Underground Railroad Historian Carol Mull Introduces The Library's New Online Product 'Signal Of Liberty' And Discusses The Underground Railroad

Thu, 08/31/2006 - 10:01am

When: October 17, 2009 at the Traverwood Branch

Step back into history as Underground Railroad Historian Carol Mull introduces the Library's new online product, Signal Of Liberty - a digitized version of a weekly abolitionist newspaper published in Ann Arbor between 1841 and 1848. Users will be able to browse issues of the paper and it will be full-text searchable on aadl.org. This project is part of the Making of Ann Arbor partnership with the Bentley Historical Library and the University of Michigan Digital Library Production Services. Refreshments will be served at this kick-off event, which will include a demo of this new historical resource and a discussion of the Underground Railroad by this prominent local historian and author. Carol teaches and lectures extensively on the Underground Railroad and has written a book on its history in Michigan, due to be published Spring, 2010.

Transcript

• [00:00:26.22] JOSIE PARKER: We're taping this afternoon's presentation, so we're going to use a microphone, and later when there's an opportunity for questions, we'll ask you to indicate that you have one and we'll bring the microphone to you, so that when this played on the website or in other places it's played, people will hear your questions well. That being said, I'd also like to ask you check your cell phones and make sure that they're off or in a sleep mode so that we don't have rings in the middle of our presentation. Thank you.
• [00:00:56.42] I'm Josie Parker. I'm here with the library system in Ann Arbor, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to Traverwood on a gorgeous fall afternoon, even though there is a Go Blue afternoon going on, we still have quite a crowd. This is wonderful. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about this project. I'm going to let the library who are responsible for this great work do that.
• [00:01:18.80] But I am going to say that I remember when we first had conversation about the Signal of Liberty about three years ago, and how excited we all were at the library to be a part of this, and to have the possibility at the public library in Ann Arbor to bring this in, get it digitized, organized, and now available to the world. And we have a lot of partners, and I'm going to let Amy Cantu and Andrew MacLaren recognize those partners. I think they'll do a better job at that than I am. And I'm going to recognize Amy and Andrew. I'm going to embarrass you both. It's not on purpose, but [INAUDIBLE].
• [00:01:57.30] It is a tremendous pleasure for the public library in Ann Arbor for many reasons. The community's the big one because there's a library system with amazing support that we have is pretty unusual. And right now with the economic situation that's sweeping the country, it is very unusual, and I'm very grateful to you for supporting the library in all the ways that you do. But without you and your support we would not be able to have the people working at the library, who are working at the library, with the skills and the interests and the energy that they bring. And it's a very interesting place that Ann Arbor as a community, and it attracts really interesting people. And two of them are working here today and are responsible for bringing this to you, and they are Andrew MacLaren and Amy Cantu, librarians at Ann Arbor District Library.
• [00:02:49.91] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:02:57.97] AMY CANTU: Thanks, Josie. And thanks again to everybody for coming out today. I'm just going to take a moment to be sure to acknowledge some of the partners, people that we work with who help with this project. And then Andrew will be giving a demonstration of the Signal of Liberty site for a few minutes, followed by a presentation by [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
• [00:03:18.74] First of all I'd like to thank the folks at the Bentley Historical Library, [? Angenia, ?] and [? Bill Warwick ?], and Frances Wood. Again, as Josie mentioned, you had these conversations a few years ago and we're really happy to see this finally get off the ground. The digital library production services at the University of Michigan, John Weiss, and John Wilkins. And I'd like to thank Carol Mull. In the past few weeks she's been very helpful in helping us get this project up and running, identifying some photographs and writing and production.
• [00:03:52.38] I'd also like to mention before we get started that the African-American Cultural and Historical Museum is having a belated journey and freedom tour tomorrow. It's at 2 o'clock. It runs from 2:00 to 5:00, and we have handouts here on the table if you'd like to take one at the end of the day. I believe they still have room. It's from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. It's $15.00, and I hope that we may have Deborah [? Meadows ?] here. I think she's-- there she is. Oh, great. She's going to tell you just a little bit more about it. She'll give you the accurate information. We also have evaluation forms, if you would take a moment to fill them out at the end.
• [00:04:33.91] With that, I'd like to introduce Karen [? Janya ?] to say a couple of words on behalf [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
• [00:04:39.15] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:04:44.57] KAREN JANYA: Thanks. I just have a few words to say it's been a real pleasure working with the community and they've been just incredible. The DLPS for putting this altogether, but ultimately it was Amy's perseverance that really go this up and running, but I just wanted to thank Amy a whole bunch for this.
• [00:05:03.62] AMY CANTU: Deborah, would you like to just tell us a little bit about the tour? Can you come up?
• [00:05:13.56] DEBORAH: Real briefly, this is a great opportunity to visualize some of the areas in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti that are associated with the underground railroad. Specifically the Beckley Home. [UNINTELLIGIBLE], and as we mentioned earlier, there will be a three-hour tour from 2:00 to 5:00. Pick-up and drop-off is at Washtenaw Community College. Tickets are $15.00. I won't hang on the bus for three hours straight. We'll get off at Kerrytown and walk around so you have a chance to stretch your legs, if you want. But there's a rich history in this area. And so I welcome to every one of you who would like to take part.
• [00:05:55.09] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:05:59.53] AMY CANTU: And now Andrew MacLaren is going to go over the site, how to browse and search briefly with you.
• [00:06:09.10] ANDREW MACLAREN: Hi. Some of this is going to look very familiar to those of you who have seen some of our other online projects. You've seen the Ann Arbor city council minutes, or the City of Leaves project. Much of this is built on the same system. So it's all going to look very familiar to you.
