Del. Grad Students: Underground Railroad may be resurrected
NEWARK -- After escaping from points south, runaway slaves entered Delaware and faced "the gauntlet," the dangerous journey east from the state line to Camden. From there, the path diverged: head north toward Pennsylvania by land or east to find freedom by water.
After the Civil War, the secret paths were no longer needed. The landscape changed. Open fields gave way to buildings. Creeks were traversed by bridges, and dirt paths became concrete roads. Old homes were torn down or found new life as museums.
Peel back the layers, and the trail thousands of slaves took through Delaware on their journey north in the early 1800s is still there. Researchers are collecting stories, letters, diary entries and maps and using them to create a road they hope will become a state highway honoring those who ran and "rode" the Underground Railroad.
"As you're driving on the route, it doesn't look the same as it did and we're kind of connecting the dots of how to improve it by making a scene that tells the story," said Sarah Beetham, one of a group of University of Delaware graduate students working on the project. "It's not just presenting the sites. We want to make it more emotionally involved by actually telling a story from the point of view of people seeking freedom."
David Ames, a professor and director of UD's Center for Historic Architecture and Design who is overseeing the state highway project, said that in thinking about the Underground Railroad, "people get very literal ... they think tracks and stations."
The path he and his students are creating has neither. Travelers who make the journey from the Choptank River in Maryland to the Pennsylvania border will follow routes 10, 15, 9 and 299, passing more than 20 sites connected to the Underground Railroad. The landmarks include houses, churches, fields and vacant lots.
"We are not pointing out one particular Underground Railroad route, but using contemporary roadways to touch on as many sites as we can to give people a sense of the passage from west to north and from the south to the north," said Debra Martin, preservation planner for the city of Wilmington.
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After the Civil War, the secret paths were no longer needed. The landscape changed. Open fields gave way to buildings. Creeks were traversed by bridges, and dirt paths became concrete roads. Old homes were torn down or found new life as museums.
Peel back the layers, and the trail thousands of slaves took through Delaware on their journey north in the early 1800s is still there. Researchers are collecting stories, letters, diary entries and maps and using them to create a road they hope will become a state highway honoring those who ran and "rode" the Underground Railroad.
"As you're driving on the route, it doesn't look the same as it did and we're kind of connecting the dots of how to improve it by making a scene that tells the story," said Sarah Beetham, one of a group of University of Delaware graduate students working on the project. "It's not just presenting the sites. We want to make it more emotionally involved by actually telling a story from the point of view of people seeking freedom."
David Ames, a professor and director of UD's Center for Historic Architecture and Design who is overseeing the state highway project, said that in thinking about the Underground Railroad, "people get very literal ... they think tracks and stations."
The path he and his students are creating has neither. Travelers who make the journey from the Choptank River in Maryland to the Pennsylvania border will follow routes 10, 15, 9 and 299, passing more than 20 sites connected to the Underground Railroad. The landmarks include houses, churches, fields and vacant lots.
"We are not pointing out one particular Underground Railroad route, but using contemporary roadways to touch on as many sites as we can to give people a sense of the passage from west to north and from the south to the north," said Debra Martin, preservation planner for the city of Wilmington.