8A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
FRIDAY,APRIL25,2003
Photo courtesy Elmer Lindell
ABOVE: This popular photograph depicts the Lawrence man who rescued local resident John Doy from a St. Joseph, Mo. prison in 1859. Local abolitionist and Civil War veteran Joseph Gardner stands fourth from left.
RIGHT: Posters like this were common before the Civil War. The Fugitive Slave Act placed a $100 bounty on the head of any escaped slave.
From the undersigned, living on Current River, about twelve miles above Doniphan, in Niagara County, Ma., on 01st of March, 1840.
To the undersigned, with a note on his hand, on brown pants and sweatpuff work, and on an old black wool hat above snow. No. J1.
The above reward will be given to any person who may apprehend this offence.
Freedom CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
$100 REWARD! RANAWAY
there were abolitionists here, sure, but there were Free-Staters here, too, and the two groups didn't necessarily see eye-to-eye."
The Free-Staters viewed slavery as an economic issue, and many wouldn't hesitate to turn in their neighbors for harboring the black fugitives, Jansen explained.
Like his namesake, George Washington chose the latter.
So, slaves who made it this far could continue their flight, or dig in and fight.
The Fugitive Slave Act meant he had a bounty of $100 on his head after his owner reported him to authorities. Upon his arrival in Leavenworth from Quindaro, Washington did not move farther away from the potential trouble posed by bounty hunters. Instead he enlisted in the Union Army with the Kansas First Colored Infantry Division in August 1862.
In 1857, John Gardner, an abolitionist from Indiana, moved his family to the Wakarusa Valley, much of which is now covered by Clinton Lake, to support the free territory of Kansas.
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But he wanted to fight for what was right, Lindell said. "He didn't like slavery, and things were moving west, so he moved west, too."
"Gardner was English and the English were non-fighters," said Elmer Lindell of Lawrence, explaining why his great-grandfather moved to the frontier.
morning, some ruffians from Missouri came up there and knocked on the door," he said.
Gardner was drawn to the area by his abolitionist cousin, Dr. E.G. Macy, who had settled a few years earlier in that valley in a house still standing today. This house still includes a trap door in the living room floor that leads to the basement.
A gunfight ensued when Gardner refused to open the door. Before it was over, the former slave, Simpson, was dead. Only a thunderstorm stopped the fire that the Missourians started.
It didn't take long for Gardner to get involved after he arrived in the area with his family in March 1857. Just two years later, in July 1859, Gardner was among the group of ten men from Lawrence who rode more than 70 miles to St. Joseph, Mo., to free Dr. John Doy, Missouri authorities had arrested Doy weeks earlier for transporting escaped slaves to Nebraska.
"One night a guy in their group acted like he was drunk and the other two told the night jailer to lock this guy up," Lindell said, recounting his family's version of the rescue of John Doy. "When the jailer got his keys but, they locked the jailer in jail and took Dr. Doy and rode out of town without a shot fired."
"One night, about 1 in the
Gardner's cabin, on land just south of the Clinton Dam, had been a stop on the Underground Railroad for a few years by then. In the summer of 1860 an escaped slave named Napoleon Simpson was living with the Gardner family and working with the family in the fields, Lindell said.
"After having his wife and kids threatened like that, he was a little more interested in fighting the war," Lindell said.
So, like George Washington would do a year later, Joseph Gardner, a surveyor by trade, headed to Leavenworth to enlist in the Union Army.
In July 1861, Gardner joined the ranks of the 3rd Kansas Volunteer Regiment, but his deployment didn't last long. By September 1862, Gardner's unit had been reorganized as the 10th Volunteer Infantry in Paola. Working out of Fort Scott, Gardner was one of the handful of Union troops injured in fighting at Newtonia, Mo., about 20 miles southeast of Joplin, Mo.
It would be one of the last victories for Confederate troops in the area.
"He was sent back to what they called a hospital then, probably just a tent strung to a tree," Lindell said. "After he got healed up, he was discharged and then he re-enlisted, and got reinstalled as a lieutenant."
Less than one year later, in August 1863, Gardner would die in service as a lieutenant with the 1st Kansas Volunteer Colored Infantry near Fort Gibson in Oklahoma. Among his troops, in
a regiment that included many former slaves, was George Washington.
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Though the two men fought together, black troops did not find equality on the battlefield, said Washington's great-grandson Jimmy Johnson.
"White soldiers could be officers and got paid $13 per week and they were given their uniforms. Black soldiers couldn't be officers and got paid $9 a week and had to pay for their uniform after they were done," Johnson said.
After the warended, Washington came to the Lawrence area where he started farming in Bloomington-Clinton Township, not far from the Gardner family farm.
Even in death the soldiers were treated differently. At the military cemetery at Fort Gibson, where Gardner is buried, the white soldiers are laid to rest on the right side and the black soldiers are on the left, Lindell said.
Though there's no evidence the families were aware of each other, both have left a lasting legacy on this community and others.
Lindell went on to fight in another war, some 180 years after his great-grandfather, and he was a prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II.