• [00:06:24.76] This is the site as you get to it, signalofliberty.aadl.org. Carol Mull has very graciously written an introduction for us for those who may not be familiar with the Signal of Liberty. I'm just going to show you a little bit about how you can browse the Signal of Liberty, how you can search the Signal of Liberty and what it's going to look like for everybody. The Signal of Liberty was only published for about eight years. You can see that on the issue right here is probably [UNINTELLIGIBLE]-- it was published in almost always four pages. Let me hop into one of these here. I'll grab one from 1842 here. So you can see when you go in at this level, you can see all of the articles in the paper listed there.
• [00:07:09.12] We'll select this one here-- this one's kind of interesting. When you get to this level you can see that you have a large image of the article itself, and over on the right you have the full page image here, which I'll show you in a moment. This one I particularly like because of this right here. The Signal of Liberty was a struggling newspaper. You could bring in a cord or wood and they would give you a subscription for free. It's just the nature of running a newspaper in the 1840s, and maybe not so different today.
• [00:07:39.84] If we go to search the signal, I'm going to do a search for Crosswhite here. You're going to learn a little bit more about Adam Crosswhite and the Crosswhite case. While Carol was talking I'm going to get here. Let's go into this one right here. You can see a big, beautiful-- we've got some beautiful color images of these pages. We had the original paper sent off, and they really brought us back some beautiful images that allowed us to get some really wonderful text out of them when we we were scanning [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
• [00:08:13.13] If you're on this level here, if you click on this image right here in the box, you're going to get the full page image a little bit larger than it was there. Again, these are very large images, so they take a few minutes. And now you can see how big they are. Those images are enormous images, and hopefully anything yo'ure looking for-- you can even see in this one-- you can see the burn though from the ink on the other side of the paper.
• [00:08:39.03] So these are all very beautiful, they're very evocative images. And if we go back up-- let me go back up to the issue that we're in. So you can see that you can jump back and forth through the articles. You can go to the next paper here, image, we are going through the newspaper. And there are also PDF versions for any of us out there-- again, they're very large files. But there are PDF versions of everything, so you can get another version of it to have. And hopefully this provides a level of accessibility for everything that anybody can look at this on any of their computers. This is taking a little longer than I expected it to. But again, it's OK. That's sort of the way it is.
• [00:09:28.25] JOSIE PARKER: And you understand if people want to see the originals, they are developed for the library. So if you don't want to wait for them--
• [00:09:36.56] ANDREW MACLAREN: So if you don't want to wait for this, you can go here. But if you are willing to wait for this, you can see that these images are as big as you could ever wish for. The level of detail that you can get-- you can see the grain of the paper in this. And that's what we were really going for. We really wanted to give people as much of the experience of seeing it in the original as we could, but at the same time make it very searchable so that you didn't have to peruse the volumes and volumes, which Carol will probably tell you what's that like.
• [00:10:09.72] The other thing we've included here is we've included just a very small set of images connected to the Signal of Liberty, large images and small because believe it or not, the photographic record in the 1840s was not scanned. Exactly. And we've also included additional resources, pages just some links to the issue of Freedom Trail and some various other articles that have been written about the underground railroad and about the resistance to slavery movement in Michigan that hopefully will help people learn about a little bit more about what the Signal of Liberty is all about and hopefully get some context for it. So I'm going to jump back over to Amy here and she will introduce Carol.
• [00:10:58.24] AMY CANTU: I just would like to give a brief introduction for Carol. We're very happy to have her here here today. As a researcher and historic preservation consultant, Carol is involved in numerous underground railroad projects, as well as museum work. She graduated with a Masters degree in historic preservation from EMU in 1998. And was appointed by governors Engler and Granholm to the Michigan Freedom Trail commission, where she serves as the chairperson of the site identification and preservation committee. Carol is also the scholar in residence of the African-American cultural and historical museum, and serves on several preservation boards.
• [00:11:34.34] She's currently working as a curatorial consultant of the Kempf House Museum in Ann Arbor. She teaches and lectures on underground railroad, and she's written a book titled, Unshackled: The Underground Railroad in Michigan, which is due to be published in spring of 2010. Please welcome Carol Mull.
• [00:11:51.26] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:11:57.96] CAROL MULL: Thank you very much, Amy.
• [00:12:08.02] So, welcome everybody. I'm very glad to see a nice crowd here. I'd also like to thank, first of all, the University of Michigan football team for blowing up the competition so I could be here and not feel guilty at all about missing the game.
• [00:12:24.10] But most of all, I'd like to thank the Ann Arbor District Library and the Bentley Historical Library for putting this online. As was said earlier, I did write a book, and it took me four years to research what I needed to complete the book on the history of the underground railroad in the State of Michigan, mostly because I had to go through the Signal of Liberty issues one by one on microfilm like this trying to-- you could see from the quality of some of it, which they had so greatly improved. I can't believe how difficult it would have been to do it on microfilm with the old copies, and now they have it. I am so excited. I am just so excited about it. I consider it to be a very rich resource, and I'm going to tell you why I think it is.
• [00:13:19.95] We're all very busy and it's hard to find time that was published 107 years ago when there are so many other things to read that are current. But I'm going to tell you today why I think it's worth your time. And that is because you're going to find a lot of truths in what was written a very long time ago that applied to your life today. I think that we all had some misconceptions about some historical facts, and what was published at this time, although slightly bias, because after all it was an anti-slavery newspaper and did have an agenda, still has truths that I think has been lost throughout history.
