The Montgomery County Historical Society is committed to preserving and researching Black History. One project that came out of our Black History program centered around the 1990 restoration of the Speed Log Cabin at the Lane Place grounds. The cabin was originally built in the northwest corner of Crawfordsville, circa 1845. It was the residence of a dedicated Abolitionist, John Allen Speed, who provided sanctuary and transportation to hundreds of fugitive slaves. We now have the data for the workings of that mid-19th century humanitarian project, and we have located to date 15 "depots" scattered throughout Montgomery County. John Speed, native of Perth, Scotland, was just one man involved in the crusade with his wife and daughter and two young sons who fed, clothed, and encouraged their black visitors to find freedom from bondage.

The Speeds influenced members of the African-Methodist-Episcopal church to join them in aiding the ex-slaves. The A.M.E. members had secured Lot 20 on which to build their small church. Speed's cabin was only a few yards away on Lot 19. The black church members also lived in shacks in the area of west North and Spring Streets-with Sugar Creek on the north and the Chicago railway stood two blocks to the east.

There was additional fervor for their underground assistance, even though the penalties for involvement were stiff-including lynching. Support came from Wabash College whose professors and administration members hailed from New England with its religious and political sympathies intact.

Another strong source in favor of the Underground Railroad came from various corners of the county in the form of the Quietism and Fortitude Quaker families. Crawfordsville's most successful banker, Isaac Elston, was married to Maria Akin, born and reared in Quaker Hill, New York. Mrs. Elston was respected and admired by the community as no other resident was.

Fisher Doherty, an Abolitionist and Spiritualist, owned and operated a wagon factory. One of his employees, Jesse Cumberland, who had married the older Speed daughter, became actively involved. Their brick house a block from the Speeds' cabin site became another "station" on the Underground.

Assistance also came from several physicians: Dr. Joseph Emmons, resident of the Quaker community at Binford; Dr. Iral Brown of Alamo and Yountsville; and Dr. Ryland T. Brown of Crawfordsville. Their enclosed buggies and night journeys kept them free of suspicion.

The above portrays only briefly the sites and people who "built" the Underground and then kept it running. John T. Hanover (who used an alias John Hanson while working in Indiana) — employed by the Freedmen's Bureau in the nation's capitol and formerly Indiana's head of the Anti-Slavery League — stated in 1865 that about four thousand Negroes for each of the seven years after the Fugitive Slave Law was repealed were given aid. The largest number traveled the Whitewater route along the eastern border of Indiana, but that still leaves an awesome number who traveled along the central route and/or through the villages and farms on the western route.

—Martha Cantrell, August 2000