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Underground Railroad Network to Freedom / Application Form July 14, 2004 Old Slave House / Reverse U.G.R.R

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Underground Railroad Network to Freedom / Application Form July 14, 2004 Old Slave House / Reverse U.G.R.R Old Slave House / Reverse U.G.R.R. Station Outside / Equality, Illinois SECTION A: SITES In addition to the responses to each question, applications must also include the following attachments: 1) Letters of support from all property owners for inclusion in the Network to Freedom 2) Text and photographs of all site markers 3) Photographs of current condition of site applying for inclusion in the Network S1. Site type: __X__ Building. _____ Structure. _____ District. _____ Object. _____ Landscape or natural feature. _____ Archeological site. _____ Other (describe): S2. If the site is on the National Register of Historic Places, under what name is it listed? Crenshaw House (a name not of the then-site owner’s choosing). S3. Ownership of site: _____ Private for-profit. _____ Private not-for-profit. _____ Public-local government. _X__ Public-state government. _____ Public-federal government. _____ Multiple (describe): Reminder: Attach a letter of consent for inclusion in the Network to Freedom from the owner(s) of the site. S4. Describe the site’s association and significance to the Underground Railroad. The Old Slave House near Equality, Illinois, represents the last of the known sites still standing throughout the entire country that once served as a “stop” on the antebellum kidnapping networks known today as the “Reverse Underground Railroad.” Not only is it the only one left, its architecture suggests that it was designed from the ground up for its secret function. The stories long associated with the house since at least the beginning of the 20th Century fit with the architecture of the third floor, John Crenshaw’s kidnapping activities, and what it known about the kidnapping rings in Illinois and elsewhere. John Crenshaw built the house as the centerpiece of his Hickory Hill plantation during a four-year period either side of 1838.1 From the time of its building up until the Civil War, Crenshaw and his family used the house as one of their multiple residences in Gallatin County. Crenshaw also owned residences in Cypressville (modern-day Junction) and Equality during that time period which the family is known to have used the manor house atop Hickory Hill. He may have also owned others. His real estate holdings totaled over 11,000 acres in Gallatin and three surrounding counties, as well as 4,000 acres in Tennessee at one time. He also controlled another 30,000 acres as the last state lessee of the saltworks. Nearby residents have long told that Crenshaw kidnapped free blacks or captured runaway slaves and housed them on the third floor in the cells under the eaves of the roof. The presence of 12 cells along the 50-foot long hall, lends credence to the story. Accounts from the 1930s recall that iron rings, or staples, set in the floor for chains. Although the rings have been long gone, the family of a resident of the house who lived there prior to the Sisk family purchasing it before World War I, remembers the rings.2 Most of the ironwork on the third floor appears to have been taken out around the war, possibly for a scrap metal drive. Although some of the stories surrounding the house state that Crenshaw used the third floor as slave quarters, most researchers of antebellum plantations and houses have stated that they have either never heard of attic quarters or that they would have been extremely rare. Most researchers note that slave owners rarely wanted slaves staying in the main house for 1 The cornerstone visible today provides the date of 1838. However, accounts of the house written in the 1930s referred to an 1834 cornerstone and start date for the house. 2 Ed Burtis Interview. May 18, 2002. Conducted by Jon Musgrave at the Saline Creek Pioneer Village and Museum, Harrisburg, Ill. Burtis’ mother grew up in the Old Slave House. For more on the Dempsey’s stay in the house see Julia Syers. Aug. 6, 1976. Letter to Mrs. [Mary] Clemons. Mary Jo Moore Collection, Paducah, Ky. 2 | Underground Railroad Network to Freedom / Application Form July 14, 2004 Old Slave House / Reverse U.G.R.R. Station Outside / Equality, Illinois fear of uprisings. An 1842 newspaper account about Crenshaw noted that he had fled Cypressville for a house far away from any free blacks. However unlikely Crenshaw would have used his attic for permanent slave quarters, its use does fit for kidnapping victims and captured runaway slaves. Extremely little has been written about these kidnapping stations or kidnappings in general. Carol Wilson‘s Freedom at Risk is the only major scholarly research conducted on this activity in