• [00:14:05.40] Also, there were some issues that were of greatest importance than that are still today, and getting a perspective for how they focused and addressed those issues at that time in the 1840s might help us consider and think about those issues today. Certainly there were racial and ethnic tensions. Very important religious conflicts. And definitely political.
• [00:14:41.27] The other reason to look at the Signal of Liberty newspaper is to find connections, especially for those of us who live here in Ann Arbor. These are connections that are not only physical, but emotional, because these places that are tied to the publications, to the Liberty, exist in our lives still. Some of my preservation friends here today will say not as many as should be around today, but there are still some, and maybe that's one thing that we'll gain from this is that those of us who pull these connections out of looking at the Signal of Liberty will say wow, that's important to me and I do want to make sure that stays in our community.
• [00:15:26.64] And one of the places is this marker that still exists at the original location of the founding of the Michigan Anti-slavery Society, which was on Huron Street. And this marker is at the location and you've probably driven past it hundreds of times if you live in Ann Arbor, and may not ever have noticed it because it is off to the side a little bit. It's at the driveway of the Ann Arbor News building. So, for those who have driven by and never noticed it, this is now your opportunity to find this place of great importance to us. Not only because of this newspaper, but because this is where our State anti-slavery society was founded.
• [00:16:15.69] I talked about the political issues. Well, politics, it's interesting when you read these articles in the Signal, I've never been somebody who really liked to read about politics so much. I kind of skipped to the more interesting social issues. And yet, when I looked at these political articles, I was fascinated because they use language you could never get away with today. They would slander each other right and left, but it's fun to read. And one of the reasons is that our presidents for this entire time period in the 1840s when the Signal was published were slave holders. And yet, there were probably more people in the country opposed to slavery than willing to ignore it or is favor of it.
• [00:17:08.12] And so, you can imagine all the conflicts, especially with some of them were elected in unusual ways just based on the way the political system worked. So it's very interesting to read some of the politically-oriented articles within the-- every issue that came up had some sort of political background to it, political basis, but also in some way it was affected by the issue of slavery.
• [00:17:47.13] So, what we find when we look at this newspaper and we start thinking about the differences between then and now is that I think I found that people had a greater willingness to speak out. This is William Lloyd Garrison in Boston who was quite famous. But of course, there were people all over the country who were lecturing, talking, and that willingness was risky at that time. People who first came out to speak against slavery and write about it often faced terrible repercussions.
• [00:18:27.19] The first people to speak out against something, which was unpopular at the time, talking about being opposed to slavery was unpopular because people were very afraid to disrupt the union. They were very concerned with what would happen eventually, did happen with this States seceding from the union, and tearing apart the nation. Some people just said let's ignore this issue because it's too volatile, and families weren't speaking to each other, neighbors weren't getting along over this same issue.
• [00:19:01.27] So people who came and lectured about it often faced a lot of hostility. When you read these articles in the paper, you can imagine these people standing on a platform in public, eggs being thrown at them, tomatoes being thrown on them, and you think what courage it took for people to stand up their convictions and face people, and risk their lives, because in fact, there were people killed who were speaking on this issue.
• [00:19:34.83] And just because I put William Lloyd Garrison up there did not mean that we only had European Americans speaking on the issue or writing about it. In fact, there were many African-Americans who took a very strong stand and spoke publicly and wrote publicly. I think that was maybe for me one of the more surprising elements in reading the Signal of Liberty newspaper was how many people were writing, how many black people were writing their own newspapers. I had no idea that the first African-American newspaper was 1827. This certainly preceded the Signal of Liberty by many years.
• [00:20:19.55] And I think that in reading the Signal it does help us dispel some myths about African-American participation in the anti-slavery movement. And of course, later in the underground railroad. By publishing articles in these newspaper, and speaking, they helped with telling people how the slave holders' arguments were false. Because obviously, here were people of color who were highly educated, highly intelligent, sometimes with little education, but highly intelligent, well-read, and well-spoken, and so they were the spokesperson themselves for why slavery was so wrong.
• [00:21:13.30] Again, these same people formed their own organizations. At first I thought they were not included in the Michigan Anti-slavery Society itself. Women were not included. They weren't encouraged to form their own ladies societies, even though the first anti-slavery societies in the State of Michigan were founded by women. Soon the statewide organization was founded and women were not involved in it.
• [00:21:48.62] But later on-- you know, even though they didn't attend those meetings, they did have a voice in the ladies meetings, and they had a good affect. They raised a lot of money for causes, they helped find schools. Unfortunately, their minutes from their meetings were not published in the Signal of Liberty the way the minutes of the African-American organization were published, and the statewide anti-slavery society minutes.
• [00:22:20.42] So, reading these minutes is very interesting. You might think oh, reading the minutes of a meeting, how can that be interesting? But it is, if you read them over time, to see how they changed their stance. Initially, people were just maybe opposed to slavery, but they really were not as strongly in favor of abolishing slavery. But as we go through the years that this newspaper is published, by the end of it you see that people were very much ready to take on the mantle of saying we want it abolished. And so the language becomes stronger, and you see how this newspaper was able to persuade many people to come to their way of thinking, and it was highly effective.
• [00:23:13.14] So, here is our Signal of Liberty. I just want to give some facts about it. It was started-- well not the Signal of Liberty. The first anti-slavery newspaper in the State of Michigan was started in Jackson, and it was starred by the Michigan State Anti-slavery Society.
