Browse Items (23 total)

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 Illinois lawyer who opposed slavery and whose daughter, Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, wrote a renowned,…

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

Presbyterian and Congregational settlers in Galesburg formed the town's Old First Church in 1837. By the 1850s, their unity fractured over Congregationalists' opposition to some southern Presbyterians' support of slavery. In 1858 Congregationalists…

This nickname of Galesburg appears in a permanent exhibition of Knox College's founding and first decades in the era of the Civil War, in the Whitcomb Heritage Center, third floor of Knox College's Alumni Hall. 

In 1842, indentured servant Susan “Sukey” Richardson, her three children, and another woman, Hannah Morrison, fled north from Sparta, Illinois, assisted by William Hayes, a neighbor of Richardson’s master, Andrew Borders. Borders had brought…

An 1856 painting of a man, Charley and a girl, Abigail Peck. Charley allegedly escaped slavery in Lewis County, Missouri in 1842 and was either caught in Quincy, Illinois and returned to bondage, or became a conductor, helping others to freedom on…

The road sign in this image was formerly posted in or near Bernadotte, Fulton County. It directed tourists to visit the site of the home of Francis Overton, and his daughter, Harriet Overton, both WIUGRR operators. Francis built a cabin near…

Site of the Hamilton Primary School of Otterville, originally built in 1835 and rebuilt in 1873. The school was founded by physician and former slave owner Silas Hamilton. It is the alma mater of George Washington, Hamilton's manumitted slave and a…

This image shows the modern home and farm buildings on the location of a UGRR station near Macomb, Illinois, "operated" by Harmon Allison, who settled there with his wife Beulah around 1854, once his father William built it. Beulah Brown Allison…

This quilt, on display in Jacksonville, Illinois' Woodlawn Farm historic site, is represented to illustrate the Underground Railroad's reliance on quilts to communicate secret information among fugitive slaves. Folk tales about such quilts claim that…