Before Juneteenth, volunteers working to preserve Underground Railroad history in Pennsylvania town
Kennett Square heralds itself as the mushroom capital of the world, but what many people may not know is that it was a crucial stop on the Underground Railroad.
Crystal Crampton, president of the Kennett Underground Railroad Center, is among the volunteers working to preserve that history.
The center offers bus tours of several Underground Railroad stations in Chester County, such as the Cox House at 921 East Baltimore Pike. The tours highlight the dangers that enslaved Black people faced as they traveled north, and the risks abolitionists took in helping them get to freedom.
"If you were found helping runaways, you could be imprisoned," Crampton said. "You could have been stripped of everything that you own, whether it be your home, your life."
Tours begin at the Kennett Underground Railroad Center, a single room at a former Quaker meeting house. Social reformers Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth once visited that building.
"Kennett Square is known for the hotbed of abolitionists," Crampton said.
Having outgrown the space, Crampton hopes to relocate the center to a historic house known as the Pines at 723 East Baltimore Pike, where Quaker doctor and abolitionist Bartholomew Fussell once lived. It's estimated that Fussell helped more than 2,000 enslaved people get to freedom. He sometimes hid freedom seekers in his root cellar.
"He spoke his beliefs, and then he acted on them, and I'm very proud to be considered part of his family," Elizabeth Pier Smith, Fussell's great, great granddaughter, said.
On Juneteenth 1865, Crampton said abolitionists in Chester County were still helping freedom seekers on their journey.
"You kind of got to know your history, to go to your future, to know what you're going to what you're going to do, what you're going to be about," Crampton said.
She said Juneteenth is about recognizing the bravery and resilience of those who worked toward emancipation.
