's rescuers went," Cordley wrote, "and did not inquire. It is often just as well not to know too much."
Although this account was written in 1903, more than 30 years after the incident, Cordley still is considered a good source on the subject, Mrs. Armitage said, because he came to Lawrence in 1857. She describes him as Lawrence's first historian.
Good documentation also is available on another local family's involvement in helping escaping slaves. They were the Josiah Millers, originally from South Carolina and their homestead was at 1111 E. 19th. The Dennis Dailey family lives there now, and the home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Dailey, a Kansas University professor, said his information comes mostly from a relative of the Miller family who lives in Iowa and from reading the Miller family papers in the Kansas Collection at KU's Spencer Research Library.
D.C. Smith of Des Moines, whose mother was the late Vanera Miller Smith of Lawrence, recalled in a telephone interview being told as a small child how his family helped runaway slaves. He added he may have some old letters sent between family members in Kansas and South Carolina during the time.
DAILEY SAID that slaves reportedly were hidden in the smokehouse, the foundation of which remains on his property.
Watkins' collection includes a letter from Texas to the Daileys regarding three doctoral candidates who were documenting locations of "way stations" along the Underground Railroad in 1984.
Mrs. Armitage said there were probably a number of other Lawrence homes where people hid slaves. She added oral history even points to the use of some caves as hiding places but nothing written has ever been found to document that.
She also said "a lot of people fantasize a lot of houses in old West Lawrence were used, but I'm dubious." She said that is not the oldest part of town and many of the homes there had not been built at the time the Underground Railroad was in operation.
She said that some day, she hopes to do an indepth study of the Underground Railroad in Lawrence, a project no one has tackled yet.
If an 1859 letter written by J. Bowles of Lawrence to F.B. Sanbourne in concord, Mass., is and indication, such a project would be quite an undertaking. The letter says, in part, "To give you an idea of what has been done by the people of this place in U.G.R.R., I'll make a statement of the number of fugitives who have found assistance here.
"In the first four years, 1855 to 1859, I am personally known to the fact of 300 fugitives having passed through and received assistance from the abolitionists here at Lawrence."
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