Louise Calloway, 93, founder of an N.J. Underground Railroad Museum, has died

Louise Calloway, 93, the curator and executive director of the Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County, died after a brief illness on Feb. 8, during Black History Month.

Today, the Willingboro, N.J., resident, who also once lived in Canada and in Cameroon, will be remembered at a Celebration of Life memorial service at Soul Anchor of Burlington, during Women’s History Month.

In what some might see as a closing of the circle, Soul Anchor is located at 322 High St. in Burlington City, the same street where Calloway opened the Underground Railroad Coffee House in 2005.

The coffee house was an informal museum, with art exhibits, jazz, and poetry readings. It was located next to the old Wheatley Pharmacy, a stop on the Underground Railroad’s network of “safe houses” for people seeking freedom from enslavement.

After the coffee shop closed in 2013, Calloway found a new home for her collection of historical artifacts in 2015, at the Historic Smithville Park in Eastampton, near Mount Holly.

The collection then became known as the Underground Railroad Museum of Burlington County.

Deborah Price, president of the board of the museum, said Calloway had a deep passion for history — learning it and sharing it.

“She was so full with knowledge that it would just pour out of her,” Price said. “I was her student. I was being molded. I knew [about history] already, when really I didn’t know as much as I thought I did.”

Price, who works in the finance industry, was a volunteer at the museum for several years and watched and learned as Calloway gave tours.

“I was able to sit in Louise’s garden, and she just planted seeds in me.”

Louise Mable Calloway was born Dec. 5, 1929. She grew up in Vauxhall, in Union Township, N.J., not far from Newark. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Morgan State University and a master’s degree in social work at Atlanta University.

For 50 years, she was a social worker and a teacher.

In interviews, she said her love of history began as a child, when at about age 9, she often visited the local library and found pamphlets and books about Africa. She was particularly intrigued to learn that newly freed Black Americans began to migrate to Liberia in West Africa, starting around 1820.

It was almost a year ago, last April, when more than 100 people went to the Burlington County Library to honor Calloway for her work as a “keeper of history.”

Calloway is survived by a son, a daughter and one grandchild.