by Amber Schmitz, Sumner Newscow — After the year 1850, lawbreakers were underground railroad operatives in Kansas territory. As a matter of fact, the most dangerous place to work on the underground railroad in the entire United States was in Kansas. Anne Hawkins, of Topeka, presented the program “Lawbreakers for the Common Good,” during the Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Society’s meeting at the Wellington Public Library.

“A lot of people didn’t realize that there was an underground railroad in Kansas,” Hawkins said. “It was so dangerous, defying a federal law, that anyone working on or even talking about it was breaking the law, due to the Fugitive Slave Law.”

At this time, men, women and children held in slavery were considered property. The Fugitive Slave Law enslaved them, and they were considered to be property, such as livestock.

“Men and women of conscience, who believed that all men and women were created equal, no matter their color or ethnicity, who believed that one person shouldn’t own another, worked to defy the fugitive slaw law, which had very powerful consequences,” Hawkins said.

After 1850, if someone was caught talking about or sharing information about the underground railroad, or harboring someone seeking freedom from slavery, were subject to a penalty of six months in prison or a $1,000 fine.

“In 1850, $1,000 was what $24,000 is today,” Hawkins said. “It was difficult for people to dredge up that type of money.”

Anne Hawkins of Topeka makes presentation at Sumner County Historical and Genealogical Society meeting Monday. 

Kansas territory was the most dangerous place to work on the underground railroad, because the laws were even stricter. When Missourians crossed the Kansas border illegally in 1855 and voted for pro-slavery laws, then went back home to Missouri, those laws favored slave holders. If someone were caught violating the law or helping a slave achieve freedom, they would receive 10 years hard labor in prison or death. There were also anti-slavery and pro-slavery people fighting and shooting at each other during the time of “Bleeding Kansas.”

“It was dangerous to be a pioneer, but even more dangerous to be a pioneer working on the underground railroad,” Hawkins said.

Bleeding Kansas was a violent place. During this time period, there was more movement of people held in slavery in Missouri, Arkansas and Texas through the Kansas territory.

“I have heard family stories about placing Wellington and the surrounding counties on the underground railroad,” Hawkins said. “When doing research, it is difficult to do. It was so illegal that no one even talked about it. It was kept a secret even after the Civil War.”

In 1890, oldtimers began to talk about their participation in the underground railroad, as they no longer feared the Missourians, and people began to talk publicly about it.

People traveled the underground railroad from Missouri, where the largest population of people were held in slavery, south, or north of Osawatamie or Ft. Scott, with a goal to get into Nebraska, which was considered free territory at the time. Eventually, they came into Iowa and Illinois, until they were all the way to Canada, which was outside of the United States laws, and there was no slavery there.

“What kind of a person is a lawbreaker?” Hawkins asked. “They make a decision to break a federal law, which is a big one, and for most people, fairly difficult to make. What attributes do they have to have to defy to increase liberty and freedom?”

For one thing, they had to have the courage to move, by literally packing up and moving. William Dominick Matthews was a Union soldier, born free in Maryland, who moved back to Kansas in the 1850s. He and other pioneers heard about and read in newspapers about the battle in Kansas, whether it would be a free or slave state, and moved. Matthews moved to Leavenworth, and opened a boarding house. He worked with the brother of Susan B. Anthony, who was also a pioneer in Kansas. He served white customers in the front of the establishment, and black customers in the back, then helped them onto the underground railroad. Matthews was a Civil War officer in the Union Army, and is best known for leading the first Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry.

John and Mary Jane Ritchie, Congregationalists, moved to Kansas in 1855, deciding that the slave owners weren’t getting the best land and last vote, and brought their church’s intentions to Kansas. They arrived in Topeka, when it was in its raw existence, and were the second American family to settle there. Their home still stands near the state capitol building, with 18 inch thick limestone walls. It was intended to be a castle to help people. Many times, border ruffians with intentions to collect bounties on slaves, would pay them a visit. On average, if you brought a runaway slave back to his master, you were paid $500 per person, which would be like receiving $12,000 in today’s terms.

