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Had a note from a relative back home in
Indiana last week. Attached was a clipping from the Wayne County weekly.
It asked: What's worse, the 1988 farm drought
that hit us, or sailing on the Titanic? Answer: the
drough. At least the Titanic had a band.
Did you hear about the Kansas farmer who
was arrested for child abuse? He tried to give the farm to his kids.
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An important piece of our history is restored
and dedicated in Jamestown. The ceremonies
were held at the Mendenhall Plantation by the
Historic Jamestown Society, and it's there for
you to see. It was the presentation of the
Stanley-Murrow Wagon, traced through five
generations, that's come to the Society as a gift
from Joshua Edgar Murrow, who died in 1980,
his wife, Hazel Richardson Murrow, and their
three children.
Cecil E. Haworth wrote: If the wagon could
talk, it would tell of many exciting and
sometimes perilous events, of several trips to
Ohio with a load of runaway slaves. The wagon
trains crossed into free terriroty of West
Virginia, then to a Friend's home in Ohio. The
drivers were two young men selected because no
one would likely suspect such young men of
"slave-running." The two were Andrew Murrow
(1820-1908) and Isaac Stanley (1832-1927),
orphans who grew up with parents Joshua and
Abigail Stanley.
The historic wagon came to the Society from
Stacey and Ruth Hockett of Pleasant Garden,
close friends of Joshua Edgar Murrow Sr., who
received it as a gift from Abigail Stanley Hodgin,
Isaac Stanley's daughter.
There's a second wagon, almost identical, in
the Levi Coffin House and Museum in Fountain
City, Ind.
The wagons with the "false bottoms" were
called "trains." The drivers were known as
"conductors," and the fugitives were refered to
as "the baggage" or "cargo." They traveled at
night as part of the underground railroad.
Assisting runaway slaves was against the law,
and so it was done with much secrecy, and no
records were kept for fear they might serve as
incriminating evidence.
It was difficult period for Quakers before,
during and after the Civil War, and some moved
west.