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Picture courtesy of Cayuga Museum
(Click picture to enlarge)


Harriet Tubman
"The Conductor"
By Carl A. Pierce
(click picture to enlarge)

 
 

THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD HISTORIC TRAIL
 HON. PETER H. KOSTMAYER

 (Extension of Remarks – January 24, 1990)

[Page: E27]

HON. PETER H. KOSTMAYER
in the House of Representatives 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1990 

Mr. KOSTMAYER.  Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation to establish the Underground Railroad Historic Trail.  The Underground Railroad was a secret avenue from slavery to freedom in the Northern States and Canada for somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 slaves from approximately 1815 through the 1860’s.  Slaves were hidden in stables, attics, and secret passages in homes across the country.  Many of these sites are still standing today.  This legislation would help preserve these way stations for our descendants.  Preceding the establishment of the trail would be a study and evaluation of the locations, their historic significance, architectural integrity, and physical condition. 

I would also like to take the opportunity to insert portions of an article by Lacy McCrary entitled ‘Liberty Train, Lingering Tracks’ that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 16. 

The Underground Railroad [was] a train that had no tracks, no stations, no timetables.  Instead, it was a network of paths through the woods and fields, river crossings, boats and ships and wagons.  Its stations were churches, homes, farmhouses, barns and cellars of white and black people who opposed slavery and risked their lives in many cases to help the slaves escape their Southern masters….  

U.S. Rep. Peter H. Kostmayer (D.,Pa.) wants the federal government to formally identify those perilous paths to freedom.  Kostmayer says he will introduce a bill to establish the Underground ‘Railroad Historic Trail’ as a ‘fitting and appropriate national commemoration to those who fled to freedom on the railroad and to those who aided slaves seeking their freedom.’ 

‘It is a part of our history which reflects well on the country, but which has an unhappier side,’ Kostmayer said in a recent interview.  ‘We need to remember we were a country in which slavery existed.  And at the same time remember there were people who thought it was wrong and were willing to risk their lives to change it,’ Kostmayer said. 

He said some of the stations had been individually designated, ‘but I don’t think any comprehensive effort has been made to recognize as many stations as possible.’  

Kostmayer’s bill would direct the Secretary of the Interior to designate a route as the Underground Railroad Historic Trail, install suitable signs and markers and provide maps, brochures and other informational devices to assist the public.  

Mount Gilead A.M.E. Church, a neat, two-story fieldstone building, stands in a grove of trees atop Buckingham Mountain in Buckingham Township, Bucks County.  The church, originally built of logs in 1835, was the last main stop on the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania.  From the church, fugitive slaves were transported across the Delaware River into New Jersey.  It is marked as a ‘historic place’ by the Bucks County Conservancy, but there is nothing to indicate it was a part of the road to freedom * * *. 

No one knows how many slaves traveled the Underground Railroad to freedom.  Charles L. Blockson, a prominent historian at Temple University, says it could have been as few as 30,000 or as many as 100,000 who fled roughly between 1830 and 1860, in what he called ‘an epic of American heroism.’ 

Later Blockson learned about people such as Harriet Tubman, called Moses to other blacks, who was born a slave in Maryland and fled north to freedom in 1849, to the Philadelphia area, where she joined and inspired the Underground Railroad.  At least 19 times, Tubman returned south to conduct more than 300 fugitives, including her own family, northward.  He learned about William Still, of whom it was said that 19 of every 20 fugitives passing through Philadelphia stopped at his home on Lombard Street in Society Hill. 

Blockson said he was elated at the idea of a historic trail. 

‘I think it would help foster better interracial understanding and give the present generation a sense of the past and the tribulations of people of all races and creeds who came together for a just cause,’ said Blockson, now curator of the Afro-American Collection named after him at Temple. 

‘In my 19 years of research on the subject I have discovered we are losing quite a few of these historic sites because of urban renewal,’ Blockson said. 

‘This church is like many throughout the United States which harbored fugitives slaves escaping from the south through Pennsylvania to Canada and freedom,’ Kostmayer said. 

Blockson in an earlier interview said Pennsylvania was the key state in the Underground Railroad and that there was overwhelming evidence that free blacks of the state and its black churches were the primary cause of the success of its clandestine operations. 

He said Quakers won an early and richly deserved reputation as friends to fugitive slaves.  However, in a 1984 National Geographic magazine article, he wrote that ‘the fellowship of the Underground Railroad was truly ecumenical, including Roman Catholics, Jews and Protestants as well as freethinkers * * *. 

Blockson said runaway slaves entering Philadelphia—as many as 9,000 before 1860—were forwarded to points along the Reading and Pennsylvania Railroads and put on trains to New York state and New England. 

Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church hid hundreds of fugitive slaves, according to Blockson, and stands on the oldest piece of ground continuously owned by blacks in the nation. 

Clarence Still, 61, a great-great-grandnephew of William Still, says his family still talks about their famous ancestor and his exploits in forwarding hundreds of slaves to freedom. 

He said that Lawnside, N.J. was an all-black community of about 1,000 homes in 1840 and that it was easy to hide runaways there. 

Mariline Wilkins, whose great-great aunt was Harriet Tubman, said she believed Tubman rescued more slaves than history books give her credit for. 

‘The history books say she freed about 300, but she told my mother it was more than that.  She told my mother she traveled at night and on weekends.  She was supposed to be an ignorant little black woman, but she had God-given sense,’ said Wilkins, who lives in North Philadelphia. 

‘I think the bill is worthwhile,’ she said.  ‘Many people think the Underground Railroad was just a myth.  It was not a myth.’

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