Brilliant late-autumn sun flickers through the leaves of tall trees at Edgewood Country Inn, a restaurant in Spencerville surrounded by quiet fields and country roads. The scene hasn't changed much since the Civil War, when Edgewood was a house.
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And, very probably, a station on the Underground Railroad.
The railroad was an organized escape system for slaves, uniting fugitives with volunteers who would carry off, conceal, feed and clothe them before conveying them across the border to states where they could live in freedom. Some escaped from Montgomery County, and others from the South fled through Montgomery on their way north.
Edgewood is one of the places highlighted in "The Underground Railroad in Montgomery County, Maryland," a history and driving guide published this month by the Montgomery County Historical Society.
"A lot has been written about the Underground Railroad, in the North and even in Washington and Virginia, but not much about its operations in Montgomery County," said author and county resident Anthony Cohen. "Slavery -- and the Underground Railroad, thanks largely to the Quaker community here -- flourished in the area. ...
"What you hear about the Underground Railroad focuses on the great figures of the North. There is no way the slaves could have escaped from the South without assistance, and there is very little written on this."
Jeanette Swan owns and operates the Edgewood Country Inn, which in the 1800s was the home of Robert and Hannah Stabler, who were Quakers. She shows visitors the two tiny concealed rooms upstairs in the back of the house.
Soon after her family moved there 30 years ago, she said, "my sons were playing and discovered a narrow, hidden passageway up to this room, with pegs in the walls so you could climb up. We didn't even know this room was here. There was a straw mattress and rags, everything covered with dust. Later, we discovered the second room and passageway. That had pegs too."
Little documentation exists for most of the places said to be stops on the railroad. "It was illegal, remember, and people didn't keep records or incriminating proof," Cohen said. There were other reasons for people to have hidden rooms, such as to protect valuables, said historian Charles Blockson, who also studies the Underground Railroad.
But Edgewood is a good bet, Cohen said. "All the houses in the Sandy Spring area that were connected with the Underground Railroad were Stabler homes, so it's extremely likely that Edgewood's hidden rooms were used to hide runaways," he said.
Cohen's guide lists 24 points of interest, including other houses, the Slave Museum in Sandy Spring, probable routes and churches that played a role. It's also a guide to a little-discussed part of suburban Maryland history: slavery and those who helped fugitives to freedom.
"People don't think of Maryland as a southern state or a slave state, but it was," said Karen Yaffe Lottes of the historical society.
Slavery was established in the state in the 17th century. Maryland sided with the Union during the Civil War, but because it was a border state and rural, many Montgomery plantations used slaves.
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 applied to slaves only in rebel-held areas, not in Maryland, so slavery continued in Montgomery until the state abolished it in June 1864.
Census records show that in 1860, slaves made up 30 percent of Montgomery's population of about 18,000, and free blacks constituted 8 percent.
No reliable figures exist on runaways, but notices regularly appeared in local newspapers.
"Maryland was a key state on the Underground Railroad," said Blockson, chairman of the National Park Service's Underground Railroad Advisory Committee, which plans a new study next year. "It was near the Mason-Dixon line, and some key people -- Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and others -- operated there."
And Montgomery, only 40 miles from free Pennsylvania and with several natural north-south routes, was an important way station. But after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, runaways weren't safe in any state, and many chose Canada.
According to historians, fugitives walked up the C&O Canal towpath, traveled north on what is now Rockville Pike/Frederick Road, probably picked their way along Rock Creek to or from Washington, where they were hidden, often by free blacks, and were smuggled aboard ships to freedom.
"Natural features that could be followed without a guide -- like Rock Creek -- were often as important as safe houses," Cohen said.
Cohen's guide notes that "long before the Civil War, Montgomery County lost its slaves to secret networks as seen through reward notices that appeared frequently in the pages of newspapers. ... In 1789, William Smith of 'Seneca' offered a reward of five pounds for the capture and return of his slave, 'Bachelor.' " Those ads ran in the Montgomery County Sentinel and the Washington Star, set off with an eye-catching logo of a fleeing man carrying a bundle at the end of a pole or a woman running with a satchel.
