By Claudia Loucks
Geneseo Current

Even though February is designated as Black History Month, there are displays year-round at the Geneseo Historical Museum that trace the struggle of the slaves in this area.

In the display where Snook is shown wearing the shackles, there are books, photographs, maps of cities in Illinois that located abolitionists that helped on the Freedom Trail.

There also is a small bottle of arsenic that the slaves carried and would drink if they were captured, as Snook explained they would rather die from drinking the arsenic than be taken back into slavery.

A trip down the stairs at the museum leads visitors to the rooms where the slaves slept and were cared for, and another small room contains a hidden stairwell and the “hiding hole,” where those in captivity would hide in fear of being captured.

Snook explained that many people are not aware that what is referred to the “underground railroad” that runs under the museum, is not really a railroad, but a term referred to by the slaves to conceal their path to freedom – (hiding hole)….”The name ‘underground railroad’ was chosen because that time period also was the time when trains were beginning to run throughout the United States,” she said.

Angie Snook, curator/director of the Geneseo Historical Museum, is shown at one of the displays in the Education Wing of the museum. She is wearing the shackles that were used to contain the slaves so they could not escape when chained to either a wagon or a brick wall. That same pair of shackles was found in the hiding hole in the basement of the museum. Photo by Claudia Loucks

Sometime between 1855 – 1865

Snook has copies of memorabilia that include the following documentation from Harriett Cone Miller, whose father was the conductor in Geneseo’s “underground railroad.”

She estimated it was written in late 1850’s or early 1860’s.

“I can recall instances where poor blacks on their way to freedom stopped at my father’s house for aid, and of their being entertained at night in Deacon Ward’s attic, and being sent on to Linden, which was a station on the underground railway. Those were stirring times. I remember once when Father Stewart kept the only hotel here that a master came with his overseer and both of them sat out on the veranda all day, watching the Ward residence, expecting to be able to locate their property (slaves), while the fugitives, dressed in women’s apparel, made their way out by the back door and were ‘on their way to Canada where colored men are free.’ We can thank God those days are past, never to return. Our settlers did their part in the great awakening.”

(The house referred as Miller’s father’s house was located in what is now First Lutheran Church parking lot).