more than a generation. In the introduction of her 1994 book, she noted: …the kidnapping of free blacks for sale as slaves was an all-too-common occurrence in the United States during the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. The ever-present danger of kidnapping and the fact that its victims had little recourse proved a grave threat to the black community.3 In 1818, Jesse Torrey wrote one of the earliest accounts of such a station in Washington, D.C. He actually talked his way to the third floor attic eaves of a house, not realizing where he was at and the owner not realizing that Torrey’s role as an abolitionist. While looking for a black woman who had jumped from the third floor window in a failed suicide attempt, he met and talked with a number of other blacks chained up in the attic. Although one or two were slaves awaiting transport South to be sold, the others were victims of kidnappings.4 On the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the Cannon-Johnson gang of kidnappers utilized the attics in another two houses. The gang also used the basement and hidden rooms in the house to keep prisoners. Peter Hook dictated the details of his kidnapping by the Cannon-Johnson Gang to former Mississippi Gov. David Holmes in 1826 after he had been rescued in Natchez. The African Observer printed the details the following year. Following Peter’s kidnapping in Philadelphia, he and four other victims were taken to Maryland: That in about a day’s sail afterwards, they landed, and he and the four other boys were chained together in a small oyster house for three days. The five boys were then taken by night in a carryall and gig, passed Lewistown about day light and stopped at Joe Johnson‘s house, a tavern on the road six miles from Lewistown, saw Abraham F. Johnson, Joe’s brother, and his wife there, where all five were chained to a staple in the floor of the garret. Soon after, a black boy, John Jacob‘s, a cart driver, from Philadelphia, was brought there.—About three or four days after the 4th of July, a black boy, James Bayard, (a sweep), a mulatto, Benjamin Baxter, who lived in Philadelphia, and Little Jack, a black boy, (a sweep,) were brought together to the garret, and soon after, Ephraim Lawrence, a black boy, and Little John, a mulatto, were brought to the garret, and then a black, Henry, a young man grown, was brought there. The 12 were chained to the same staple. Two girls were brought some time before this, (Lydia Smith, and Sally,) both black. These girls were chained in a different part of the same garret.... Peter thinks they were kept in this garret about six months. One night, twelve boys and two girls were taken down, walked 6 or 7 miles, and were put on board a ship by Joe Johnson and set sail. Lydia Smith also told her story, which included the various sites in which she had been held. The kidnappers moved her six times between five different locations. In addition to being chained in the Johnson’s attic, Lydia had also been chained for around five months at the home of Johnson’s mother-in-law, Patty Cannon.5 Lydia’s story of being transported from house to house is similar to that of a black woman named Lotty kidnapped by John Forrester from her home in Hamilton Co., Illinois. John Lockhart wrote a letter to Shawneetown lawyer Henry Eddy about the kidnapping. Working 3 Carol Wilson. 1994. Freedom at Risk: The Kidnapping of Free Blacks in America, 1780-1865. Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky. 6. 4 Jesse Torrey. 1817, reprint 1970. A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States: With Reflections on the Practicability of Restoring the Moral Rights of a Slave, without Impairing the Legal Privileges of the Possessor; and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free Persons of Colour: Including Memoirs of Facts on the Interior Traffic in Slaves, and on Kidnapping. Philadelphia: Privately published. Reprint, St Clair Shores, Mich.: Scholarly Press. 5 Carol Wilson. 19-37; and Wm. Kesley; Thomas Shipley; B. Lundy; Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, John Adams. July 1921. “Reports of the American Convention of Abolition Societies on Negroes and on Slavery, their Appeals to Congress, and their Addresses to the Citizens of the United States [Part 1]” The Journal of Negro History. 6:3. 326-328. 3 | Underground Railroad Network to Freedom / Application Form July 14, 2004 Old Slave House / Reverse U.G.R.R. Station Outside / Equality, Illinois alongside Lotty’s husband in his investigation, Lockhart described a network of houses where the kidnapped woman had been taken and hid across the Ohio River in Kentucky.6 Just as pawnshops are often used to fence stolen goods today, slave trading firms and auction houses served the same purpose for kidnappers during in Crenshaw’s day.
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