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The college's online history emphasizes its founding by opponents of slavery, making Galesburg a regional center of underground railroad activity.

Photograph by the Illinois State Museum of the McWorter or Old Cemetery, where the remains of African American residents of Philadelphia, Illinois were buried. Philadelphia was a village in southwestern Illinois founded in 1836 by Frank McWorter, a…

The site focuses on western and southern Illinois sites Quincy, Jacksonville, and Alton, as well as Oakland and Chicago. Note that the site erroneously describes the underground railroad as active after the Civil War. Actually, with the end of the…

Beecher Hall, the original building of Illinois College, was completed in 1830. It was named for the college's first president, Dr. Edward Beecher, brother of the abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher and the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet…

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…

A map of Illinois free and slave counties in 1824 showing shaded counties that were favorable to legalizing slavery in Illinois

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…

Dr. Richard Eells built this home, Quincy's oldest two-story building, now located within its Downtown  Historic District, in 1835, four blocks from the Mississippi River. Quincy, Illinois, was the first Underground Railroad station across the border…

David Blazer, of Aledo, Illinois, shared his memory and specific details of the underground railroad activities of his father, uncle, grandfather, and of another family, the Allisons, in McDonough County, Illinois before the Civil War.

Part of the "History and Culture" of Macomb, Illinois