The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive historySiebert, Wilbur Henry
History
The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history
Siebert, Wilbur Henry
Fugitive slaves -- United States; Underground Railroad
A special map of exceeding interest and importance is that drawn by
Mr. Lewis Falley, of La Fayette, Indiana, showing the underground
lines of Indiana and Michigan about 1848. Mr. Falley's acquaintance
with the Road came about through the work of his father in the
interest of fugitives in La Fayette after 1841. Subsequently
Mr. Falley learned of the lines traversing his state through an
itinerant preacher who sometimes stopped as a guest at his father's
house. When Mr. Falley's map was received in March, 1896, the author
himself had already plotted from other testimony a number of routes
in southern and eastern Indiana and in Michigan, and a comparison
of maps was made. On Mr. Falley's map three main roads appear, the
eastern, middle and western routes. The first of these ran parallel,
roughly speaking, with the eastern boundary line of the state only
a few miles from it, and took its rise from two lesser paths, which
converged at Richmond from either side of the state line. The second
or middle route sprang from three branches that crossed the Ohio at
Madison, New Albany, and the neighborhood of Leavenworth, passed
north through Indianapolis and Logansport, and entered Michigan a
few miles east of Lake Michigan. The third or western route followed
up the Wabash River to La Fayette, where it crossed the river,
proceeded to Rensselaer, and thence northeasterly to the Michigan
line, making its entrance to Michigan at the point where the middle
route entered that state. From the two crossing-places on the
Michigan border the northern extensions of the Indiana routes found
their way to Battle Creek, from which station one trail led directly
east to Detroit, and the other, by a more northerly course, to Port
Huron. In southern Indiana the eastern route was connected with the
middle route by a branch between Greensburg and Indianapolis, and
the middle with the western by two branches, one between Salem and
Evansville, and the other between Brownstown and Bloomingdale.
[Illustration: ROUTES THROUGH INDIANA AND MICHIGAN IN 1848.
As traced by Lewis Falley.]
In the general map prepared by the author, the southern route
through Michigan to Detroit, and the eastern, middle, and a portion
of the western routes in Indiana on the map of Mr. Falley are
duplicated with more or less completeness. The initial stations
along the Ohio River correspond in the two maps almost exactly, and
many of the way-stations seen on the one map are to be found on the
other. It is not to be expected that the two maps would agree in
all particulars, and some stations occur on each that are not to be
found on the other. Such differences are due to the development of
new or the obliteration of old lines and the insufficient knowledge
of the draughtsmen. It is not known that a map similar to Mr.
Falley's has been devised for any other state or states among the
many through which well-defined underground routes extended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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