News : Iowa's connection to the Underground Railroad shared at the CP Depot Museum

Center Point Historical Society News - Log Cabin Festival

Jenny Barnett, of the African American Museum of Iowa, gave a talk on The Underground Railroad to about 50 guests at the Center Point Historical Society's annual Log Cabin Festival, Sunday, Aug. 28.

The pleasantly non-political presentation featured Iowa's part of the story. Jenny pointed out, that though Iowa was always anti-slavery, there were enslaved people here. In the first years of Iowa as a territory (1838) and state (1846) settlers from slave states outnumbered settlers from northern states, and the slaveholders brought their slaves with them.

Our second Territorial Governor, John Chambers, appointed in 1841, came from Kentucky "accompanied by a small troop of slaves," a contemporary newspaper reported. Which he apparently took back to Kentucky with him when his term ended, Jenny said.

She also said that because involvement with the Underground Railroad was so dangerous then and so glamorous now the real facts are fuzzy. Some of the secret slave hiding holes claimed in Iowa homes may have actually been places to hide moonshine during Prohibition. The beloved "Quilt Code" guiding runaway slaves to safety is a myth according to most historians.

Which doesn't stop people loving the myth and loving the dozens of quilts displayed in the Depot Museum and on the Strait Log Cabin walkway railing for the Cabin Festival.

The Historical Society's next event will be the annual Center Point Cemetery Walk on Sunday, Sept. 18, at 4 p.m. In case of rain, it will be held, with slides of the gravesites, at the Depot Museum.