In the decades leading up to the Civil War, it's estimated that more than 3,000 people escaping from slavery traveled through northern Indiana on their way to Canada and freedom.
The freedom seekers came north through Missouri and Kentucky and often coalesced in the southern suburbs of Chicago, staying with abolitionists who then sent them on their way through northern Indiana and then through southwest Michigan to Detroit.
That's the narrative explained by Tom Shepherd, one of the founders of the Little Calumet River Underground Railroad Project. The group seeks to preserve the history of the Underground Railroad in the Midwest and is holding a talk Wednesday at the St. Joseph County Public Library.
Shepherd said the goal of the talk is to encourage local communities to research their town’s role in the railroad. In the long term, the Little Calumet River project hopes to create a national heritage trail from Chicago to Detroit showcasing the journey and struggles of freedom seekers and those who aided them along the way.
“We began to meet up with folks in Indiana who were saying ‘We didn’t know about this, but there was a safe house there, or that there was an abolitionist here," Shepherd said.
The road to establishing a heritage trail is a long one which requires immense amounts of research and documentation. But the Little Calumet River Project leaders aren't deterred. Shepherd said the group began when he and former professor Larry McClellan discovered a series of safe houses on the south side of Chicago and began piecing together the routes connection to sites in northern Indiana.
That route continues into Michigan and communities like Cassopolis have robust groups focused on the railroad.
