In Northeastern Illinois and Chicago
3,000 to 4,500 freedom seekers passed through northeastern Illinois from the 1820s through 1861. Of those traveling through Chicago, roughly one-third came to Chicago and went by ship to Detroit and Canada, one-third traveled by train from Chicago after 1852, and one-third left Chicago overland first south through the Calumet region and then east through northwest Indiana and onto Michigan. Their movements reached from La Salle and Livingston Counties to the southwest into Will and Cook Counties, with some traveling through what are now the western and northern suburbs.
MY WORK --
The Underground Railroad South of Chicago - 2019
To the River: The Remarkable Journey of Caroline Quarlls, a Freedom
Seeker on the Underground Railroad - 2019
Barefoot to Chicago: Freedom Seekers and the Underground Railroad
in Northeastern Illinois - TBP in 2023
Papers and presentations at the annual symposium of the Illinois State Historical Society:
2006 -- "The UGRR South of Chicago"
2007 -- "Chicago and the UGRR"
2010 -- "Freedom Seekers in Illinois"
July, 2010 -- presented “Freedom Seekers in Illinois” at the annual
National Park Service Network to Freedom conference in
Topeka.
July, 2014 -- presented "Women Freedom Seekers and Chicago" at the
annual National Park Service Network to Freedom conference in
Detroit.
Principal researcher and author of successful applications for on the National Park Service Network to Freedom listing of significant Underground Railroad sites for: Crete Congregational Church and Cemetery, I & M Canal Administration Building in Lockport, and the Jon and Aagje Ton Farm Site on the Little Calumet River.
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