One of Washington's daughters, Jimmy Johnson's grandmother, went on to teach school in Quindaro and Parkville, Mo. — two communities that played an integral part in Washington's flight to freedom. One of hers sons went on to get an undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas, and one of his sons did the same.
Jimmy Johnson didn't graduate from KU, though he was in the doctoral program here in the 1970s. After finishing a stint in the military and completing his Ph.D. in archeology, Johnson led students on a dig at the site of the Platte County farm where his grandfather was once a slave. The group found artifacts from the antebellum era, including cookware and chains.
"When I found those chains, well, it was spooky," Johnson said. "It was spooky for me to think that they had my great-grandfather chained up every night.
"Then I started thinking about
UNDERSTANDING
KANSAS' SLAVERY
HISTORY
Jayhawker: A name given to members of the bands who carried on irregular warfare in and around eastern Kansas in the Free State conflict and in the early part of the Civil War. They often combined pillage with guerilla lighting. Applied to these guerillas because of their habit of suddenly pouncing on the enemy. According to local historian Steve Jansen, Jayhawkers came from both Missouri and Kansas.
Free-Stater A resident of Kansas territory who wanted to abolish slavery more for economic reasons than moral ones, Jansen said. Jansen estimates 50 to 60 percent of Lawrence residents were Free-Staters, who saw themselves as family farmers going against the slave-holding, corporate farmers.
Abolitionist: A resident of Kansas territory whose desire to abolish slavery was based more on a moral concern than an economic one, Jansen said. Many abolitionists came to Lawrence with the town's founders through the Massachusetts immigrant Aide Society, but numbered only 20 to 30 percent of Lawrence residents at the time, Jansen said.
Quantrill's Raid: Early in the morning on August 21, 1863, a band of more than 300 proslavery guerillas from Missouri were led into Lawrence by 25-year-old William C. Quantrill. By the time they left more than 100 Lawrence men were dead and most of the town was burned to the ground.
how he got out.'
He escaped and stayed free through a combination of his own fortitude and the help of abolitionists along the way, Johnson said.
That same combination characterized Kansas in its formative years, said the daughter of one of Lawrence's founders. Annie Soule Prentiss, in a 1929 edition of The Kansas City Star.
"I look back over the years to the hardships and dangers and sacrifices made to plant a Christian state here, and it seems we bought this freedom at a great price." Prentiss said.
"Then I walk around and see this great city of Lawrence with the state university on the hill, the thousands of noble young men and women coming up from all parts of our free Kansas to be educated, and hundreds coming from free Missouri, too; when I realize that Missouri has been redeemed. I know it is worth all the sacrifices."
— Edited by Michelle Burhenn
Local Homes CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8A
archivist Judy Sweets.
"How are you going to find two independent sources of an illegal activity?" Sweets asked. "There's scanty documentation, so we have to rely on family history letters and newspaper articles for the most part."
So far, historians have documented between 30 and 35 sites in the Douglas County area and around 70 between the Missouri border and Topeka, depending on the historian asked.
In Lawrence, one site everyone can agree on is Grover's Barn. Sitting four miles west of town in the mid-1800s, Grover's Barn is a stop that has been well-documented through diary entries and letters. The barn structure was incorporated into what is now Firehouse No. 4 at 2819 Stonecabin Terrace.
One other site in town is more
disputed 290 words
The Miller Home, 1111 E. 19th St., was constructed by one of the town's first wealthy merchants, Josiah Miller, for his father. The Oregon Trail ran directly behind it, and it was one of the few structures Quantrill spared in his raid.
But the few mentions of escaped slaves being hidden in the smokehouse by members of the Miller family aren't enough to convince Martha Parker of the Clinton Lake Museum of the house's validity as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Dennis Dailey, professor of social welfare, has lived in the home for more than 20 years. He, along with Sweets and local historian Steve Jansen, disagree with Parker.
"It could have been." Parker said. "There's just not enough proof for me to say one way or the other."
This map depicts the Jim Lane Trail. The Underground Railroad trail is named for an active abolitionist who would go on to become a Kansas senator and Union General in the Civil War.
"There have only been three owners of this house," Dailey said of the 145-year-old structure. "The woman we bought the
house from told us, and she heard it from the last Miller to own the house, who sold it to her
"I don't think it was as active as some other places in the Wakarusa Valley," Dailey said.
"But" definitely think there was some activity here.
The Underground Railroad has taken on legendary status, Iansen said.
nel, they automatically think its part of the Underground Railroad." he said. "They take the 'underground' part of that quite literally. It's unlikely though that in a pioneer community like this was, that there would have been
"Whenever people find a tun-
Unlikely as that may be, anything that gets people to think about, or notice, the abundant history in the area is encouraging for community historians like Iansen, Parker and Sweets
"History's not only what happened, but what people think happened," Jansen said.
this elaborate system of tunnels taking people from house-to-house."
This summer the Watkins Community Museum of History 1047 Massachusetts St. will offer bus tours of Underground Railroad sites in the area to allow residents to see where this history really happened. Three tours will be offered as part of the Civil War Days commemoration in August, with each tour visiting 10-15 underground railroad sites in the area.
For more information contact the Douglas County Historical Society at wemhist@sunflower.com or 841-4109
Edited by Michelle Burhenn