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National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom commemorates the stories of freedom seekers

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Through its exhibits and public programs, the Oklahoma Indian Territory Museum of Black Creek Freedmen, Inc. shares and ...
10/14/2026

Through its exhibits and public programs, the Oklahoma Indian Territory Museum of Black Creek Freedmen, Inc. shares and provides access to research materials on the freedom-seeking histories of Black Creek freedmen.

The museum explores documented acts of self-emancipation alongside the lives of territory freedom seekers who joined the Kansas forces to fight for the Union. Accurate and current interpretations of this underrepresented aspect of the Underground Railroad narrative are delivered via the museum's artifact collections, exhibits, genealogy workshops, Muscogee language courses, traveling displays and community research initiatives.

Image: Reenactors in the exhibit space

Asher Aray, a free Black abolitionist, operated a crucial Underground Railroad station from his farm in Pittsfield Towns...
10/07/2026

Asher Aray, a free Black abolitionist, operated a crucial Underground Railroad station from his farm in Pittsfield Township, Washtenaw County, Michigan. Active in the anti-slavery movement, Aray attended Michigan anti-slavery conventions and served on the committee that planned the 1843 State Convention of the Colored Citizens of Michigan.

Together with his wife, Catherine, he hid freedom seekers at their farm and used his wagons to transport them to Detroit to cross the river into Canada. In 1853, Aray assisted in the escape of 28 enslaved people from Boone County, Kentucky, a feat that gained national attention and was featured in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. While this event placed him in the historical record, entries in his personal ledger show that he helped a minimum of forty freedom seekers reach freedom in Canada.

Image: Portrait of Asher Aray, aged 65

In celebration of International Underground Railroad Month the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program ...
09/23/2026

In celebration of International Underground Railroad Month the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program announces the July 2026 round of applications. This latest round adds 10 new listings, bringing the total up to 914 across 41 states, Washington D.C., Canada and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Below are the list of new listings. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks as we highlight, in more detail, each of the 10 new listings.

Georgia:
McDonough Memorial Cemetery – McDonough

The 1526 San Miguel de Gualdape Slave Uprising – Darien

Illinois:
Midwest Underground Railroad Network – South Holland

Iowa:
Burial Site of Samuel Luke Howe and Charlotte Perrin Howe in Old City Cemetery – Mount Pleasant

Maryland:
Brown-Cummens Escape Site – Hagerstown

Michigan:
Henry Bibb in Detroit – Detroit
Homesite of Asher and Catherine Aray – Ypsilanti

Minnesota:
Eliza Winston Exhibit – Minneapolis

Ohio:
David Adams and the Underground Railroad in Hancock County – Findlay

Oklahoma:
Black Creek Freedmen’s Museum – Oklahoma City

Learn more about the sites here:
https://cms.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/national-park-service-adds-14-listings-in-11-states-to-the-national-underground-railroad-network-to-freedom-program.htm

Image: Grave of Asher Aray

September is International Underground Railroad Month, a time to commemorate the importance of the Underground Railroad ...
09/09/2026

September is International Underground Railroad Month, a time to commemorate the importance of the Underground Railroad and the places that preserve the stories of freedom seekers.

The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, managed by the National Park Service, recognizes sites, research facilities and educational programs connected to people who escaped enslavement and those who helped them pursue freedom. Today, the Network to Freedom includes more than 900 members, including sites that are also part of the Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.

Together, these sites tell stories that connect the struggle for freedom to the history of Reconstruction. Some include Fort Monroe National Monument in Virginia, Boston African American National Historic Site in Massachusetts, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, and Mother Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia.
Reconstruction Era National Historical Park

Image: African Meeting House

Prior Foster, a born-free Black man and Underground Railroad conductor, established the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute...
09/02/2026

Prior Foster, a born-free Black man and Underground Railroad conductor, established the Woodstock Manual Labor Institute in Lenawee County, Michigan, to educate individuals of African descent. Sponsored by abolitionists across the Northern United States, Foster frequently traveled to New England to raise funds, while his daughters and brother managed the campus as an Underground Railroad stop.

As a manual labor school, students could work on the farm to pay tuition instead of using money. The institute drew many Black settlers to nearby Addison and housed others, likely freedom seekers, in its dormitories. Operating from 1844 until around 1860, when Foster retired to Illinois to live near his son, the institute exemplified the abolitionist belief that education was a necessary component of freedom for formerly enslaved people.

Image 1: 1957 photo of main house converted into a barn by the Greenleaf Family. Picture Lenawee Historical Society and Museum

Image 2: Harbaugh Hall 1860. Prior Foster lived and ran Coshocton, Ohio brand of the UGRR. Johnson-Humrick House Museum

William Lambert’s home once stood at 497 Larned Street in Detroit, Michigan where he operated and coordinated Undergroun...
08/26/2026

William Lambert’s home once stood at 497 Larned Street in Detroit, Michigan where he operated and coordinated Underground Railroad activities for countless freedom seekers. Born free and educated, Lambert arrived in Detroit in 1840 as a cabin boy and quickly established a successful tailoring and dry-cleaning business. His shop and home quietly functioned as an Underground Railroad station, reflecting the dual public and covert nature of his work.