Border ruffians haunted settlements seeking runaway slaves and abolitionists. Ritchie was caught and taken to jail in Lecompton. While awaiting trial, which was ten years in jail or death, he somehow managed to cut a hole in the side of the rough wood or canvas wall, slipped out and escaped. As he was fairly well-known, he couldn’t go home, so ran on foot using the underground railroad and laid low for two years. During this time, Mary Jane pioneered by herself, raising the children and operating the underground railroad.

Certificates through the New England Emigrant Aid Co. to create the free the state of Kansas fund could be sent to pioneers to provide food, clothing, transportation and other needs to the underground railroad.

“Not everyone could pack up and move, but could still support the effort monetarily,” Hawkins said.

To boost morale, many popular songs were written during this time period. Many were sung in churches in Massachusetts, and were also written to spread the word.

People, from individuals to church groups, came together to work on the underground railroad, with the belief that all people should be treated equally. The Beecher Bible and Rifle Church was established in Wabaunsee, Kan. in 1857, and the building was completed in 1868. The church was supported by the Beecher family, and named after Henry Ward Beecher, one of the most popular ministers who was hated by southerners. He is quoted to have said, “You might as well read the Bible to buffalos as to slave owners, they only understand the logic of the gun.” He was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

At the time, the Sharp rifle was cutting edge in technology, and much more accurate than musketry. Beecher collected money and guns to send to Kansas abolitionists. Legally, you had to stamp the crate with the contents, and sometimes they were confiscated. Beecher and his followers began breaking down rifles and sending parts in different crates, along with Bibles tucked in, and stamping Bibles on the outside of the crates. Abolitionists unpacked the crates, assembled the rifles and became armed with what were known as Beecher Bibles.

Another factor of people working with the underground railroad was that they had to internally get out of their comfort zone.

“It was one thing to leave your space and go pioneer,” Hawkins said. “To go that extra step to break the law for divine conviction, you had to be able to change inside.”

Sarah Armstrong was a woman who owned a homestead claim next to her brother. This happened to be nextdoor to a slave owner from Kentucky who brought his slaves to Kansas territory before it became a state. When the slave owner was out of the house, Sarah invited the enslaved children to her house and taught them to read.

“This was her way of leaving her comfort zone and breaking the law, by giving them a skill that she knew they would need to survive,” Hawkins said.

Richard Corrolley, a trained theologian, told people that he would help a freedom seeker who showed up at his door, then wrote an essay that said “It is easy to be brave 1,000 miles away, but you must face the question at short range.”

John Stewart, who was called the “Fighting Methodist,” was willing to dramatically leave his comfort zone. He dressed up like a peddler, went to plantations in Missouri, and talked directly to slaves in charge, to tell them about the underground railroad. There were trusted slaves in charge of field work and housework on Missouri plantations, and this is how Stewart passed on the information.

An enslaved man and his wife Fannie had three children, one of which was a baby, and were owned by an Army Major in Leavenworth. George had been so dependable and trusted by the Army Major, and had fought alongside him in the Mexican American war, and spoke by Spanish and English. When he had to leave his house, he trusted George to be there when he arrived home. This is when George and Fannie realized this was their chance to run, as they were told their family would be sold and split up. Most runaway slaves were men or women ages 12-30, it was very unusual to find children on the underground railroad. When they arrived at the John and Mary Jane Ritchie home, they hid them downhill in a cave they had dug near a creek where she got their water supply. Now they were having to supply baby items, such as diapers, and a diaper cover.

“Babies could be quieted with a sugar teet,” Hawkins said. “A chunk of sugar was snapped off and a cloth was tied around it to give to a baby like a pacifier. It was up to the other whether or not to add whiskey, if it meant a quiet journey where they wouldn’t be caught, dragged back into slavery, or sold.”

Louis Bodwell agreed to take George and Fannie and their three children. This particular situation was not one where the family could run on their own, as they had two older children and a baby. Bodwell had to acquire a wagon that no one would pin to him, and horses that no one would think were his.

“It took several days, but Bodwell did it, and off they went, and headed north,” Hawkins said.

Bodwell kept a coded journal of their travels, which was published in 1890 in a Manhattan newspaper, 40 years later, after the danger had subsided. They had to cross creek beds, and there were no maps for the underground railroad. It took 14 days to travel from Topeka to Nebraska City, and everyone feared they were going to be shot or imprisoned.

