Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
‘TREMENDOUS HISTORY’
Underground Railroad runs rich legacy for liberty
KENNETT SQUARE » The Underground Railroad served as a pathway to freedom for runaway people fleeing the bondage of slavery in the South.
There were more stations, homes and meeting places, which served as stations in the Underground Railroad. Runaways would hide in the stations from slave catchers who could bring them back to the South with a bounty on their heads.
In the borough, the Kennett Underground Railroad Center, part of the Kennett Heritage Center, typically offers monthly tours from April through October. The bus tours bring people to eight stations of the historic route within the community.
One of the stops is at 300 Greenwood Drive, a building that is home today to the Brandywine Valley Tourism and Information Center. It was once called the Longwood Progressive Meeting, a house of worship for Quakers, constructed in 1855. The site is also listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.
“The meetinghouse was a beacon to reformers and abolitionists,” said Susan Hamley, executive director of the Chester County Conference & Visitors Bureau. “Renowned speakers and visitors included Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth.”
The building is presently closed to the public.
Lynn Sinclair is the administrator for the Kennett Underground Railroad Center, an allvolunteer nonprofit dedicated to telling the stories of Underground Railroad sites and participants in this area.
Sinclair said the board is meeting this week to determine a date for an open house later this year.
Members will also decide when to resume monthly bus tours, she said.
The two-hour bus tours allow families and individuals to visit documented Underground Railroad sites, historic homes and Quaker Meetinghouses while discovering the role local abolitionists
“Even in our county, we have a tremendous history that is worth even more exploration.” — Rev. Kyle Boyer
played in the Kennett Square region to help end slavery in America prior to the Civil War.
All bus tours were canceled last year due to the pandemic. Sinclair said the nonprofit organization sent out self-guided tours for families to enjoy together on their own.
“I had the opportunity to participate in a Juneteenth event at the Fussel House in Kennett which was one of Chester County’s stops on the Underground Railroad. Even in our county, we have a tremendous history that is worth even more exploration,” said Rev. Kyle Boyer.
Approximately 2,000 enslaved people passed through the house on their way to freedom, as previously reported in
the Daily Local News. The Fussel House is one of 600 locations officially recognized by the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
According to a declaration issued last spring by the governor, June 19, 1865, marks “when Union soldiers reached Galveston, Texas, the furthest point in the south, with news of the end of the Civil War. Slaves were previously unaware they had been freed more than two years earlier when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, or that Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia two months earlier.”
Back in Kennett Square, the Underground Railroad bus tour features contributions by local AfricanAmericans and their faith communities in the quest for freedom from slavery, according to the nonprofit’s website.
“The Underground Railroad served an obvious purpose during its time,” Boyer said. “Thank God all of us can now fight for freedom above ground and in other ways as opposed to the secret network of safe houses slaves were forced to use.”