Upstairs

As we climb upstairs, consider what it meant to run for freedom.

Escaping slavery was dangerous no matter the path. Freedom seekers had to place their trust in strangers, not knowing if they were allies or slave catchers. Men like DeCamp, a notorious local catcher, would trick runaways with false directions and then capture them along the way.

Many freedom seekers chose to travel alone, relying on their own resourcefulness. Some stories are legendary: Henry “Box” Brown mailing himself north in a wooden crate, or William and Ellen Craft disguising themselves as a white man and his servant to ride trains to freedom. But for many, it meant walking through forests, rivers, and fields at night, guided only by stars and hope.

Today, many myths surround the Underground Railroad—stories of quilt codes, hidden songs, and lantern signals. While powerful, these stories don’t hold up under historical scrutiny. The quilt code story, for example, didn’t appear until the 1990s and lacks evidence from earlier sources. Codes in songs are also hard to verify, as most spirituals weren’t written down until after the Civil War.

Lanterns in windows? That myth comes from the Rankin House in Ohio, where a lantern was used to signal safe crossing. But no widespread practice of lantern signals has been documented.

Here at Spring Hill, features like the steep Jacob’s Ladder stairway or a storage closet behind a door could serve practical purposes for the household—and at times, a discreet purpose for freedom seekers. But secret tunnels? No documented station on the Underground Railroad has ever been proven to use them. And if there were tunnels, we might ask a simple question: Where did they put all the dirt?

The story of the Underground Railroad at Spring Hill is a story of courage, conviction, and community. It’s about people who risked everything for freedom, and those who chose to help them—even when it was dangerous, even when it was against the law.

As you leave today, remember that history is rarely simple. The Underground Railroad was not a single track or a single story—it was thousands of stories, woven together by people who believed, above all else, in the right to be free.