John Brown was the most famous abolitionist, as he brought groups of slaves from Missouri to the underground railroad in Kansas territory. Jane Hamilton was one of the slaves that Brown helped to freedom. Brown and a group of his followers arrived at a Missouri plantation one Christmas Eve, shot two slave owners, and convinced 12 slaves to leave with them. He then knocked on his sister’s door, Florella Adaire, whose husband was a minister, and they agreed to hide the slaves, who stayed Christmas night. The next day, they thought they were only moving 12 runaway slaves, but the number had increased to 13, as Jane Hamilton had given birth.

“She left slavery and gave birth,” Hawkins said. “It was a very courageous decision that effected her lineage. Any child born to a woman in slavery was considered a slave. She took the risk and went with John Brown. They made it north to Nebraska City, where they were kept safe in a cave, then onto Iowa, Chicago, and finally, Canada, by riding trains, wagons, walking on foot, and taking ferry boats to get to freedom.”

During the journey, a man in the group named Samuel Harper helped Hamilton take care of her baby, and the two fell in love, and were married on Ontario, Canada. The Mayhew family helped them make this journey.

“Here is a photo of Darrell Hogan, great great grandson of Jane Hamilton, shaking hands with Brad Mayhew, the great great grandson of the Mayhews,” Hawkins noted. “Their entire lineage was free after Jane took that one step.”

Sometimes it was good for those freeing slaves to equip allies. The underground railroad was about helping people find freedom in secret.

“These people didn’t want publicity, didn’t want honors, didn’t want pats on the back, and weren’t afraid to equip their allies with weapons,” Hawkins said.

In the south, slaves were prohibited from carrying arms. In the underground railroad, people handed those seeking freedom rifles to protect themselves.

“Runaways found people, men, women and children had to use intellect, to piece together where to go for help,” Hawkins said. “Escaped slaves who wrote back to abolitionists heard their masters in Missouri cursing out people who would help slaves, and remembered their names. They had to rely on their wits and intelligence.”

Oftentimes for their safety, enslaved people had to pretend to be dumb and know nothing, but their smarts an intellect helped get them to freedom.

Elizabeth Abbott was an abolitionist who was helping a man who had worked on a river boat as a cook. She was lame, and having difficulty, and he was cooking for her while she kept him safe. One night, they heard the baying of hounds coming, and the man froze, knowing those hounds with men were coming for him.

“Elizabeth handed him a hatchet from her wood pile, and told him that if the hounds get to him first, to make his shot good,” Hawkins said. “He ran and Elizabeth ran into the house. She heard riders and hounds, then yelps and no sound. Half an hour later, he came back to return her hatchet, and lets her know that he missed the first time, and got them the second time.”

Joseph Gardner had a family full of children ages 2-15, and they lived in a cabin sheltering Napoleon Simpson. He had left slavery in Missouri and made it to Canada. He decided that he missed his wife, and left freedom to come back for her. He was staying with the Gardner family while working on getting his wife out of slavery, and for her to be well enough to travel.

“Joseph’s son, Theodore Gardner, wrote that suddenly their cabin as surrounded by a posse of 25,” Hawkins said. “They started lighting the roof on fire, and shot through the windows. They were bounty hunters wanting to capture Simpson. The family armed all of the boys, and the men they were sheltering who wanted to escape slavery. As they were firing through the windows, Theodore wrote that one bullet went astray and hit their last bottle of rattlesnake antidote.”

The firing stopped, and the torching hadn’t worked, but something spooked the posse, and after about 20 minutes, everyone was gone. Napoleon opened up the door to make sure the coast was clear, and one lone gunman shot him dead.

“He didn’t survive, but he fought valiantly, like he was family,” Hawkins said.

Creative problem solving abilities were a must for those sheltering runaway slaves, and the runaways themselves.

Rev. Richard Correlly was away from his cabin one day when a 14 year old girl knocked on his door. She had left slavery in Missouri and was needing help. His wife, Mrs. Mary Ann Correlly allowed her into her very small cabin in broad daylight. Their small cabin consisted of a room downstairs and a partial upstairs. At the time, she had a guest, Mrs. Ward, and they were working on projects.

