Underground Railroad is topic of upcoming Fulton Historical Society meeting

FULTON – The Fulton (Martin House) Museum will host its monthly program at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 22.

This month’s presentation pertains to the Underground Railroad as it relates to the strategic role played by Clinton County, Iowa, and Whiteside County in the years before the Civil War.

Slavery was the most contentious issue in America before the Civil War. The Underground Railroad is the story of enslaved people who took the question of their personal freedom into their own hands and the people who aided them in their quest to find safe haven in Canada. The secret network was so effective that slave catchers declared that it was as if escapees from slavery had gone underground. Even “station masters” knew only as much as was necessary to fulfill their role.

The presentation will illustrate how geography and human conscience combined to make Clinton and Whiteside counties key players in the Underground Railroad network.

The presenter will be Herb Shafer, a retired pastor and amateur historian. For 47 years he pastored at Iowa churches, including the First Methodist Church of Clinton from 1998 to 2007. After that, he and his wife Jan resided in southeast Iowa, where he pastored in Mount Pleasant and later in Van Buren County.

For nine years, Jan operated the Bentonsport Village Bed and Breakfast. Guests’ curiosity about the Underground Railroad led to a search for documented stories to provide a glimpse of the workings of the “freedom trail.” The results of that research, as it relates to the local community, will be part of the presentation.

The Shafers retired to this area in 2022 and live in Fulton.

The program is free and open to the public. The Martin House is located at 707 10th Ave. in Fulton. The building is accessible through the north entrance, and refreshments will be served.