A hidden secret over a century ago, the Underground Railroad ran through Central Illinois
In the early morning of Jan. 16, 1848, Albert Greene of the Mount Hope settlement in McLean County was celebrating his sixth birthday by battling a case of the measles. Feverish and restless, he thrashed and sweated his way into a semi-sleep when unusual activity in the house's kitchen jolted him fully awake. He heard hushed conversation and the shuffling of many feet, and he smelled coffee brewing and meat frying.
Greene was awakened to hear the sound of wheels outside his home's front door. He heard people passing back and forth between the house and the covered wagon that had pulled up. Then the wagon pulled away and the house was silent again.
The Greene family's early-morning visitors were escaped slaves, probably from Mississippi or Louisiana. His father, an abolitionist who had relocated to the Midwest from New England, had received word to expect two fugitives who would need transport to Tremont, the next "depot" on the Underground Railroad that ran through central Illinois.
According to John Ackerman, Tazewell County clerk and recorder of deeds, an estimated 800 slaves passed through Tazewell on their way to Canada between the late 1840s and the end of the Civil War. The main pathway of the Underground Railroad, a secretive network of citizen volunteers, entered Tazewell County near Delavan, passed through Tremont and Morton, and circumvented Washington en route to Metamora.
Read more: https://thesouthern.com/news/state-and-regional/a-hidden-secret-over-a-century-ago-the-underground-railroad-ran-through-central-illinois/article_2962723d-cc22-5a2c-9db3-6a8057dafcef.html
