Pathways to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Chicago

Pathways to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Chicago. . , Prior to the Civil War, an estimated 3,000 to 4,500 African descendants traveled to the Chicago region to escape slavery in the South. Responding to their journeys, Black and White abolitionists in Chicago and across the region formed networks of support that became the Underground Railroad. From the 1830s until the Civil War the work of these activists along with the convergence of waterways, roads, and railroads made Chicago a pivotal juncture in the Underground Railroad. , , Black families, some with children, and individuals often traveling on their own, came up through Illinois with many coming to Chicago, then the size of the Loop. From there, they journeyed by boat over Lake Michigan or overland following the historic Detroit-Chicago Road (now U.S. 12). Those on the road traveled south from Chicago through present day Riverdale, crossing the Little Calumet River and into northwest Indiana and across southern Michigan. It is estimated that between 500 and 800 followed this path to the U.S.-Canada border. , , During the time of the Underground Railroad, the area around this part of the Little Calumet River was mostly farmland. The location of the Ton and Kuyper farms were paramount to their effectiveness as stations on the Underground Railroad. These farms allowed African descendants determined to be free to find safe havens where the Detroit-Chicago Road crossed the Little Calumet River. The original forty-acre Ton farm included what is now Chicago's Finest Marina and extended to Beaubien Woods near the current Bishop Ford Expressway and 134th St. , , Underground Railroad Corridors , Detroit-Chicago Road - In the 1820s, the federal government built the Detroit-Chicago Road as a military and commercial highway. Following the 1832 Black Hawk War, the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, and with these the forced removal of indigenous people from their ancestral homelands, families from New York and New England settled on this land along the Little Calumet River. in the late 1840s, they were joined by Dutch settlers. The road crossed the Little Calumet River at what is now the Indiana Avenue Bridge. Some who had escaped their enslavement and were traveling on from Chicago found accommodations and aid from farm families along this corridor, including the Tons and the Kuypers. , , Historic Illinois Central Railroad After 1856, at least 100 escaping African descendants traveled on this railroad from Cairo and southern Illinois, some hidden and others as ticket holders on their way to Chicago. , , Railroads east of this site - The Michigan Central and Michigan Southern Railroads completed railway connections into Chicago in 1852. They became additional options for the movement of Black freedom seekers on their way to Detroit.