Maryland Quakers outlawed slave trading and ownership among their members, and some in the Sandy Spring Quaker community are said to have helped slaves escape. Many of the freed slaves of the Quakers remained in Sandy Spring, and their community also may have helped fugitives.
Not all the tour stops are stations on the Underground Railroad. Cohen has included the little-known "Uncle Tom's Cabin," hidden behind a screen of pines and maples on Old Georgetown Road in Rockville.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was fiction, but according to Stowe and others, the character of Uncle Tom was based largely on Josiah Henson, slave and trusted overseer of the Riley plantation once on that site. One of the original buildings remains, with an attached cabin that looks as it did in Henson's day: logs, shake roof and gray stone chimney.
Henson, who later escaped and wrote his memoirs, lived on the property, although it's not known whether he lived in that cabin. But locals still refer to it as "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
In fact, Cohen pointed out, much of the material that Stowe used in her celebrated antislavery book came from incidents and people in Montgomery County.
"Henson was sold on an auction block in Rockville," he said. Stowe cited Reuben B. Carlley, of Poolesville, as a model for the slave trader, Mr. Haley. Cruel Simon Legree probably was based on Brice Letton, described in detail by Henson, Cohen said. Letton attended Christ Episcopal Church in Rockville, another stop on the tour. Stowe also cited the travails of the Edmondsons, a free black couple who fought to liberate their children, as a source for her book; their farm was located on land now occupied by Leisure World, a retirement community in Silver Spring.
The cabin, and some other stops on the driving tour, are part of private homes that are not open to the public. Cohen notes in his guide when that is the case. Edgewood is open, and Swan will show the hidden rooms.
The guide is available for $5 from the Historical Society, which plans bus tours. Cohen will lead one from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 11, and his well-informed commentary adds immensely to the tour.
Cohen, 30, is an American University graduate who volunteered as a researcher at the Historical Society for several years before writing the guide with a grant from the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission. He works at the university.
He based his research on contemporary accounts such as the book and letters of William Still, an Underground Railroad conductor in Philadelphia. Cohen linked them to local records and fugitive slave notices in the area and to records of escaped slaves in Canada.
Cohen said he found his research "chilling," and he encountered a couple of shocks along the way.
"I found what I think was an ancestor of mine, in Canada," he said. "An escaped slave named Sneed, from Georgia. My family is originally from Georgia, and Sneed is a family name. It's an unusual one, blacks of Cherokee descent. ... I didn't know about him."
The other surprise was "the amount of white assistance they had getting out. Many people helped, at great risk to themselves." Punishment for helping slaves escape varied; one man was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In one celebrated case, a 15-year-old girl escaped with the help of "Professor H"; the railroad arranged for her to disguise herself as a boy coachman, complete with cap, and "Professor H," within the coach, guided her to freedom through Pennsylvania.
No proof exists of the professor's identity, but Cohen said he thinks he has deduced who the man was, based on letters and facts about the escape: Benjamin Hallowell, a Pennsylvania Quaker living near Sandy Spring who later helped found Swarthmore College.
Hallowell became president of the agricultural college that later was part of the University of Maryland on the condition that the college agree not to use slave labor.
Cohen is careful to qualify his conclusions whenever there is uncertainty -- and uncertainty abounds in this field. Especially on his tour, though, he discusses what is likely to be true and the basis for his deductions. In the process, he communicates something of the thrill of historical research.
Driving along the routes of Montgomery County, some parts still largely rural, it is easy to imagine fugitives taking refuge in one of these old houses, hiding in Rockville Cemetery, then making their way along the wooded shores of Rock Creek to freedom.
"The Underground Railroad is all around us," Cohen said. "It still exists, and it can be retrieved."
For information on the guide and tour, contact the Montgomery County Historical Society at 301-340-6534.
301.263.6982
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