Mrs. Correlly invited Lizzie in, but couldn’t find an immediate hiding spot. Then, Lizzie had the idea for them to hide her inside of the bed. They removed the pillows, comforter, featherbed, and straw mattress, allowed Lizzie to climb onto the ropes, and put everything back together. As Mrs. Ward was so tiny, she volunteered to play a sickly woman, and laid on top of the mattress with Lizzie underneath. Mary Ann completed the setting by putting medicine bottles on the night table, and that’s how they successfully hid Lizzie, and she was never found or captured. She slipped out later that night into safety.

Clarina Nichols was living in Quindaro, Kan. when a teenage girl runaway slave came to her for help. There had been a leak in her cistern, and it had been drained and patched with plaster, then white washed, but was still dry. Clarina lowered down a chair, comforters and the girl. She wrote about how the girl whimpered all night long, about spiders and the dark. She moved a rocking chair, candle, and her son on his mattress, to play a mother and sick child. If someone peeked in the window and spied, which was common during those days, they would see a mother sitting up with her sick child, singing comfort songs and hymns to him, while actually covering up the girl’s cries.

Caroline Scales owned a boarding house in Topeka, with sugar hog head barrels in the basement. A runaway female slave stayed six weeks in one of those barrels, and helped Caroline in the kitchen when she could, while she got a network of people to assist her.

Agnes and William Mitchell were siblings who moved with a church. The cabin that he built still stands in the middle of a modern home. While refurbishing the modern home, which is on the National Register, when removing a cabinet from a wall, it was discovered that it had a false top, and shelves were bolted in. It was guessed that William and Agnes, who were known to work on the underground railroad, used the shelves of the false cabinet as a ladder that went into the attic. When runaways came, it is believed they skittered up the ladder, then the dishes were put back into place, and nobody would know that anyone was hiding.

“Other ways they used creative problem solving was dressing men like women and vice versa,” Hawkins said. Efram Newt was a runaway slave and was dressed as a woman, and nobody was looking for a woman of that height.”

Hugh and Elizabeth Fisher dressed a runaway male slave as a free woman in a bonnet and nice clothes that a free woman would wear and sent him on his way. Elizabeth became frozen with fear, as she realized that the socks she had given the slave, she had monogrammed for her husband. She was terrified that they would trace the socks back to their house, but they never did.

Bill Riley was a man who had been captured after escaping slavery, and was drug to a jail in western Missouri. All free African Americans were afraid at this time that bounty hunters would sell them back into slavery. If bounty hunters sold freed slaves, they could get more per person. Riley was chained and awaiting to be sold in jail, and his cell was near a wood stove.

“At some point, the guard was feeding the stove, and a live coal popped out, and Bill Riley grabbed it with his bare hands,” Hawkins said. “He used it to burn out the iron bars from the wooden frame of his cell and slipped out. It was January, so he had to get across the river on floating cakes of ice. To take a live coal in your bare hands to free yourself is creative and makes you realize that freedom is worth that suffering.”

The final quality of pioneers who believed that the emancipation proclamation would come to the United States was persistence. The emancipation proclamation didn’t free those who were enslaved in states in rebellion, only those held in confederate states. Two years later, people started to leave slavery to join the Union. The first group of African American soldiers to join were from Kansas, as was the first Colored Volunteer Infantry. They were also the first to see action at the Battle of Island Mound.

In 1865, the 13th amendment abolished slavery, ending the need for the underground railroad. Unfortunately, this didn’t completely abolish slavery. Sadly, there was an upturn in slavery, and Kansas was known for human trafficking, since it was in the middle of the United States. In Kansas alone, there were between 300-500 slaves freed in ten years, although there is not really a way of knowing.

“Other ways that people can help exercise freedoms, is that 160 years ago, we wouldn’t have been allowed to talk about past and current issues,” Hawkins said. “There are people giving re-enactments and tours. Kansas is alive in bringing the past to life, and keeping it vital and relevant, and 160 years ago, it would have been illegal to talk about it.”

Follow us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.