Unearthing an underground history

Alexander McClure, a slave in Tennessee, sought to ship himself to freedom, to a new life in the North.\nWith help, McClure sealed himself in a dry goods crate in Nashville, Tenn., bound for Cincinnati by rail. Documents unearthed by the Indiana Historical Bureau Underground Railroad Initiative reveal that McClure endured more than 10 hours holed up in a three-foot by two-foot crate. \nHis journey ended short of sanctuary in the free state of Ohio when his box broke open while being transferred from a ferry onto another rail line. Authorities in Seymour, Ind., apprehended him. \nMcClure's story is one of many the initiative gathers. Drawing on federal funding, the state program sponsors research and public outreach programs to record such stories.\nThe Underground Railroad, a secretive network of safe havens, was set up by white abolitionists, free-born blacks and liberated slaves in open defiance of the law. Individuals -- some for religious reasons, others out of first-hand knowledge of the brutal hardships of slavery -- assisted with shelter, food and passage to the next station on the railroad. \nDuring the early- to mid-1800s, many slaves fleeing Southern plantations crossed the Ohio River into Indiana, a free state. According to archived news reports by The New Albany Daily Ledger, many swam the mile-wide river or walked the sheeted frozen surface in winter. \nSeveral runaway slaves passed through Bloomington along one of the main routes.\n"We want the public to understand that the Underground Railroad is an important part of our state history -- a vital part of Indiana's heritage," said Jeannie Regan-Dinius, special projects coordinator of the initiative. "It's one of the earliest civil rights movements, one of the earliest philanthropy movements. All socioeconomic classes and races were working together toward freedom and equality."\nRegan-Dinius said the project also seeks to dispel myths surrounding the railroad. \nMcClure, for instance, was one of the few to literally travel by rail. Most journeyed by foot, sometimes by wagon or ferry, often taking roundabout routes to throw off pursuers, according to William Still's first-hand account, "The Underground Railroad." Generally, they hid by day, advancing only under darkness of night. They often slept out in the open, in fields and in the woods.\nAnother common misconception is that the railroad was literally subterranean, Regan-Dinius said. But many "conductors" of the rails openly disobeyed the law.\n"People picture tunnels and hiding places, but much of it took place right out in the open," she said. \nThe Indiana Division of Historic Preservation and Archeology administers the project to preserve Underground Railroad history through a federal grant from the National Park Service. According to the Congressional Record, in 1998, Congress passed an act charging the park service with preserving Underground Railroad history.\nRealizing the difficulty of researching such a poorly documented and varied underground network, the park service tasked out the job to state governments, Regan-Dinius said. Indiana was the first to answer the call in early 1999. Several other states, including Michigan and New York, have since followed suit.\nMany fugitive slaves from Kentucky passed through Indiana on the way to Michigan or Canada, she said. Some chose to stay, linking up with free black settlements. \n"They had farming communities where they lived together and supported themselves as a community," Regan-Dinius said. "Most chose not to live in the cities and towns, so they could live with a little less racism."\nMost escaped slaves opted to flee the country altogether, she said. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 gave licenses to bounty hunters, who often tracked the escapees like prey with packs of dogs. \n"Canada was easier," she said. "There were still property laws in place, and there was still violence surrounding it. Many were recaptured or kidnapped and sold back into slavery. There was a reward of $50, which was a lot of money in 1851."\nThe initiative has also scheduled a series of workshops in February intended for teachers but open to the general public at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis. \nStaffed by a volunteer research group known as Indiana Freedom Trails, the initiative eventually hopes to map as many confirmed stations along the railroad as possible, Regan-Dinius said. \nThe program has already designated a few sites in the state, such as the Levi Coffin House in Fountain City, a restored eight-room house dubbed the "Grand Central Station" of the Indiana Railroad, according to the Indiana Historical Bureau. The Coffin family reportedly helped more than 2,000 slaves on their journey to freedom and was immortalized in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," as a place of refuge of the heroine, Eliza.\nThe initiative also funds a marker program, which has nine signposts denoting key events in Indiana Underground Railroad history scattered throughout the state. Most are concentrated in the south-central region, said Stephen Berrey, marker program coordinator.\nThough intended for tourists, the markers do not stake out and identify specific routes taken by runaway slaves.\n"There are hundreds, thousands of paths from town to town," Berrey said. "We're not trying to link them in that way ... We want the public to understand how complex and vast this really was, beyond just escaping."\nIt takes a year of research to certify a marker application, Berrey said. The process relies heavily on locals coming forward, often with family records. \nWhile there are no markers or designated historical sites locally, a few places in Monroe County have been linked to the Underground Railroad, including the University-owned Raintree House. \nMany of the local conductors were Covenanters -- members of the Reformed Presbyterian Church -- transplanted to the greater Bloomington area from South Carolina, wrote Henry Lester Smith in a 1917 issue of Indiana Magazine of History. According to the article, a few local citizens harbored runaway slaves, risking criminal prosecution and often violent run-ins with the professional bounty hunters.\nBut documentation remains scarce. Because the Railroad broke the laws of its day, few official records now exist. The initiative, Berrey said, draws heavily from court cases and census records but often relies on diaries and genealogies.\n"A lot of stories may be hard to prove," he said. "But it's our hope that people will come forward with whatever they have. The longer we've been going, the more interest we've generated -- we're starting to get all sorts of interesting material from the north of the state now."\nBecause of the scope of the project and its localization, Regan-Dinius suggested a partnership with an IU history or folklore professor would be a productive working relationship. Beyond calling for volunteers, she urges anyone with any pertinent information to come forward.\n"Grandma's diary gets thrown away," she said. "But that's a piece of living history that a historian would salivate over"