12 September 2015 Volume 11, number 56 UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FREE PRESS® Independent reporting on today’s Underground Railroad urrFreePress.com Fields, Dobbin House, Gunner Named 2015 Free Press Prize Laureates In This Issue The 2015 Free Press Prizes for leader- ship, preservation and advancement of knowledge are announced. 1 In a border-state county, an extensive network of escape routes operated. Fields The Dobbin House Hideaway Gunner In the eighth annual awarding of the ed every year in Maryland. Following 1 Underground Railroad Free Press Maryland's lead launched by Fields, a Prizes, Free Press honors state leader number of other states have since leg- The new Harriet Tubman Under- Louis Fields, Historic 1776 Dobbin islated their own Harriet Tubman ground Railroad National Monument House Inn & Tavern, and map maker Day. will soon be open for business. Nicholas Gunner as the 2015 winners. Also beginning in 2010, Fields began 2 The Free Press Prizes are regarded as coordinating county and regional ob- the international Underground Rail- servances of Harriet Tubman Day Oberlin, Ohio and Oberlin College road community's top honor. throughout Maryland and tirelessly made themselves into Underground visits the observances each year. He Railroad and abolitionism hubs. ❦ also got the State to include the Un- Louis Fields Awarded the 2015 Free 2 derground Railroad in Maryland Press Prize for Leadership tourism marketing campaigns, collat- Baltimore's Louis Fields, more active eral materials and press releases. Want to take part? The Free Press in Maryland Underground Railroad website offers many ways for you to become involved in today's Under- work than anyone for several dec- Fields works closely with Harriet ground Railroad. ades, has compiled a record as one of Tubman descendants living on Mary- 3 the foremost state or provincial Un- land's Eastern Shore where Tubman derground Railroad leaders in the was born and escaped, and has gone View photos of the web of Under- United States or Canada. as far as organizing reunions for them. He was instrumental in per- ground Railroad routes in one coun- ty today. In 2000, Fields led an effort to per- suading the state's two United States suade the Maryland General Assem- Senators to introduce the bills which 5 bly to legislate an official annual ob- are creating the new Harriet Tubman servance of Harriet Tubman. As her Underground Railroad National birthday is unknown, March 10, the Monument on the Eastern Shore. day she died in 1913, is now celebrat- Please see Prizes, page 4, column 1 A Border County's Seven Recognized Underground Railroad Routes One of an occasional series on Underground Railroad sites Because of higher pro-slavery sympathies to the east and more dif- involved with the Underground Railroad. Over several decades, ficult terrain in the Appalachians just to the west, many freedom civic leader Lebherz's list grew to 20 sites, mostly safe-houses but seekers coming up from Virginia funneled through a 50-mile also a few routes. Ann Lebherz died march, 2015. Snowden went swath centering on Frederick County, Maryland. The more than much further, compiling the county's best-ever collection of local 80 identified safe-houses, routes and people involved in the coun- African Americana, a prize collection which after her passing went ty's Underground Railroad include the seven firmly documented to the Museum of Frederick County History. Snowden was a biol- routes below. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, Kathleen ogist who worked for the National Institutes of Health before re- Snowden and Ann Lebherz independently began keeping lists of tiring and becoming an elected member of the Town Council of places in the county that they had heard were or may have been Please see Seven Routes, page 3, column 1 123 Underground Railroad Free Press 2 Tubman Memorial Construction Nears Completion Construction of the Harriet Tubman Un- new facility jointly when it opens in 2016. derground Railroad National Monument Born Araminta Ross in 1822 on the near- near where Tubman was born and es- by plantation, Harriet Tubman lived and caped on Maryland's Eastern Shore is worked enslaved in this area from child- nearly complete. Authorized by presiden- hood until she escaped at age 27 in 1849. tial proclamation on March 25, 2013, the In her own era, she made her name and $13.9 million project is funded by an $8.5 became famous nationwide for returning million federal Transportation Enhance- to the area from which she had fled to ment Program grant, $3.5 million in State free an estimated 300 members of her funding, a $1.1 million grant from the Na- family, friends and other enslaved Afri- tional Park Service, and two grants from can Americans, becoming the best known the U.S. Department of Housing and Ur- Underground Railroad