Underground Railroad, Alton, Missouri

Among the winding brick side streets and towering Victorian homes of Alton, Illinois, lies a silent railroad.

“There were about seven different lines of the underground railroad running through Alton at different times,” said Eric Robinson, a history professor at Lewis and Clark Community College who gives tours of the city’s most prominent historical sites.

Bordered by the Mississippi River, Alton is only 30 minutes from downtown St. Louis, and on a clear day the city skyline is visible from the crests of the hills. Of more interest, however, is the amount of history that exists in and around the spectacular views and stunning architecture in Alton.

Between 1820 and 1860, Alton became a major stopping point for slaves on the run from all over the Midwestern and Southern parts of the country. Alton is home to the second-oldest black church west of the Allegheny Mountains, the Union Baptist Church, which was known in its early years as an underground railroad stop. Several other landmarks around town — such as the Enos Apartments and the Old Rock House — are also recognized as underground railroad stops.

Robinson’s tours take place on a bus that cruises through Alton as he tells story after story about the buildings, streets, monuments and graves that served as the setting for underground railroad movement and abolitionist work.

The first notable stop on Robinson’s excursions is the Enos Apartments, a tuberculosis sanatorium built in 1888. Robinson said a tunnel — originally used for coal storage — exists beneath the apartments where slaves were rumored to have been hidden.

“This is an obvious building for the underground railroad because it has a commanding view of the Mississippi River and St. Charles County,” Robinson said. “They would come here and stay for a short while, then proceed farther north.”

“ [The park] is one of the Peoria area’s top family- friendly attractions,” she said.

A few shaded streets away from the Enos Apartments, Robinson’s tour stops at the Union Baptist Church. The church was organized in 1837, the same year Alton was incorporated as a town, and is the oldest black church in Alton.

The Old Rock House, another underground railroad stop, is a gray stone building located across town. The house served as the organization spot for the Anti-Slavery Society of Illinois.

As Robinson reveals more about underground railroad lines, he talks about the danger associated with the operation.

“If you were white … you ran the risk of a jail term and a fine of $500 if you were lucky,” Robinson said. “If you were white and unlucky, you ran the risk of being tarred and feathered … businesses being destroyed, farms being destroyed.”

The tour progresses through more underground railroad lines, two graveyards and historic black communities. With each stop, Robinson uncovers a little more of the early history of Alton, which is quite extensive when it comes to slavery and civil rights.

Don Huber, Alton township supervisor, said Alton was closer to the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in the mid-1800s than it is now. When the water was low, a chain of rocks running through the Mississippi River prevented travelers from coming any farther downstream than Alton.

“Alton was … a much bigger hub in its day than it is now,” he said.

The Mississippi River, and two smaller creeks that emptied from it, also provided an entry point to two very large and very active black settlements in Alton, according to Huber.

“If you were an escaping slave and could get across the Mississippi River, you could follow one of those creeks,” Huber said. “As you went up the creek … you were able to follow those natural watersheds and then you’d come to these large black settlements where you could sort of disappear into the population until you could get out.”

It is still possible to find descendents of those original families in Alton today.

Resident Charlotte Johnson said her husband’s family has been in the area since 1837, and she has spent a lot of time researching the Johnson family history, which she thinks had some connection to an underground railroad line that ran through nearby Woods Station.

“The hardest information [to find] has been on my husband’s family,” she said, explaining that there is a lack of legal paperwork available about past members of the Johnson family.

Johnson talks about several other families who helped establish black settlements in the early 1800s and whose descendents remain in the Alton area today. Through her research, Johnson has tracked families that came to Alton from various southern states.

Johnson describes her work as one big puzzle, saying that once she gets to know the people of Alton she can make connections and devise a research trail.

“Everything I hear orally from someone, I try to find three sources for it,” Johnson said. “… I comb the county building, I comb diaries, church histories, obituaries. I’ll go to the sources, but I try to get as much legal printed word as I can on anything that I use. Then you put the puzzle together.”

With historians such as Johnson digging for clues to Alton’s past and Robinson studying the town’s history and relaying it to the public, the city’s unique railroad system is no longer silent.

Photos by Phil Jarrett