• [00:23:33.49] One of the things that came out of that very first meeting in Ann Arbor was we think that we should have a newspaper, because that's the way to persuade people about the laws of slavery. So we'll publish and get people to come on board and then we'll get more societies, and the more societies we have, the more powerful we'll become. So it was about those two things, the newspaper and then the societies.
• [00:23:59.25] So, the newspaper first was started on Jackson. The Sullivan brothers were asked to head it-- it was really Nicholas Sullivan first of all, but he came out and brought a printing press with him to do it, but it was very, very expensive to run a printing press, to find somebody who knew how to run a printing press, and to get subscriptions. There weren't many people living in the state at that time.
• [00:24:26.12] You think about just distributing the newspaper on a regular basis, and how costly it was just to, not only get money from people, because money was also scarce in those days. There were a lot of banking issues. So, getting the financial support meant that-- and this newspaper, the first one did not succeed. So then they said, OK, we're going to find someone new and they came up with Peter Foster.
• [00:24:55.69] Then his partner who had moved to-- Peter Foster was one of the first settlers in this area, and Guy Beckley didn't come until several years later. But together they said they would publish the newspaper. They chose Ann Arbor as the site for publication. The place that they chose is on Broadway Street. The building is gone now, but after you cross the Huron River, you cross the Broadway bridges, you can see that the block of buildings there is the exchange block where the St. Vincent DePaul shop is. That's opposite where this building was, the Huron block. And the Huron block had a store on the lower level, and that belonged to Josiah Beckley. Then above it was the printing office, and that was where Guy Beckley, Reverend Guy Beckley and Theodore Foster published the paper.
• [00:25:57.95] So you see all these places that link us to this history. I go by these places and I just feel a history just because I know about it now.
• [00:26:10.40] So, what are we going to find when we look at this newspaper? What did they concentrate on? What did they want to tell us when they published this newspaper? They certainly had an agenda, and there certainly are some biases that you'll find in the paper because they were trying to persuade people to oppose the institution of slavery.
• [00:26:37.32] So, they concentrated mostly on politics. National politics especially. After the first year, or actually in the year that they first started publication in Ann Arbor, the anti-slavery movement decided that they need to go national politically, and they created a national party for elections, the liberty party. The newspaper then became the voice of the liberty party. And there were newspapers in every state in the north, and even some in the south, believe it, that supported liberty party. So you're going to have a lot of politics in the newspaper because they were supporting that national party.
• [00:27:23.76] Then all the anti-slavery societies. You'll find all the minutes from those meetings, and you'll also find how many other minutes there were from other meetings. There were temperance societies. Then there were statewide anti-slavery society meetings. But then there were counties that had their meetings, then there were local counties that had their meetings. Then they started a young man's society for the youth in the community. And you can't believe all of these different groups just it was trying to reach every single element of society.
• [00:28:03.33] And then the other thing you'll find are the stories. Of course, this is what I think most people find most interesting and fascinating. But you do need to have those other stories to put it in context. Because the escapes from slavery and the underground railroad don't have so much meaning unless you understand why it was necessary to escape from slavery, and why people needed help to do that. And that, of course, is the basis of the underground railroad.
• [00:28:32.47] So, one of the things that the Signal of Liberty sought to do was to describe what slavery was. If you think about it, there were many northerners who, in the 1840s, had been born in New York or New England-- some of these states where slavery was not necessarily abolished already, but it was on its way out. And so there really were not many people enslaved anymore. Perhaps people really did not know what enslavement entailed. They did not understand the brutality of it sometimes. The lawlessness of it. And so that was something that this newspaper could do. It could describe what it meant to be enslaved-- not only the loss of freedom, but the loss of personal happiness, the separation of families, that sort of thing.
• [00:29:33.82] I think that was something that didn't occur to me before was how people who maybe have been born in Michigan in the 1830s growing up really did not understand what slavery was. This was a free state and there was not slavery here at that time. And so it helped interview people who came through, escaping from slavery to get their own words to describe what it was. And that helped to persuade other people how wrong it was.
• [00:30:05.79] So, what happened is that Foster and Beckley found that there were people escaping on their own. Most of the south emancipators in the 18-- well, we have people as early as the 1820s. But in the 1830s coming through, and by 1840 when they were writing a newspaper would willingly give some interviews about their escape. Unfortunately, for us looking back, some of them didn't give us any names, because you really couldn't give names, because a person might be captured then. A couple of them did because they were continuing on to Canada where they knew that they would be safe and could not be returned to slavery.
• [00:30:49.62] So, we do have some interviews, including a man named Robert Cox who described the reasons that he escaped, which were that he was no longer able to bear listening and watching to his own mother being tied and whipped or his sister being given the same kind of treatment. Those sorts of articles were-- they did achieve their effect in the sense they also upset other people in the community who protested that Foster and Beckley should not have been publishing that sort of material in their newspaper. That wasn't the place for it or whatever.
• [00:31:36.17] And so they did have some protests in the beginning, nothing violent. They had red paint put on the door of the publishing house, the printing house, and then articles written to them. And they responded bring it on, we're going to keep our stance, we're not going to back down. We believe in what we're doing and believe it's right.
• [00:32:00.51] So, one of the escapes that happened was Caroline Quarrelles Guy Beckley wrote in the Signal of Liberty, as I said, would work with people who came through. They would often interview people and write about it. For Caroline Quarrelles we know about her escape because the man who helped her escape from Saint Louis across at least five states-- she went up in Wisconsin and came across-- wrote about stopping. And he said that they went all the way across Michigan. They did not name any of the places where they stayed specifically, except someplace in Climax Prairie. Then he said and then we were entertained by the editors of the Signal of Liberty. Entertained was the word that they used back then, just when they stayed over and somebody took are of them or whatever.
