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A U.S. federal list of Illinois sites
The U.S. National Park Service's "Aboard the Underground Railroad" list of recognized Illinois sites
Abolition City
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.
An Illinois freedom trail
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…
An Unmarked McDonough County Station
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…
City of Macomb website
Part of the "History and Culture" of Macomb, Illinois
Come ride on the "Liberty Line"
The advertisement offers free travel to Canada those “who may wish to improve their health and circumstances.” A WIURR conductor, John Cross, of Knoxville, submitted this widely reproduced illustration to the Western Citizen. In 1842 he had been…
Hamilton Memorial School
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…
Illinois College's original building
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…
Illinois early proslavery counties
A map of Illinois free and slave counties in 1824 showing shaded counties that were favorable to legalizing slavery in Illinois
Old Charley painting
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…