conductor. In ban Development. The Monument is lo- Union scout, spy and nurse. In a single 1859, she purchased a farm in Auburn, cated on Maryland Route 335 a mile week, she led Union forces up South Car- New York, and established a home for south of its junction with Key Wallace olina's Combahee River and freed 756 en- her family and others, which she used Drive. The National Park Service and the slaved people, becoming the first woman late in life as a home for indigent elderly Maryland Park Service will operate the women. In the Civil War she worked as a Please see Monument, page 4, column 3 The Oberlins—Town and College—Made Their Abolitionist Marks Book review by Owen W. Muelder emancipation of the nation’s enslaved as so helped to ensure the school’s future. well. In addition, the community eventu- ally gained a reputation as a center of Morris develops several significant Underground Railroad operations. Con- themes in his book, one of which is his sequently, Oberlin endured remarkable description of the abolitionist movement hostility from those who looked upon the in the east splitting apart at the very time school and town's inhabitants as radicals that Oberlin College was beginning to and self-righteous troublemakers. grow. Arguments between factions along the eastern seaboard, for a variety of rea- 100th Anniversary In the early 1840s, the Ohio legislature sons, led to the rupture of the American even debated an unsuccessful proposal to Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. But at Ober- repeal the college’s charter. lin (and at anti-slavery outposts through- out Ohio, Michigan and other upper Mis- The author expertly details how the col- sissippi Valley states) abolitionists, for the lege managed to go from an institution on most part, were able, in Morris’s words the verge of collapse to a school that sta- “… to accommodate the differences that bilized and soon afterward thrived. This disturbed eastern anti-slavery unity in was primarily due to the arrival of several 1837–40.” Therefore Oberlin’s abolition- young men who came to Oberlin in 1835 ists were able to “…avoid being side- from the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. In tracked by debates over ‘proper’ or ‘pure’ 1834 Lane students had conducted a Owen Muelder, recipient of the 2014 Free means by prioritizing the ultimate goal of lengthy debate about slavery that turned Press Prize for Preservation, is author of two emancipation.” There were abolitionists books on the anti-slavery movement, and nearly all of the seminarians into radical throughout the north who wanted to see director of the Galesburg Colony Under- abolitionists. The students’ anti-slavery human bondage eradicated, but that did ground Railroad Freedom Center at Knox advocacy at the school and the aid they not mean they viewed African Americans College in Galesburg, Illinois. gave to African Americans in the city out- as equals. However, in Oberlin, Morris J. Brent Morris’s new book, Oberlin, Hot- raged the school’s authorities who de- describes a notable effort to regard each bed of Abolitionism, College, Community and manded that the seminarians disengage person “…according to his personal the Fight for Freedom (University of North themselves from these activities. The sem- worth and not his color.” Blacks in the Carolina Press, 352 pp.) pushes aside my- inarians rebelled and the majority community and college were encouraged thology of Oberlin’s early history to pre- dropped out of Lane. The core of these to be leaders and the town became a truly sent a historically accurate account of the “Lane Rebels”, dedicated to the immedi- integrated community. Oberlin was also community’s anti-slavery past. Morris ate emancipation of all slaves, later among the first colleges to admit women. has produced a first rate piece of work. moved to Oberlin and their arrival at the No other institution of higher learning college brought boom times to the institu- The last part of the book lays out in detail was more deeply committed and actively tion. Before they agreed to come to Ober- Oberlin’s fearless efforts to aid fugitive involved with the anti-slavery crusade in lin, however, they insisted that the college slaves on the Underground Railroad in- the United States than Oberlin College. adopt a colorblind admissions policy. cluding first hand accounts confirmed by Beyond the college campus itself, the citi- Simultaneously, financial support was several reliable sources. They describe zens of the town of Oberlin were stead- given to the college by the wealthy Tap- freedom seekers who moved out of Ober- fastly committed to bringing about the pan brothers in New York City, which al- Please see Oberlin, page 5, column 1 435 Underground Railroad Free Press 3 Seven Routes New Market, Maryland. In 2001 when The Susquehanna Path Railroad tracks through the county.