The Underground Railroad

Station Houses

Station houses were safe places for runaway slaves to stop and rest along their journey. Some station house owners would put lamps in a window or to the attached top of a pole as a sign their house was a safe place. They’d give the slaves food, water, and sometimes a change of clothes. There were different kinds of station houses: barns, attics, cellars, secret rooms in houses, churches, and more.

Quakers Levi and Catharine Coffin owned one of the most famous station houses on the Underground Railroad. Levi remembered seeing a line of slaves being led through a field near his house in North Carolina growing up. He was shocked at how they were treated and separated from their families. So when he learned that he and his wife’s home in Newport, Indiana was where three routes of the Underground Railroad met, he and his wife knew they had to take action. He once said, “Seldom a week passed without receiving passengers by the mysterious road.” It’s estimated that anywhere from two to three thousand slaves stopped by the Coffin house on their way North. They never lost a passenger.

Thomas Garrett was another white abolitionist and Quaker who worked the Underground Railroad. He witnessed his parents hiding runaway slaves in their home when he was a child, before the Underground Railroad was established. As a grown man, he turned his home in Wilmington, Delaware into one of the last stations before escaped slaves could reach freedom in Pennsylvania. It’s believed Thomas helped between two and three thousand people find a safe haven and passage North. People who were pro-slavery hated and feared Thomas. Maryland offered a $10,000 reward for his arrest. Eventually, he was brought to court, where he admitted to helping slaves escape. His punishment was to pay a fine which took all his money. But he continued to help slaves on their way to freedom. When he died in 1871, former slaves drew his casket through the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina, in an open carriage inscribed with the words “Our Moses.”

Many slaves running to freedom were afraid to ask for help. If they knocked on the wrong door, there was a risk the people who answered would turn them into their masters. The reward for returning a slave was more than a family made in a year. So, safe places were spread through word of mouth. Sometimes slaves felt safer to knock on doors of a station house owned by a black person or former slave. But no matter what, there was always a risk.

Miss Caroline’s Safe House

Addy and Momma are trudging onward when they see a white house with red shutters up on a hill. That must be the house Poppa told them about, owned by Miss Caroline! But is it truly safe to go there? They don’t know, but they know it’s a risk they must take. Addy goes to knock on the door herself, still disguised by a little boy. When an old white woman the same size as Addy answers the door, she has a frown on her face and looks angry. She demands the boy go away, because she won’t help the Confederate soldiers.

Addy realizes Miss Caroline believes the disguise, and she removes her hat and shakes out her braids. Addy explains she and her Momma are running away to freedom, and Uncle Solomon sent them. Miss Caroline’s anger fades. She ushers them inside and gives them food, hot baths, and fresh clothes. Addy sleeps on a real mattress, not one filled with itchy corn husks. Lying in Momma’s arms, Addy drifts to sleep.