In the same letter Mr. Milligan corroborates some information secured from the Rev. R. G. Ramsey, of Cadiz, Ohio, August 18, 1892, in regard to an underground route in southern Illinois. Mr. Ramsey related that his father, Robert Ramsey, first engaged in Underground Railroad work at Eden, Randolph County, Illinois, in 1844, and that he carried it on at intervals until the War. "The fugitives," he said, "came up the river to Chester, Illinois, and there they started northeast on the state road, which followed an old Indian trail. The stations were each in a community of Covenanters, ..." and existed, according to his account, at Chester, Eden, Oakdale, Nashville and Centralia. "Besides my father," said Mr. Ramsey, "John Hood and two brothers, James B. and Thomas McClurkin, lived in Oakdale, where my father lived during the last thirty-five years of his life. He lived in Eden before this time...."[26] The Rev. Mr. Milligan writes as follows: "My father removed to Randolph Co., Ill., in 1847, and with Rev. Wm. Sloane ... and the Covenanter congregations under their ministry kept a very large depot wide open for slaves escaping from Missouri. Scores at a time came to Sparta [the post-office of the Eden settlement mentioned above]--my father's region, were harbored there, ... and finally escorted to Elkhorn [about two miles from Oakdale], the region of Father Sloane, where they were sheltered and escorted ... to some friends in the region of Nashville, Ill., and thence north on the regular trail which I am not able further to locate. At Sparta, Coultersville and Elkhorn there was an almost constant supply of fugitives.... But ... few were ever gotten from the ægis of the Hayes and Moores and Todds and McLurkins and Hoods and Sloanes and Milligans of that region." [26] Conversation with the Rev. R. G. Ramsey, Cadiz, Ohio, August 18, 1892. The evidence above quoted has the well-known value of two witnesses, examined apart, who corroborate each other; and it also illustrates the way in which the pieces of underground routes may be joined together. These letters, together with some additional testimony, enable us to trace on the map a section of a secret line of travel in southern Illinois.