Peter H. Michael
Guide to Freedom: Rediscovering the Underground Railroad In One United States County reveals Underground Railroad sites of Frederick County, Maryland, which lies amidst a major group of Underground Railroad routes just to the east of the Appalachians. Frederick County, a border county in a border state during the Civil War, directly adjoins the slave state of Virginia and the free state of Pennsylvania. Despite the geographic centrality of this county to Underground Railroad activity, most of its fascinating Underground Railroad history had nearly been lost to time. The recently rediscovered history of the Underground Railroad in the county presents one of the very few detailed pictures of the Underground Railroad in any border or southern state. Guide to Freedom lists all confirmed or suspected Underground Railroad safe-houses and routes in the county and rates each according to the likelihood that its oral tradition or documentation is authentic. What has emerged is a network of six confirmed routes, more than fifty confirmed or suspected safe-houses and a number of Underground Railroad safe-house operators and conductors. Of high interest to readers will be the stories of freedom seekers identified by name who passed through Frederick County including several who were sheltered at the author's own safe-house.
Peter H. Michael is publisher of Underground Railroad Free Press, the nation's largest circulation Underground Railroad news publication. Through its web-based Lynx and Datebook services, Free Press serves as the Underground Railroad community's nexus of Underground Railroad organizations. Mr. Michael founded the annually awarded Underground Railroad Free Press Prizes for contemporary Underground Railroad leadership, preservation and advancement of knowledge, the Underground Railroad community's top honors.
Mr. Michael and his wife Vicki, a painter and civic leader, own Cooling Springs Farm which his ancestors operated as an Underground Railroad safe-house. Cooling Springs Farm is one of the nation's most visited Underground Railroad sites and is open to the public for tours and study. He is the seventh Michael generation at the farm which his family founded in 1768. Listed on a number of historic registers, Cooling Springs Farm is believed to be the nation's only Underground Railroad safe-house still owned by the same family as in Underground Railroad times, or one of only two. Peter Michael also authored An American Family of the Underground Railroad which vividly tells the story of his family's Underground Railroad involvement and later work in fighting racism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Peter Michael serves as president of Michael Strategic Analysis, an award-winning strategic planning and market analysis firm which he founded in 1976. He completed Princeton's post-graduate program in demography on a Population Council fellowship, had his Berkeley MBA thesis published as the cover story of a national magazine, and as an undergraduate attended the University of Maryland on an academic scholarship.
Some regard the Underground Railroad as the noblest endeavor of conscience in United States history. The Underground Railroad existed for 280 years - more than a quarter of a millennium - from 1585 when the first enslaved people from Africa arrived in the New World at the Spanish settlement of Saint Augustine, Florida, to the end of the Civil War in 1865. The inception of the Underground Railroad, though it would not have a name for another 250 years, would have been when an enslaved person first escaped from the Saint Augustine colony and was aided by any other person, most likely a Native American.
The overwhelming majority of what transpired on the Underground Railroad was never recorded and much of the little that was has been lost to time which makes the Underground Railroad of today especially dependent on the oral traditions handed down though families, property owners and others. Because most involved in the Underground Railroad were illiterate, because the entire operation was illegal, because those who had assisted freedom seekers could still be prosecuted after the Civil War and because many families and communities were divided over slavery long after emancipation, much of the history of the Underground Railroad was never recorded and forever lost, carried unspoken to the grave by the brave souls who had been the Underground Railroad.
What remains today through the oral traditions of handed-down accounts and, in many fewer cases, actual documentation almost entirely from northern states is precious and dwindling as oral traditions continue to die out with the passing of Underground Railroad site owners and the descendants of freedom seekers, safe-house operators and conductors. Thus, it is vital to record and preserve intact Underground Railroad stories while they remain with us and to assure that they are not pushed to dusty back shelves to be forgotten by too much emphasis on the very small fraction of Underground Railroad history and sites ,fortunate enough to be documented. The purpose of this book is to put forth and preserve for posterity the collection of these stories from one United States county, Frederick County, Maryland, which found itself at the crossroads of the national argument over slavery, the Civil War and the Underground Railroad.
Regular travel on the Underground Railroad occurred as far west as the Great Plains but most Underground Railroad activity was concentrated into two bundles of routes on either side of the Appalachians. On the western side of these mountains, routes passing from slave states to the north tend to have been best documented in Ohio with its many safe-houses and routes, with a good number of sites also well defined in some places in Indi-ana, Illinois and even further west.
Routes east of the Appalachians are not well documented until one gets north of the Ma-son-Dixon Line and into Pennsylvania, the first free state which freedom seekers encoun-tered until November 1, 1864, when Maryland abolished slavery. Frederick County, Mary-land, a border county in a border state, had distinctly split sympathies regarding abolition and slavery with the predictable result of virtually all of its Underground Railroad sites being clandestine at the time and therefore remaining very shrouded until recent research. The topic of Guide to Freedom is the Underground Railroad in Frederick County, Maryland, where I reside and have been researching the Underground Railroad intensively for the past seven years.
Frederick County sits directly amidst a 50-mile swath between southern Maryland to the east which had strong pro-slavery views and the Appalachians to the west where the ter-rain made flights to freedom more difficult. This 50-mile stretch of friendlier, easier-to-negotiate territory funneled freedom seekers through Frederick County, the neighboring Montgomery and Washington Counties of Maryland and Washington, DC. Frederick County sits at the center of this funnel.
As of early 2008, sixty-one confirmed or suspected Underground Railroad sites have been identified in Frederick County, beginning to flesh out the picture of what the Underground Railroad in the county looked and felt like in its time. With the renewed enthusiasm for the Underground Railroad, stories in Frederick County are beginning to surface more and more often and the list of possible sites grows. Even as it was in its day, we can never be certain whether some sites said to have been involved in the Underground Railroad in Frederick County, Maryland, actually were involved, but this ambiguity reflects the very nature of the Underground Railroad in its time.
In the rest of Guide to Freedom, enjoy your tour of the rediscovered Underground Railroad in Frederick County, Maryland.