• [00:32:53.19] Well, this case of Caroline Quarrelles she was one of many, has now taken on a very big life in the State of Michigan, and some undertakings are going on now, and this could end up being a really huge thing for this State. There are people who right now are trying to list the Detroit River as an international heritage site. And they are hoping to have Detroit River be a place where you could go and have all sorts of interactive ways to learn about the escape to freedom and crossing.
• [00:33:39.90] And they're using the Caroline Quarrelles story as a basis. And so there are some meetings at the end of this month, and some of us that are here are going to those meetings. Other people in other states have taken this one story and-- we are so lucky that of all the places in Michigan where she stayed, the one we absolutely have confirmation of is right here in Ann Arbor, and tied to the Signal of Liberty.
• [00:34:07.80] Anyhow, we don't know exactly where she might have stayed at the Beckley House. I think he was friendly with the sheriff, and so she probably just slept in a nice bedroom. But on the other hand, there were other people who did stay at the Beckley House on different occasions. And people knew about him, so it may be that he had people in other places and hide them on occasion.
• [00:34:31.42] One place, other than his brother Josiah's place, which is just down the road, which exists still today is the schoolhouse that the Beckley's built on Traver Road. It's very interesting. It was just a little schoolhouse, it's [UNINTELLIGIBLE] now. But it has a trap door in the kitchen area, and it goes into this rather large space in the cellar. I've been to many places that are supposed to be hiding places, and some of them were interesting, and some of them can be explained for man other purposes.
• [00:35:08.24] This one is interesting because it was a schoolhouse, so why would there have been a need for a cellar with storage when it was just a school, only operated in the daytime. It was just a small school. So it's very interesting. And of course, with the location where is was, sitting up on a hill just over the river bank and the railroad tracks, and of course, the Beckleys, and all the Beckley family that lived in lower town-- there were about five of them that lived there, and they were all opposed to slavery and listed in different articles as tending meetings or whatever.
• [00:35:46.90] Now, Theodore Foster did not live in Ann Arbor, he lived in Scio township, and he had a store there. Grace Shackman here wrote about it in an article and spoke about his history. He also was on the underground railroad, and was found to have somebody hiding in his basement at one time. The neighbors were pretty upset about it. He ended up getting-- I don't want to say he was picked out in his church, but he ended up leaving the church shortly thereafter.
• [00:36:19.89] It was over this whole issue with him hiding somebody in his house and the children playing in the basement. It would be something that was acceptable as long as people didn't talk about it and they pretended it wasn't going on, but once the man was exposed then they had to address it. And obviously, not all the neighbors were in favor of it, so he was discouraged from his activity and left his church, which was a very important part of his life, as it was for most people of this time period.
• [00:36:51.50] Then shortly thereafter, when Guy Beckley left the newspaper, Foster did as well, and he moved to Lansing.
• [00:37:03.33] Another person who contributed to the Signal of Liberty and then he started his own newspaper in Canada later called The Voice of the Fugitive was Henry Bibb. Henry Bibb is a very interesting man, and his book is a great reading because he escaped several times because he kept getting caught again, but he kept escaping. It's very entertaining reading. He was incredibly articulate. When he lectured in this area-- he lectured in Saline, in Salem, in Ann Arbor. The anti-slavery society had him go on a lecturing tour. People who heard him-- and there's a great article in the Signal of Liberty about listening to him and saying I think he may be the best orator of our time.
• [00:37:59.89] Another person who was outside of this area, but on the underground railroad was Nathan Thomas. He wrote that he had at least 1,000 people at the time and he was operating underground railroad stations come through his place. Before him was Erastus Hussey and his wife in Battle Creek, and they, too, said that they had at least 1,000 people during that time.
• [00:38:24.74] Nathan Thomas, I mention him because these names will keep coming up. And so when you're looking at the paper, and you see the list of people that attend a meeting, especially look at the list of the people that were on the executive committee, and then the people who were the agents for the Signal, and when you see the column "Agents for the Signal," that means the people who were selling the subscriptions. Now, if you're selling a subscription to the paper, obviously, you can endorse the paper. I don't think anybody would hesitate to think that you were opposed to slavery if you were.
• [00:39:03.58] Well, it turns out that in my research for my book, every time I'd see one of these lists, every single person on there was an underground railroad agent in section one of two, because the agencies changed over the years.
• [00:39:16.10] So these people are the same people who were officers of the anti-slavery society, agents for the Signal of Liberty selling subscriptions, and very important people in helping people find freedom.
• [00:39:34.99] I mentioned Jonathan Walker because his history is another one that's in the paper. And he has a connection with Michigan as well. He was a man who was caught in Florida helping people escape, and sent to jail. He was branded with the letters SS on his hand, and the SS was for slave stealer. I wanted to put this slide up here because it ties in with poetry in which you'll find in most issues of the Signal. There will be a poem in the very front page. And later John G. Whittier was one of the people who submitted poems, as well as several women and other local poets that we don't even know sometimes who they were. But there were famous people who wrote poems for the Signal of Liberty, and his poem called The Branded Hand was one of them that appeared. Jonathan Walker later moved to Muskegon, and that's his memorial, he's buried there.
• [00:40:42.14] There are many of these connections to Michigan that I had never known existed before.
• [00:40:50.25] When we get to 1847, 1847 was a year when we just had an incredible number of escape stories and attempted kidnapping stories or capture stories. There are several of them. They're fascinating because as you read the Signal of Liberty you'll find that they start an announcement, and then you'll read something else where's there's a follow-up and then you start reading the court cases. And some of these go on for years and they have different resolutions. And some of them you will not find the resolution in the Signal because it went past the time of publication.
