An estimated 800 to 1,500 freedom seekers who escaped slavery passed through Northwest Indiana on their way to Canada.
A new project aims to unearth their stories.
The Chicago to Detroit Freedom Trail initiative is looking to chronicle the journeys of freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad in Northwest Indiana. It’s seeking volunteer researchers to help flesh out more details about known Underground Railroad sites and the people who passed through them on the way to freedom.
Tom Shepherd and Larry McClellan, community activists who also are behind the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project, are looking to retrace the steps of freedom seekers for the Chicago to Detroit Freedom Trail. It will have interpretative signage and digital resources explaining the history. They’re also seeking to flesh out stories in Bronzeville, the South Side, the Chicago south suburbs, Elkhart, Goshen and South Bend.
Much of the existing history focuses on the people who operated Underground Railroad stops. But the hope is to flip that to focus more on the freedom seekers themselves, said McClellan, who wrote the book “Onward to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Illinois” and “The Underground Railroad South of Chicago.”
He estimates about 6,000 to 10,000 freedom seekers, many from Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, made their way to Illinois between the 1830s and 1861.
“There are two great stories: people who were enslaved went north to the northern states to seize their freedom. And people responded to them in farms and towns by being helpful, giving them food and places to stay.”
McClellan said it’s also time to retire language like fugitive slaves.
“That’s the unjust laws and languages of the 19th century,” he said. “The fundamental human intention is that they were going to be free. The Underground Railroad was the responding networking, not the initiating network. But a lot of history was written by old white men like me and they told the stories of old white men like them who were abolitionists. We need to expand that set of stories to have a diverse set of stories.”
Initial research uncovered about 60 places in Northeast Illinois and 19 places in Northwest Indiana where freedom seekers found assistance on the Underground Railroad.
“These journeys happened right in our backyard,” he said. “We need to uncover more of these stories.”
Caroline Quarlls for instance was enslaved in Missouri and decided at 16 years old she was going to be a free person so she ran away. She made her way to Wisconsin, before passing through Chicago on route to Detroit so she could cross into Canada. She had light pale skin with freckles that let her pass as white but knew if she were caught she would be kidnapped and enslaved again.
“She had a remarkable journey,” he said. “One of the great honors of my life has been getting to know her descendants. We know she stayed in Crete overnight and in Westville. She went right through Valparaiso and right through the Middle of Merrillville. We have all kinds of stories like this we can find. We’ve only begun to do the digging.”
Freedom seekers who made their way through Chicago to Detroit geographically all had to pass through Northwest Indiana. They often took the Sauk Trail, an indigenous pathway, or the Chicago to Detroit highway that’s now known as the Dunes Highway.
Initial research has unearthed some Underground Railroad spots like Hohman’s Bridge in Hammond, Gibson’s Tavern in what’s now Gary, the Doctor Henry Palmer Home in Merrillville, the Aberdeen Inn in Valparaiso and the Daniel Low Estate in Michigan City. There also are potential sites that need more investigation like the Alpha Wreck in Odgen Dunes that is rumored to have ferried freedom seekers across Lake Michigan.
A Quaker community of abolitionists and a community of free African Americans by LaPorte also helped freedom seekers.
“We need to revisit sites in a different way to look at who traveled through this region, who was traveling on foot and in wagons along ancient Native American trails,” he said. “It used to take six hours by stagecoach to go from Michigan City to Chicago or six days if the weather was bad. They rode on the beach as it had the finest hard surface before there was road. Stagecoaches didn’t cross rivers even as sluggish as the Calumet River. They followed it to Lake Michigan where it formed a sandbar out into the lake. They would go across the sandbar and back onto the beach. They went full speed and never told the passengers they were going into the lake so you had women fainting and passengers fearing they had gone completely crazy.”
The project is seeking volunteers who will gather more details and stories about known Underground Railroad sites in the Calumet Region.
“We need to move from a general level of understanding to developing these stories,” he said. “It deserves some real work to develop guidebooks and maps We know the outline. We know the trail. We know the national mythology. For the next several years, we need to figure out how freedom seekers move through our backyard. Any way you could be of help would be terrific. Every bit we can uncover helps.”
For more information or to volunteer, email tomshepherd2001@yahoo.com or find the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project on Facebook.