Union
Canal House, Union Deposit
A recent newspaper
article (The Patriot-News, October 7, 2003, page East-6) reported that,
according to local legend, the Union Canal House was an Underground Railroad
station, focusing on the subterranean tunnel that connects the historic
structure, now a restaurant, with Fort Swatara, across the street. No known evidence supports
this claim. The structure is, however, in a location that could have been part
of an Underground Railroad route. We know that fugitives sometimes used canals
as a means of transportation while fleeing north, and the Union Canal connected
the towns of Middletown and Pine Grove, both of which had Underground Railroad
stations. Furthermore, accounts from Harrisburg document that freedom
seekers were sometimes sent to Pine Grove, making Union Deposit a logical stop
on that route. Samuel S. Rutherford identified the route north from his
ancestor's farms, writing "guides would conduct them on to the next station,
which was on a farm near Linglestown, then on to Harpers Tavern, Lickdale, Pine
Grove, Pottsville and north to Canada." (Samuel S. Rutherford, "The Under Ground
Railroad," in Publications of the Historical Society of Dauphin County,
Harrisburg, 1928, page 3.)
Joseph
Meese
Farm, Linglestown
Historian Nevin Moyer
identifies the Joseph Meese Farm as an Underground
Railroad station. The village of Linglestown was a documented stop on the
Underground Railroad and was apparently the first stop after the Rutherford Family
farms in Swatara and Lower Paxton Townships. See the route identified by
Samuel S. Rutherford, above. Moyer identifies the farm of
his birth as the historic site:
I will have to take you to the large 140-acre farm, the first farm east of Linglestown where I was born.
There my parents, the B.F. Moyers, as well as my grandparents and great grandparents, Joseph and Henry Meese
(Mease, Miese) lived. It was on this farm that Andrew Berryhill lived when he was killed by the Indians, and the rest of
the family escaped through the wilderness to Fort Hunter. Andrew Berryhill is buried behind his old
house, with others of the family and the graves are not marked. His son, Alexander, became one of the early burgess’
of Harrisburg in which city there are a hill and a street named for this family. We read, in our early history of Dauphin
County, of the famous Battalion Drill ground, at Linglestown. The noted drill ground is on this farm. Here, too, was an
underground railroad depot, the home of Frances Wenrich and Colonel John Umberger.
("An Interview with Nevin B. Moyer by Galen Frysinger, Paxton Rangers
Historic Association, Lower Paxton High School," in The Junior Historian
III/3 [February 1946], Harrisburg. Reprinted on the Internet as "Nevin
Moyer, of Linglestown, Pennsylvania, USA," Galen Frysinger,
http://www.galenfrysinger.ws/nevin_moyer.htm, accessed July 31, 2005.)
The farm's owner in the period of Underground
Railroad activity was Joseph Meese (1810 - 1882), Moyer's grandfather.
In 1850, Meese worked the farm with his wife Sarah, four daughters aged 3 to
16 years, and two teenaged farmhands. One of those daughters was
Catherine (Kate) born in 1842 and mother of Nevin W. Moyer. It is
likely that Moyer, a respected local historian, learned the Underground
Railroad history of the farm from his mother, who probably witnessed, if not
took part in, such activities, lending credibility to Moyer's statement.
(1850 Census, Lower Paxton Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania; Lower
Paxton Township, Pennsylvania, 1767-1967, Harrisburg, 1967, pp. 126,
174.)
AME
Church, Middletown
Historian G. Craig Caba, in a talk before the Camp
Curtin Historical Society in February 2002, noted that the African Methodist
Episcopal Church in Middletown had been involved with hiding fugitive slaves.
Middletown had a small but politically active African American population, and
an anti-slavery society had been formed in the town as early as 1837 (see
the chronology page). Some local white leaders, notably George Fisher,
were friendly to the abolitionist cause.
Harrisburg's Wesley Union AME Church, which actively
supported local Underground Railroad activities (see
Judystown), had close connections with the Middletown church, making this
claim highly possible.
Harrisburg
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