The Underground Railroad, by which perhaps, on average, a thousand people a year escaped their enslavement in the United States, is famous, though often misunderstood. It existed from the colonial era through the abolition of slavery in the Constitution in 1865. Famous abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and William Wells Brown were former slaves who escaped by various means; all were both beneficiaries and operators of the Underground Railroad. Some fugitive slaves were assisted by white people so committed to antislavery that they were willing to break federal and state laws, South and North, and to expose themselves to vigilante violence, South and North.

The Underground Railroad was a national, if illicit, human network, whose heroes and moral drama have become an important part of American memory, though that memory often remains superficial. This may be the case especially in rural America, where relatively few public history sites are available. This project, a work-in-progress, and on-going public history site, seeks to correct that.

The Underground Railroad definitely "ran" through Western Illinois, though, as elsewhere, where, when, how, and involving whom often remain hidden in plain sight. The four well-known abolitionists noted above didn't escape slavery via the Western Illinois Underground Railroad (WIURR), but other individuals did.

Hard evidence about the WIUGRR is hard to come by, and not only because it was an illegal activity, both in Illinois and the United States. Many Illinoisans were hostile to the plight of fugitive slaves. On the other hand, since the Civil War, many Western Illinoisans have passed on stories about the involvement of their ancestors, ancestors' neighbors, in the WIUGRR, and about the usage of certain places as WUGGRR routes and "stations."

This project presents "items" about the WIUGRR in various thematic "exhibits." "Items" include documentable people, places, routes, incidents, as well as myths and misconceptions - stories told about the WIUGRR that do not hold up to verification, yet continue to circulate in memory. Thus the project has two purposes, one to document parts of the WIUGRR for interested scholars, students, and tourists, and the other to engage in a conversation about why myths circulate- whose memory circulates those myths, and why? And who gets forgotten?

Recently Added Items

A trap door

tunnicliff trap door.png

This image shows a trap door inside a Macomb home built in 1854-1855 by George Parkinson, and subsequently owned by Damon Tunnicliff, a prominent…

WIUGRR Map

IMG_2198.jpg

A map of the sites of the Underground Railroad in Western Illinois, documentable based on records surviving as of 2005

Beecher Chapel marker

IMG_2210.jpg

Presbyterian and Congregational settlers in Galesburg formed the town's Old First Church in 1837. By the 1850s, their unity fractured over…