• [00:41:26.58] The Crosswhite case is one of the more interesting ones and it's very well covered in the Signal of Liberty, and this happened in Marshall, Michigan where the kidnappers came up from Kentucky, and took Adam, who's pictured there and his wife and children out of the house and-- well, tried to take them out of the house. They broke down the door and then they were unable to take them because the citizens of Marshall said you're not taking them. So there were many court cases that followed this. It's very interesting to read the take from the Signal of Liberty and get the behind the scenes sort of like who actually spoke up and who reported this. It's good reading.
• [00:42:17.35] So, the other case that took place in the same year was the Cass County raid. They call it the Kentucky raid. And this was a terrible one where there was violence where a whole group of men came up from Kentucky, and a posse, and they planned it advance. They knew that there were at least two very large settlements of African-Americans, both free and self-emancipated, living in Cass and Berrien Counties and they planned this attack to go and rescue some of them.
• [00:42:56.65] One of the people they were after was Perry Sanford, and he has escaped not many months before the attack came. And these men broke into this area and grabbed people from their beds. Some people resisted, some were able to run away, but many were tied up, including children and thrown on the wagons. I guess I won't tell you how it ends. You can read it in the Signal yourself. But it was actually the same kind of story as in the Crosswhite case where the citizens already had banded together to protect these people.
• [00:43:43.09] There were especially Quakers in that area, and they had a long history of making an area where these people would be safe, this community, and protecting them. And then when this happened, they made chase and rescued them. Most of the people who had been captured left for Canada immediately. Others stayed on. But it's the same sort of thing where it ended up in long court cases. And the outcome in the end was not so great for the Michigan citizens who helped. So those people that you read about in the Signal of Liberty often, not only put their lives on the line to be part of this effort to end slavery, but they put the lives of their families on the line as well, because they sometimes lost everything in these court cases.
• [00:44:44.22] So, what else will you find in the Signal of Liberty? Well, there's some fun stuff, too. It's not all politics and sad cases. You'll see a lot of advertisements and notices. One of the things you see often is people writing that they found a cow in their front yard. It seemed to be a standard thing back in the day that a cow would roam. And so, when one would get loose in somebody's yard, what would they do? They would just say well, I'm going to have to send a notice into the paper because I don't know who this animal belongs to, and it's been feeding off my grass, and I wish this person would come and get their cow or else I'm going to keep it.
• [00:45:26.83] So it is really funny how often you find these notices that I have, and they'll describe brown-- that your cow has been here since this date and please come and get it and pay for damages. So there are a lot of funny notices like that.
• [00:45:45.43] Medical cures. I don't know if you noticed, but there was a cure for baldness back in 1840. I don't know what happened to the cure, but it was published back then that it was just a topical cream and it took care of it. There were so many other things that could be taken care of with all sorts of ointments and drinks and all sorts of things. I don't know if there were the scientific studies attached to them that we have nowadays, but back then they were some of the biggest advertising source were these cures that you would read about.
• [00:46:23.76] And then there is Saleratus. So probably the only person in the room who can tell us what this is is going to be Grace or Susan, right? Do you guys know? OK, well there are all these ads at these stores where I think even Josiah Beckley's store where they advertise new shipment of Saleratus Come now. Get your-- what is-- I've never heard of this.
• [00:46:46.72] JOSIE PARKER: Is it baking soda?
• [00:46:48.18] CAROL MULL: Yes. There we go. It takes our impressive librarian.
• [00:46:54.04] JOSIE PARKER: There's a great children's book [UNINTELLIGIBLE] and it's Sally Saleratus or something [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE].
• [00:47:02.35] CAROL MULL: So what happened is in the old days before they had baking soda the way we do now from salt, they got baking soda from ashes. Now, I'm not even go near what the health of that was for a human being. So that's one of the things, I just gave you a little tip when you see this advertised prominently, that's what it was about.
• [00:47:25.45] So that's it. Thank you.
• [00:47:27.88] [APPLAUSE]
• [00:47:34.20] JOSIE PARKER: Do you want to go ahead and take any questions at this time?
• [00:47:37.11] CAROL MULL: Sure. Yes?
• [00:47:39.84] AUDIENCE: I missed the initial-- My name is Thomas. I missed the initial moments of your presentation and I apologize for that. I'm curious as to the longevity of the Signal of Liberty newspaper and other Michigan anti-slavery newspapers extended through the Civil War period, and whether they covered campaugs stops in western Michigan's by Abraham Lincoln and other candidates in 1860.
• [00:48:20.32] CAROL MULL: OK. Everybody could hear that, right? The Signal of Liberty ended with the death of Guy Beckley. He was only 46 years old or something like that. He was in his 40s in 1847, and he really was the financial supporter I think with his family of the newspaper. Foster tried to keep it going. He kept it going for another year. By 1848 it was finished.
• [00:48:52.55] Then the Michigan Anti-slavery Society tried to start with another newspaper and they got one going with Erastus Hussey in Battle Creek, and it did not survive for the very same reason is they couldn't keep the others going because of financial difficulties. It was just too expensive to--
• [00:49:13.12] Although the subscriptions of the Signal of Liberty, it got up to 1,800, I mean almost 2,000 at one point. So it was heavily-subscribed. The problem was people didn't pay, even with wood. So, that's the end of that-- that was the only anti-slavery newspaper in Michigan, this one.
