Background
For thousands of men and women fleeing the opression of slavery, the Underground Railroad became their lifeline, their passage to freedom. Known alternatively as the Freedom Line, the Lightning Train, the Freedom Train, Mysterious Tracks, or the Trackless Train, the Underground Railroad wasn't a system of rails or trains but a loose organization of freed slaves and abolitionists -people- who harbored fugitives often at great peril to themselves. The federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made assisting of fugitives a crime, and anti-abolitionist sentiment made life unsafe for freed blacks and white sympathizers alike. The entire movement was shrouded in mystery, but the place of its birth has been alternately placed in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Even the origin of the term "Underground Railroad" is much disputed. Some sources indicate that as slave catchers came north, their quarry seemed to disappear underground and the term "Underground Railroad" was born.
The road to freedom was paved - with acts of heroism and courage. Three of these hard-made paths made their way through Lancaster County. The county's location along the Mason-Dixon line, its residents' devotion to freedom, and its proximity to other free Northern states made it ideal as a pathway to freedom. Some fugitives made their way to Columbia, others crossed the Susquehanna River into Southern Lancaster County at Peach bottom, and still others followed a path that lead them along the Octoraro Creek in the eastern portion of the county. Regardless the path, their destination was often Christiana and eventually, Philadelphia or Canada.
As many as 50,000 to 100,000 men and women escaped to freedom using the Underground Railroad network, but the exact number will never be known - many of the ledgers documenting their flight were destroyed. Oral histories and some records did survive, however, and these are enough to give us an idea of how slaves made their way north. Songs like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Brother Moses Gone to de Promised Land, Wade In The Water and Follow the Drinkin' Gourd served as directions for fugitives to follow. Using ingenious disguises and creative ploys (like one slave who mailed himself to freedom or others who hid in the false bottoms of wagons), slaves made their way out of bondage. Yet no story of the Underground Railroad would be complete without mention of the men and women who acted as "conductors" and "Stationmasters" along the pathway to freedom.
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