A man of exceptional intellect and organizational skill, Lambert emerged as one of Detroit’s most influential Black leaders in the antebellum period. In 1842, he founded and led the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit, a Black-directed organization that coordinated aid for freedom seekers. Lambert played a central role in assisting freedom seekers, including the rescue of Robert Cromwell, who was forcibly seized under federal authority and swiftly conveyed to Canada. Closely allied with George DeBaptiste and William Webb, Lambert also maintained national connections with Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet and John Brown. Through political leadership, clandestine organizing and direct resistance, Lambert helped make Detroit a commanding terminal of the Underground Railroad.

Image: William Lambert Homesite Marker

The 1795 home of Quakers William and Deborah Parrish Wright in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was a key proper...
08/19/2026

The 1795 home of Quakers William and Deborah Parrish Wright in Columbia, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was a key property in a chain of safe houses that formed along Pennsylvania’s southeastern border counties during later 18th and early 19th centuries.

The Wrights were among the first families in the Susquehanna River Valley to regularly assist freedom seekers. Their network began with William’s sister Susanna and his brother-in-law, Jonathan Mifflin, who lived on their farm west across the river in York County, settling there in 1800. The Wrights harbored the formerly enslaved in their Columbia home. They organized escapes by disguising freedom seekers at their home and they took action in court to challenge enslavers in their community.

The Wright Family also opened their nearby croplands and orchards to settlement by waves of freedom seekers, circa 1820, establishing the core of Columbia’s free Black population and a place of refuge for later arrivals. The Wrights also worked secretly with William Whipper and Stephen Smith, Columbia’s wealthy Black lumber merchants who used their private railroad cars to transport freedom seekers. These actions and alliances became part of a multi-state system of support that emerged spontaneously as the enslaved liberated themselves in adjacent Southern States, with many finding their way to the Wright’s in Columbia and their fellow Quakers across the region and beyond.

Image: William and Deborah Wright House, Front Facade

The St. Charles History Museum, formerly the St. Charles Heritage Center is a 501 (c)3 not for profit organization, base...
08/05/2026

The St. Charles History Museum, formerly the St. Charles Heritage Center is a 501 (c)3 not for profit organization, based in St. Charles, Illinois. The Museum’s goals are to collect, preserve and present the long, rich history of St. Charles, the “Pride of the Fox Valley.”

The museum strives to share stories, engage the community and spread awareness of local and regional history through interactive exhibits, educational programs, articles and social media. It also contains a vast collection of documents that support Underground Railroad activity in the area. The town served as a hotbed of abolitionist activity and saw a strong contingency who participated on the Underground Railroad.

It is believed that St. Charles became a major junction for Freedom Seekers due to its proximity to Chicago and infrastructure. In 1842, a route on the Underground Railroad was planned through St. Charles and hundreds of Freedom Seekers made their way through town. Additionally, several freedom seeking families settled in St. Charles.

The Museum hopes to document the important role St. Charles played during the anti-slavery movement and highlight the forgotten stories of Freedom Seekers and abolitionists, alike.

Image: St Charles History Museum

Denver’s Riverside Cemetery is the final resting place of three historic figures with connections to the Underground Rai...
07/30/2026

Denver’s Riverside Cemetery is the final resting place of three historic figures with connections to the Underground Railroad. Henry Wagoner, Barney Ford and Silas Soule.

Barney Ford, a freedom seeker who fled enslavement in 1848, journeyed to Chicago to become a member of the black community there and began a career as an entrepreneur and civil rights leader, a path which ultimately led him to being a hotelier and restaurateur in Denver.

Born a free black man, Henry Wagoner was a civil rights leader in Chicago in the 1850’s. Along with Ford, Wagoner founded that city’s Vigilance Committee in September of 1850. Wagoner famously aided John Brown by hiding thirteen freedom seekers in his Chicago mill in 1859 before their journey north to Canada.

Meanwhile, Silas Soule, a veteran of “Bleeding Kansas” worked with John Brown in Lawrence and was a member of a group that executed a daring jailbreak. Together, their gravesites commemorate a legacy of abolitionism and civil rights leadership.

Image: Riverside Cemetery Marker

# Chicago

The Batavia, Illinois property of Reverend John and Lucinda Cross represents one of the few extant physical artifacts as...
07/28/2026

The Batavia, Illinois property of Reverend John and Lucinda Cross represents one of the few extant physical artifacts associated with a central figure of the mid-nineteenth-century Underground Railroad network.

Upon arriving in Illinois in 1839, the Cross family immediately began aiding freedom seekers, an effort that forced them to relocate frequently. By 1855, the family had settled in Batavia, Illinois and in 1858 purchased property in the "Institute Addition” of town. By this point in time, John Cross had a storied legacy acting as the equivalent of “Johnny Appleseed” in establishing a Northwestern Network to Freedom.

He made multiple trips across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, using Christian unity as a lynchpin to bolster these efforts. It was said that Cross personally hand selected the agents, routes and safehouses leading to Illinois and “established what is believed to be the first continuous line of underground railroad in the United States…from Quincy to Canada.” The Cross family would move to Iowa in 1860 but maintained ownership of their Batavia property until early 1869.

Image 1: Image of home

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