Curious Iowa: What were the Underground Railroad stops in Iowa?

The story of the America’s Underground Railroad — a network of routes and safe spaces that helped enslaved people escape from the south before the Civil War — still is being pieced together, nearly 200 years later.

Dave Holmgren, lead researcher with the Iowa Freedom Trail Project, said verifying stories is difficult. Some records and histories written during the period are available, but family stories can get warped and distorted while being passed from person to person.

Holmgren said historians are discovering new information about the Underground Railroad “all the time.” He joined the Freedom Trail Project in 2011 when there were 900 names its database. Now, there are about 1,500.

How active was Iowa’s portion of the Underground Railroad? Where was it? And what remains of it? That’s what one person wrote to ask Curious Iowa — a series from The Gazette that answers readers’ questions about our state, its people and the culture. This week, we take a look back at the places and people of the Underground Railroad in Iowa.

Underground Railroad routes in Iowa

There were three “paths” that freedom seekers took through Iowa, said Iowa State Historical Society state curator Leo Landis. People entered the state from the west, south central or southeastern parts.

The western path, which connects through the congregational church to the center of Iowa, is the most well known due to iconic abolitionist John Brown’s use of it. The route John Brown took on his last trip across Iowa in 1859 is known today as the Freedom Trail.

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While there may have been many Underground Railroad stations in Iowa at one time, today, only a few are still standing. Some were houses, but they may also have been a barn, cellar, cornfield — anywhere that could conceal freedom seekers.

African American Museum of Iowa museum educator Sydney O’Hare said, “The few structures that we do have belonged to very prominent residents, but the vast majority just belonged to regular people who wanted to do the right thing.”

Five Underground Railroad stops in Iowa have been preserved: Lewelling House in Salem, Pearson House in Keosauqua, Jordan House in West Des Moines, Hitchcock House in Lewis, and the John Todd House in Tabor.

Holmgren said the secrecy around the Underground Railroad makes research into it difficult.

“To get absolute verification of Underground Railroad activity is extremely difficult just simply because we’re talking about activities that were felonies under federal law at that time because of the two fugitive slave laws: the first act of 1793 and the second one in 1850, which was the notorious one.” Holmgren said.

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Federal Marshals were sent into free states, including Iowa, to monitor activity. Under the Federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, all citizens were required to assist Federal Marshals in finding fugitive slaves. These laws meant freedom seekers were risking everything to escape enslavement.

Also unknown are most of the people who arrived in Iowa through the Underground Railroad.

“Probably 90 to 98 percent of all fugitive slaves who came to Iowa, their names are lost to history.” Holmgren said.

The story of Charlotta Pyles

One story that was not lost is that of Charlotta Gordon Pyles. Like many of the stories of the Underground Railroad, it was passed down by family members. Pyles’ granddaughter, Grace Morris Jones, shared it with the State Historical Society of Iowa in the 1920s.

Pyles died a free woman in Keokuk in 1880, but her life started enslaved on Hugh and Sarah Gordon’s plantation near Bardstown, Kentucky.

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As Hugh reached the end of his life, he was influenced by abolitionists’ beliefs. Before his death in 1834, his daughter, Frances Gordon, promised she would free the people the family had enslaved. It would take her 20 years to follow through on that promise.

When Frances Gordon tried to free the family’s slaves, her brothers stepped in, selling one of Charlotta’s 12 children and filing lawsuits to try to stop Frances. Fearful that her brothers would try to sell other members of the Pyles family, Frances and the Pyles family — Charlotta, her husband, Harry Pyles, their 11 remaining children and five grandchildren — piled into a prairie schooner and fled to free territory.

They used river travel to cross the country from Louisville to Cairo, Illinois and finally to Keokuk.

Charlotta became a prominent anti-slavery activist. In 1855, she embarked on a lecture tour on the east coast to raise money to buy her two sons-in-law out of slavery. During the tour, she befriended Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.

Landis, at the State Historical Society, said that many white people were not accustomed to hearing Black people, especially women, present compelling stories, aside from people like Sojourner Truth or Douglass.

“So there was a bit of fascination with slavery narratives,” Landis said, “but also then to have a first person account of what enslavement was like was something that the anti-slavery movement was really keying into then in the late 1840s, early 1850s up to the Civil War.”

The Pyles family went on to become Underground Railroad agents, giving shelter to freedom seekers on their way to Canada. Notably, when Charlotta’s grandson was denied enrollment in an all-white public high school, Charlotta and other Black families filed a lawsuit. In 1875, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in their favor. In 1876, school officials in Keokuk began enrolling Black students, 78 years before Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court case that declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

Charlotta and Harry Pyles and Frances Gordon are buried in the same cemetery in Keokuk.

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Ultimately, the story of the Underground Railroad is one of sacrifice. Landis said that enslaved people wanted to realize equality and freedom in a nation that says all men are created equal.

“And so, willing to risk their lives to have freedom like any white American would have, to me, that’s the story of the Underground Railroad,” Landis said. “And realize that there were white people supporting them, but it was action taken by Black people in those states where slavery was legal and finding routes … and then allies in our state could help them achieve equality to the greatest that they could.”

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Comments: bailey.cichon@thegazette.com