• [00:49:35.49] In other states, various papers went for [UNINTELLIGIBLE] time. There were some reports of Lincoln, of course, and anti-slavery news in other newspapers. In fact, one of the newspapers in Detroit considered to be sort of anti-slavery, but there was none that was to be true anti-slavery paper after the the one that succeeded the Signal in the state.
• [00:50:09.16] Yes?
• [00:50:12.62] AUDIENCE: Might you have any idea what percentage of the black population of Canada is derived from blacks who crossed over during these periods?
• [00:50:23.62] CAROL MULL: No, I don't.
• [00:50:25.16] AUDIENCE: Small or large?
• [00:50:28.92] CAROL MULL: You know, it's interesting. In writing my book, this was one of the things I addressed is because there are a lot of perceptions already that there was this mass migration of people who had settled in the northern states to Canada after 1850 when the second fugitive slave law was passed. And we know that there was a migration just from personal accounts or whatever.
• [00:50:57.31] But what found when doing the research for my book was that there were many people who came back not long afterwards. They didn't wait until the Civil War to come back to Michigan. It was surprising to me. But there's no statistical data that anyone can derive because your census data's on each side of that, 1850 and 1860. So you can't get the information in between. And then we have the same problem with trying to get a handle on who was living in Canada from 1860 to 1870 because through the outbreak of the Civil War, so maybe a black population in Canada that had come from America wanted to fight and left to fight in the war.
• [00:51:41.99] So I can't get a handle on it. And other people I think try, but I don't know. When I look at some of the individual cases, there were many people who came-- the black Americans and black Canadians who came to Michigan in the 1840s. I found several. And I don't know whether they were free blacks from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, whatever, or whether they escaped and had, at one time, been enslaved. The fact is there were many more free blacks in Canada than I think a lot of people realized. Many came from Virginia when Virginia tightened their laws about education. Because [UNINTELLIGIBLE] blacks for a generation or so there who had taken advantage.
• [00:52:35.16] First, there were some where they were allowed to vote for a certain period of time in some of the states and that was taken away. And then they'd attend schools and be educated and that changed. So some of these laws went back and forth in some of these states. So when they were tightened and there were more restrictions, people left. And a lot of people left Virginia because they suddenly, in the years before the Civil War, faced a lot more discrimination than we ever had in the time before that. So they were free. It's tricky.
• [00:53:07.58] Yes?
• [00:53:08.07] AUDIENCE: I have a question about Reverend Beckley. Is there a biography of him? And the other question that came to mind was in regard to the first president [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Was he the minister of that church, at that church?
• [00:53:27.11] CAROL MULL: No, Another man was, and I've forgotten-- Beech? I think it was Beech. He also was was an anti-slavery activist, which is one of the reasons the church was made available. Reverend Beckley was a Methodist Episcopal minister. As I said before, when you read about this in the Signal you're going to find it fascinating, this whole political versus religious tension that existed.
• [00:54:01.04] What happened, Beckley is the case of what was happening all over. He's a perfect example of it, because he was very much opposed to slavery and found that his own church would not deny admission to slave holders, the southerners. So a lot of the churches split, not only in the north, but they split from the north to south. So he started embracing the teachings of the Wesleyan Methodist church, which began with Robert Swift in Michigan. Really there were teachings existed, but the church itself, the formation of the church really started in two places, New York and Michigan, and Michigan was one of the first places to start that church.
• [00:54:50.90] Well, Beckley wrote in his newspaper about he's supporting the Wesleyan Methodist church, and then, surprise, he couldn't believe he was getting kicked out of his own church. So yeah, so he was not a minister there.
• [00:55:07.84] Yes?
• [00:55:10.75] AUDIENCE: I had several questions about the slavery catchers. I know there were a lot in the border states, but were there just as many coming through Michigan? Also, when they were here, how were they treated by people who lived there? Were the very secretive and then they got the slave and just disappeared? Was there a natural circuit of slavery catchers here?
• [00:55:45.09] CAROL MULL: OK. I just remembered I didn't answer your other question. There is no biography. Yeah, there is not. The next book after.
• [00:55:54.35] Anyhow, the slave catchers, there were people who, I don't want to say were pro-slavery living in Michigan, but there were people who, we called them anti-abolitionists in Michigan. And there were people who would write very openly about it. But slave catchers or slave hunters came through. I don't know of any who lived in the state of Michigan. I can't imagine they would ever be able to, their lives would have been too miserable. And most of them that I know of in the stories that we know of-- the Crosswhite case and some of the others came out of Kentucky. They were often identified early.
• [00:56:44.18] Laura Haviland from Adrian who was probably our most prominent underground railroad operator in the State, identified people almost immediately. They would come onto her property in Lenawee County and she would hear that bit of a southern accent and they'd try to tell her some story about how they were selling bibles or they were representing-- one of them that came through told her he was representing an abolitionist newspaper. And she was like I don't think so.
• [00:57:15.92] But anyhow, so people came through and they were on the lookout for them. But I don't know of any who stayed here. One who came through, there was a group that came through-- the ones that came to the Kentucky-- Cass County raid I mean, they're from Kentucky, they tried going into Battle Creek first. They were going to make that their area to connoiter. And Erastus Hussey saw them and kicked them out of town.
• [00:57:49.46] So they went back down to Indiana and they made that their headquarters in Indiana. And then when they made the raid in Cass County, they came up from Indiana instead of going across because they had to do that because they couldn't go [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. So, does that answer your question.
• [00:58:08.31] AUDIENCE: I also wanted to comment that I found-- the reward money to me for that time seemed to be quite high. And it seemed very much worth their time to try to catch these slaves.
