The Underground Railroad Madison, Indiana
By Suzanne Laine - Digital Marketing Manager
It’s 1849 in MADISON, Indiana. A mob of slave owners from Kentucky arrives downtown MADISON to seek out slaves who escaped and crossed the river to Indiana. One of the slave owners recognizes Griffith Booth, a former slave who is known for his connection to the Underground Railroad. Members of the group seize Booth. They take him down Walnut Street to the banks of the Ohio River and force him into the water. When the men are waist deep, they demand that Booth tell them where the slaves are hiding. When he refuses, they dunk his face into the water, again and again. He is nearly drowned before two other MADISON residents risk their own lives to fight off Booth’s attackers.
Elijah Anderson, who lived on Walnut and Third Streets in Georgetown, was a successful blacksmith in the Georgetown neighborhood. He also had a secret life as a pilot and conductor for the UGRR. He often disguised himself as a slave owner and escorted escaped slaves, sometimes in large groups, all the way to Canada on steamboats and trains. He estimated, in his personal journal, to have escorted 1800 slaves to freedom while operating in Indiana. Elijah Anderson was arrested by Louisville police while taking a group of fugitive slaves from Lawrenceburg, Indiana to Cleveland, Ohio on a steamboat on the Ohio River. He was found guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison, where he died mysteriously before his release.
William Anderson was born in Virginia to a free African American woman, but he was not born free. He was bound to eight different owners over his lifetime. His will to be free was stronger than the bonds of slavery, however. While the gift of literacy was, by law, denied to slaves, he somehow learned to read and write. By his own account, he used his abilities to write his own slave pass and escape. Anderson arrived in MADISON in 1836 and built a home in the Georgetown neighborhood. He also owned farm land outside of town. He was arrested for his UGRR activities in 1856 on a Kentucky warrant. While he was acquitted of the charges, he was forced to sell his home and land to pay his court costs.
These are just a few of the stories of the MADISON, Indiana residents who risked their lives to serve as volunteers in the Underground Railroad network.
MADISON, Indiana Conductors and Stations
Historical records show that MADISON, Indiana was home to our state’s third largest African American population in 1820. The northern downtown MADISON section, including Northern Walnut Street and surrounding blocks, was called Georgetown at that time. Free African American families lived in this neighborhood during the nineteenth century. The prosperous Georgetown district was a mixture of homes and businesses and was home to many prominent African American businessmen and community leaders over the years.
The Underground Railroad featured three aptly-named categories of people. Those escaping slavery were “passengers”. Those who traveled south to seek out passengers were “pilots”. Those who aided passengers along their journey north, to Canada, were “conductors”. While many of the names of people involved with the freedom network were kept secret, we know that MADISON was home to conductors and pilots, and important “stations”—the term for the locations that secretly housed the traveling passengers along their journey. In MADISON, most of these conductors lived in the Georgetown neighborhood.
Indiana was a free state for citizens, but not for passengers
The Underground Railroad was most active in MADISON in the early and mid-nineteenth century. At that time Indiana was a “free state”, but reality was harsher than the term implied. Slaves seeking freedom through the UGRR were not safe from their owners or the slave hunters who sought them out to hold them for ransom.
MADISON, due to its riverside location and UGRR connections, was frequented by slave owners who came from Kentucky seeking escaped slaves. The clashes between the slave owners and the citizens of Georgetown often resulted in violence committed against the neighborhood’s leaders. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, slave hunters targeted the area en masse, hoping to capture escaped slaves and receive money for returning them to their owners. The newly passed Act increased the penalties for aiding slaves, and bounties were placed on the heads of many UGRR leaders, including Elijah Anderson. Griffith Booth and others moved north, just as the slaves they assisted. While UGRR activity continued outside of MADISON in more secluded locations such as Eagle Hollow, UGRR activities in the Georgetown area of downtown dwindled.
There are many more UGRR landmarks across the country. If you’re interested in seeing more places where UGRR activities took place, there are many self-guided road trips you can map out online. A list of many of them can be found here.