The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The Underground Railroad ran through Connecticut
A cave in Ridgebury hid fugitive slaves as a stop on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Historian Jack Sanders began researching the little known station, run by an African-American couple, after coming across a 1879 newspaper story revealing the discovery of a skeleton in a cave on Ned’s Mountain in Ridgefield.
“Kept secret from contemporaries and undiscovered by historians, a station on the famous ‘Underground Railroad’ apparently once operated in Ridgefield,” Sanders wrote.
“The station’s site went on to be the home of at least five men of color who fought in the Civil War, two of whom died while in the service and two others who were wounded...
“‘Uncle Ned and Aunt Betsey’ Armstrong, a popular AfricanAmerican couple in the first half of the 19th Century, risked arrest and imprisonment as they sheltered slaves who were fleeing from bondage in the South and seeking freedom in the North. Two of their Ridgefield-born grandchildren went on to fight slavery via the Civil War, and one became among the last victims of the conflict.”
Sanders’ research is published in “Uncle Ned’s Mountain, An Underground Railroad Station and Home for Civil War Soldiers from Near and Far,” a June 9 article available on the Ridgefield Library’s website; search the site for “Uncle Ned’s Mountain” and it will be the first result.
Related research by Sanders can be found in “Farmers, Soldiers and Slaves, African-Americans in 18th Century Ridgefield, Connecticut.”
“African Americans have been part of Ridgefield’s history since at least the 1730s, yet little has been written and even less documented about their lives and their contributions to the community — and the nation — during the town’s first century,” Sanders wrote. “Ridgefield records in the 1700s rarely mention non-European residents, be they free blacks, slaves or native American Indians . ...
“Even African Americans who were free landowners here weren’t considered full citizens, prevented by Connecticut tradition and laws from voting or holding office.”
Ridgebury Cemetery is home to the side-by-side graves of Uncle Ned and Aunt Betsey Armstrong, whose work on the Underground Railroad helped escaped slaves find freedom before the Civil War.
Among Sanders’ findings is that seven African Americans who lived in Ridgefield fought in the American Revolution.
Sanders also recently published “Racism in 20th Century Ridgefield,” which reviews three episodes — the beating of an African American by a drunken white man in 1922, the burning of a cross on a multiracial couple’s law in 1978, and the difficulties black entertainer Godfrey Cambridge encountered upon moving to Ridgefield in 1974.
The piece also documents the long record of work for equality left by the Rev. William Webb, an African American who moved to Ridgefield in 1934, was one of the founders of the Ridgefield Chapter of the NAACP in 1951, and was ordained a minister in 1969, leading African Methodist Episcopal congregations in Danbury, Waterbury, Bridgeport, Norwalk and Branford while living in Ridgefield on Knollwood Road.
“In Ridgefield, he was also active in leading efforts to bring affordable housing to town; he often spoke at meetings to promote the need for lower-cost apartments,” Sanders wrote of Webb. “He served in the Ridgefield Clergy Association and on the board of directors of Danbury Hospital. A World War II veteran, he belonged to the American Legion and VFW posts.”
Webb died in 1991.
Sanders developed his interest in local history working as a reporter and an editor for The Ridgefield
Press for more than four decades in the late 20th century and the early years of the current century.
Skeleton story
In an interview conducted by email exchange, Sanders described how he came across the information about the Armstrongs and their Underground Railroad stop while reading a 140-year-old newspaper.
“I was doing research for a study of 18th century African Americans and their contributions to Ridgefield, especially their service in the Revolutionary War,” he said. “In digging through old newspapers, which you can do digitally nowadays, I came across a story in an 1879 issue of the New Haven Register that mentioned a skeleton being found in a cave in Ridgefield, and reporting that the cave was once used by a black couple, ‘Uncle Ned and Aunt Betsey,’ to hide fleeing slaves as part of the Underground Railroad.
“I was astounded,” Sanders said. “I had never heard of this, though I had heard of Ned through my research into place names; he was the source of the name, Ned’s Mountain. But Underground Railroad? Wow. No history of Ridgefield — or Connecticut — had even hinted of that.
“More research uncovered a New York Tribune article, also in 1879, that gave more details, including Ned and Betsey’s surname. From there it was more digging through newspapers, land records, probate court documents, church records, census data, and cemeteries.”
A historian who is white and grew up in Danbury in the 1950s and ’60s, Sanders presents his research into African Americans’ history in Ridgefield as a part of the past too often overlooked.
“The Armstrongs and their compound on Ned’s Mountain are just part of a larger, important and fascinating story of African Americans in early Ridgefield and their many contributions to the community,” Sanders said. “Virtually nothing has ever been written about their lives and their contributions, so people are left with the impression that Ridgefield was settled by white people and that only white people served their country in the Revolution and even in the Civil War. And yet, African Americans contributed significantly to the first two centuries of the town.”