• [00:58:25.63] My last comment is it's interesting, and you could see it in the newspaper I'm sure, how they describe the slaves, because a lot of them, if they didn't have some kind of a scar or some mark, how do you find this person, and yet they were able to find these slaves. The descriptions were so important when it was published.
• [00:58:51.10] CAROL MULL: The reward posters, I think somebody has actually written a book about the reward posters. I think I saw something recently. And they're fascinating because they are an original source of information about enslavement and enslaved people.
• [00:59:09.91] One of the things that I find disturbing is the fact that they had so many scars and marks. I mean there's something that's telling in itself. The other thing is how often the descriptions will say a very bright young man, able to read. All of these things that they say couldn't happen or shouldn't happen, then they'd publish it themselves in their reward posters that this person was highly intelligent, well-mannered.
• [00:59:38.13] Just all these things that they said, oh no, you can't teach people to read. Their descriptions were ridiculous, really. But they usually talked about what the person was wearing when they left. Some people I know did not want to post rewards, but in some states it was required, that you could go to fail and be fined if you didn't post a reward when the person you enslaved escaped. So that's why some-- and you will see some, you'll see and it says $0.25 or $0.10. They had to fulfill the obligation of putting out a reward poster, but they didn't really care.
• [01:00:18.33] And then some would say things like you can keep, if you can catch him. So they run the gambit. And yes, there were people who were considered extremely valuable as property, if you will. I put that in quotes. On the other hand, where Haviland had a reward poster for her in the south, and I think that for her it was $3,000. So, try matching that one. And then some of the other underground railroad operators, they had bounties on their heads in the south that were in the thousands-- she was not the only one.
• [01:00:55.96] One more question.
• [01:01:01.88] AUDIENCE: Maybe you can clear this up. In the history of the Congregational church, they often mention that they split from the Presbyterians over slavery. And who was more to anti-slavery? The Presbyterians or the congregationalists?
• [01:01:17.65] CAROL MULL: The congregationalists were more anti-slavery in most places. But it gets very tricky in the early history of Michigan when you look at the Presbyterian congregational churches because we often find is that these certain Presbyterian churches would be found and maybe called First Presbyterian, and then in parentheses would say founded in the congregational tradition.
• [01:01:44.22] So, some of them were actually combination churches. For instance, there's an underground railroad operator in Reverend Oren Thompson up in the northern part-- above Detroit, north of Detroit. And he served as the minister in both a congregational and Presbyterian church, because they weren't that different based on how they were founded and who founded them and what their principles were. So it's kind of dicey in the beginning.
• [01:02:26.42] AUDIENCE: What was the split in Ann Arbor about?
• [01:02:30.19] CAROL MULL: Almost every split in every church was over the issue of slavery because generally, the ministers were the ones who blocked the progression toward opposing slavery because they knew it was going to split the church with the southern faction and the northern faction, and by their church, they didn't want to see their church split. And so they would say no, I'm going to stay with the teachings of the church because they believed that they could convince people and just persuade people that slavery was wrong, and that they would prevail if they had that faith. But it was very slow-going that sort of policy.
• [01:03:15.27] I should mention also since you asked that question that a lot of people don't realize that the Quaker faith split just as much as some of the other religions over the issue of slavery. And Laura Haviland for instance, was raised a Quaker and she left over the issue of slavery, and she became a Wesleyan Methodist. Which something else. When you see a list of Wesleyan Methodists, you can be sure that most of those people are strong abolitionists and most likely on the underground railroad. I won't say that they definitely were. But the Wesleyan Methodists were generally people who left other churches over the issue of slavery. As soon as the slavery issue was settled, the Civil War, the Wesleyan Methodist church pretty much disbanded in most places.
• [01:04:05.26] AUDIENCE: Does your book cover that?
• [01:04:09.22] CAROL MULL: Yes, it does talk about that aspect.
• [01:04:11.70] AUDIENCE: To go back to [UNINTELLIGIBLE] of Reverend [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Is there a biography?
• [01:04:17.64] AMY CANTU: No.
• [01:04:21.60] AUDIENCE: Were you able to actually interview the Michigan descendants of slaves?
• [01:04:27.54] CAROL MULL: Yes. In fact, I just got a letter this week from Dr. Benton in Wisconsin, who is descended from Elijah Benton, who lived in Pittsfield township near Captain John Lowrey, who had an underground railroad station. He sent pictures-- he has pictures from his family album of he family. In fact, I can let you use the John Lowrey picture because he said that I could decide where it was [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Happy to use it. So he's very proud of his history.
• [01:05:14.78] And then there are many descendants that I've let through the African-American Cultural and Historical Museum that are from the Aray family. Asher Aray was a prominent underground railroad operator in Saline area on US 12. He was long neglected because the census data had his name listed as Ray, R-A-Y, instead of Aray, the A spelling, A-R-A-Y. So people didn't tie it together when they put together the histories. But he was free and his family goes back to the 1700s free. And that's covered very well in my book.
• [01:06:03.69] Let's see, the other descendants on the Beckley's, there are both African-American and European-American Beckleys. And one of the descendants sent to the museum, the African-American Museum, a hymnal that Guy Beckley wrote, and that's in their possession. No picture of him. So yeah, there are many descendants around, apparently. And then, of course, the Caroline Quarrelles, one of her descendants is the person behind making this initiative to have this trail be a historic place.
• [01:06:40.95] JOSIE PARKER: Thank you very much, Carol.
• [01:06:42.93] [APPLAUSE]