To mark International Underground Railroad Month in 2022, the National Park Service's Network to Freedom program let a different member site take over its social media each day under #TakeoverTheNetwork. On September 4 it was the turn of the Oldham County History Center in LaGrange, Kentucky, which looks after two Network to Freedom listings: the Henry Bibb Escape Site/Gatewood Plantation and the J. C. Barnett Library and Archives.
Why Oldham County
The county lies on the Ohio River next to Louisville. Its river location, farming economy and nearness to a large city tied it closely to slavery and to the Underground Railroad.
The Mount House parlor
The J. C. Barnett Library and Archives occupies the house of James and Amanda Mount. James Mount was the county jailer from the 1850s to 1865, and the Mounts themselves enslaved people. The History Center holds receipts for their purchases and sales of enslaved people, and bounty papers for freedom seekers who fled the Mount home. Because an enslaved person's journey on the Underground Railroad begins with the first step toward freedom, these papers document the start of at least two such journeys from the property, which is why it is a Network to Freedom site.
In 2021 the center recreated the house's parlor, furnished as it would have been when the Mounts and the people they enslaved lived there, to show the relationship between them and the freedom seekers who set out from this place. The archives also hold volumes of county court records, including further papers on slavery and contracts for hiring out enslaved people. Its collections also include a handwritten 1861 letter from Camp Sigel.
A podcast
In 2020 the center produced a podcast, "30 Days of Stories on the Underground Railroad in Kentucky," on freedom seekers, conductors and abolitionists along the Ohio River, available at oldhamkyhistory.com.
Digging at the Henry Bibb escape site
Henry Bibb escaped from slavery at the Gatewood Plantation, and the center's executive director, Nancy Theiss, told his story in the takeover, with objects from its collections. An archaeologist explained the studies under way at the escape site, where high school students in the center's archaeology field school dig test pits and sift soil alongside experienced archaeologists; two of them, Benny and Cecelia, introduced themselves.
More from the series: #TakeoverTheNetwork · previous, Frederick Douglass Driving Tour of Talbot County · next, Banneker-Douglass Museum.
Sources
- National Park Service, Network to Freedom, "Oldham County History Center #TakeovertheNetwork." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/oldham-county-history-center-takeoverthenetwork.htm
- The original's photographs, all from the Oldham County History Center, and its social-media videos are not reproduced here.
- Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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