FORWARDED MESSAGE - From: Sandra Moats Burke

Hello Bennie,

Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I have just a few points to make. The history of the Underground Railroad is American history, not black or white. Professional historians sometimes seem to think they own history and can or should control it. I believe amateur historians are quite capable of discovering or rediscovering crucial bits of history, especially neglected history like the Underground Railroad. My degrees are not in history, but I've been researching West Virginia history for years. Part of that history concerns the Underground Railroad and the antislavery movement.

West Virginia historians have been writing about the abolitionist movement all along. State histories published in the early 1900's have bits and pieces of information. Abolitionists played a huge role in tearing West Virginia from the side of our mother state, Virginia.

Yet no one has done indepth research documenting the Underground Railroad in WV. Maybe it's too late, maybe not. I'm attempting to do this research with a lot of handicaps. Any help is appreciated. The National Park Service has provided their assistance. Last year I attended an event at Cumberland, Md., where people from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland gathered to share information on the Underground Railroad.

I understand the NPS has an interest in telling the story of slavery, along with the story of the Underground Railroad. You have to understand the evils of slavery to understand why ordinary people broke the law to work the Underground Railroad. Evil laws like the Fugitive Slave Law were made to be broken. Good people felt the duty to obey a higher law.

Bits and pieces of information about the days of slavery and the Underground Railroad are to be found in West Virginia history books. One story (which I found in one of the volumes of Jim Comstock's West Virginia Heritage Encyclopedia) told of a tragic couple who escaped without assistance. Knowing they would never make it to freedom, they killed themselves. Their bodies were found inside a cave. What was so bad that suicide was preferable? Slavery.

Each year I find new information about stations of the Underground Railroad in West Virginia. Francis H. Pierpont, wartime governor of Loyal (Unionist) Virginia, established his seat of government in Wheeling. Before the war Pierpont represented a black man accused of being a conductor of the Underground Railroad.

Our state's third governor, William Erskine Stevenson, was one of the members/founders of the abolitionist colony of Valley Mills in Wood County. Stevenson was once indicted by a Wood County grand jury for circulating an abolitionist book.

Our first governor, Arthur I. Boreman, was son of an abolitionist family who came from Pennsylvania. A family historian reports the Boreman's former residence in PA was used as a station of the Underground Railroad.

So you can see the abolitionist movement in West Virginia included our state's founding fathers. Some historians have argued it was the abolitionists who created West Virginia.

Look at national maps of the Underground Railroad. West Virginia is left blank. A national online listing of Underground Railroad conductors credits Virginia with the conductors of Wheeling. Look for Wheeling on the Ohio River in West Virginia. One of the conductors at Wheeling was Dick Naylor, a free black man who loitered at the wharf, where he pretended to be an old drunken derelict.

My point is this: The rest of you may not need help from the National Park Service in telling your state's role in the Underground Railroad. It has been documented. The state of West Virginia is being left out of this story. To change that, I'd like to be able to continue to receive the assistance of the National Park Service.

Thanks for your time in reading this. Post it if you wish.

Peace, all blessings,

Sandra Moats Burke