Andrew Gregg Curtain of Bellefonte, five years before he became governor of Pennsylvania, leading a posse on horseback in an attempt to free an abducted African- American ex-slave. Famed Massachusetts Quaker and abolitionist Lucretia Mott visits Halfmoon Township and delivers a fiery antislavery sermon. A small African-American church in Bellefonte is part of a denomination known for providing assistance to fleeing slaves.
A new permanent exhibit, The Underground Railroad — A Journey to Freedom, which opened at the Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County in April, highlights an area of Centre County history that perhaps not many are familiar with. It’s widely recognized by historians that Pennsylvania as a whole was historically very important as a through-point for the Underground Railroad, and noted historian Charles Blockson has spelled out the history of black political engagement in Centre County and the prominent presence of Quaker families in and around Bellefonte, two ingredients needed to re up the engine of the metaphorical locomotive.
The exhibit doesn’t illustrate everything mentioned in the opening paragraph, some of which touches upon the Underground Railroad only in the sense that they are indicative of the historical spirit of abolitionism in Centre County, but the attendant brochure created by Penn State graduate student Mudiwa Pettus for the exhibit addresses most of them and offers additional insight.
The term “underground railroad” is not to be taken literally, of course. It’s a term used to reference the surreptitious movement of blacks out of areas where their freedom was threatened to areas where it was not. The risky activity was largely conducted by blacks, though a number of whites, many of them of the Quaker (more properly Religious Society of Friends) faith, also participated.
The recent discovery in the historic Linn House that is home to the museum of a “secret room” — the kind sometimes used in the 19th century to hide slaves — prompted museum staff to investigate Underground Railroad history in Bellefonte and eventually establish the exhibit and art installation in the secret room between the second and third floors at the museum. It features sketches by Lino Toyos, a local scenic designer, art works by several other artists, and an informational brochure.
The museum’s exhibits present information about structures in Bellefonte that are thought to have served as Underground Railroad stations during the 1800s, including the home of William Thomas (known as “The Wren’s Nest,”), the Samuel Harris House, and St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.
The executive director of Bellefonte Art Museum, Patricia House, notes that the Underground Railroad exhibit has been well received.
“I am very pleased with the interest we are getting from the community,” she says. “Lots of folks are visiting the space, sharing stories they have heard or sharing information from their own research. The exhibit has stimulated a dialogue about our region and about our history, and the strength and courage of people who were enslaved seeking freedom. We have had a large increase in school visits and inquirers from many people for a variety of reasons. The exhibit provides a place to acknowledge the important role this area played in the Underground Railroad.”
Constance Cole, a researcher from State College and decades- long collaborator with Blockson on research into African-American history and the Underground Railroad, was a part of the exhibit’s opening ceremonies. She presented findings that indicated that the Linn House should be considered part of the Underground Railroad from a much earlier time — around the 1830s — than had previously been thought to be the case. While the Underground Railroad connection to the Linn House is clearly legitimate, unfortunately,
Much of what researchers have to work with in trying to discern the history of the Underground Railroad is reminiscent of a self-guided driving tour developed by the Susquehanna Heartland Humanities Council called “Riots, Rumors, and Stories: The Underground Railroad and Abolitionists in the Valleys of the Susquehanna Region.” Rumors and stories are often the only “evidence” of Underground Railroad activity in many areas, including Centre County.
“There aren’t a lot of physical spots related to the Underground Railroad here in Centre County that you can see, though there are a number of families that were clearly involved,” Cole says. “If I were to pick a spot in Centre County with likely Underground Railroad ties, I’d pick Way Fruit Farm in Port Matilda. That’s where our largest free black population was, where the people were, where the jobs were.
The Ways were and are still a Quaker family. The Way family was among the first Quakers from Chester County to migrate to Port Matilda in 1792, according to Centre County Historical Society documents, and the land that became the Way Fruit Farm, according to the enterprise’s Web site, was purchased in 1826.
The aforementioned driving tour, devised years ago, suggests the Centre County Courthouse, St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Gray’s Cemetery in Halfmoon Township as suitable sites for Underground Railroad history. Dr. Donna King’s more recently devised walking tour version adds the Centre County Library & Historical Museum in Bellefonte and now the Bellefonte Art Museum for Centre County.
King is pastor at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and a former lecturer in the African-American Studies Department at Penn State. After the Underground Railroad exhibit opened, she gave a lecture on the role of the black church in the Underground Railroad that was based on a paper she had earlier presented at Oxford University titled, “The Role of the Black Church in Early Pennsylvania Underground Railroad History, Education, and the Politics of History.” She is scheduled to present a follow-up paper at Oxford in August.
“I think the exhibit is a wonderful portal to the historical abolition mindset in Bellefonte and the surrounding communities,” she says. “There were these strong statesmen, like Judge Walker, who had hidden rooms in their homes where slaves were hidden. There’s such a history of them standing up against slavery. I think it’s going to turn the tide in our perspective of the role of Bellefonte in the history of the Underground Railroad and of abolition in Pennsylvania. Now we’re able to put some of the missing pieces of narrative together and tell the true history of Bellefonte and its legacy of social justice.”
In the past, King has given Underground Railroad tours for her own classes, for a summertime Penn State public history program, for the Foxdale Retirement Village, and, most recently, in cooperation with the Centre County Library system.
“I was teaching English teachers [and later others] about multicultural education and social- justice education, and I would take them on field trips to historical sites in Bellefonte, including my church, St. Paul AME Church, where I was church historian,” she says. “I’m now pastor there.”
She plans further Underground Railroad- oriented tours for the future in Bellefonte to be called “Freedom Walk and History Tour,” but no schedule has yet been created. Those tours will include a stop at the Bellefonte Art Museum and its Underground Railroad exhibit.
“When we do the tours,” she says, “we will stop at the museum and look at the hidden room. A screenwriter is being employed to write historical scripts of some of the escape narratives associated with the church and the Bellefonte community.”
King’s doctoral work included work in multicultural education and in the process of teaching teachers. Her pilot teacher-education course was designed to teach about the Underground Railroad, followed by a Women’s Studies course specifically dealing with women and the Underground Railroad. This led her to an increased interest in public history and community heritage, and she taught a course on historic preservation and community heritage for the Penn State College of Engineering. She also recently secured an NEH “Created Equal” grant to do public history programming regarding the Underground Railroad, abolition, and civil rights, and she’s submitting a proposal to Penn State for a book about the ties between Penn State’s founders, abolition, black churches, and the Bellefonte community.
“The more I do research the more I find of the white and black allies who worked on the Underground Railroad and on abolition efforts,” she says. “The Underground Railroad in this region demonstrated the local ties of Bellefonte and other communities to the historical resistant struggles for freedom. There was, at historical points of time, a free black community in Bellefonte. This place had a legacy of social justice and an abolitionist mindset. It was a place where black people and white people came together to right a wrong like slavery. That’s very significant for the cultural heritage of this area.”
