BRUNSWICK — Author Mark Alan Leslie will tell the story of the Underground Railroad in Maine at the Joshua Chamberlain Civil War Roundtable on Thursday, June 13, at Curtis Memorial Library, 7 p.m. in the Morrell Room, 23 Pleasant St.
Leslie points out that Chamberlain and his then fiancée, Fanny, were close to Harriet and her husband, Prof. Calvin Stowe; Harriet often would read from her novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”_ _when the couples visited._ _
Maine’s connection to the famous Underground Railroad that helped free runaway slaves in the mid-1800s does not begin and end with Stowe, however. A number of Maine families from Kittery to Fort Fairfield formed a network of “safe houses,” hiding slaves from slave hunters and supporting them on their way to Canada.
Leslie is a longtime journalist whose career started as a reporter and editor in Maine. In his novel, “True North: Tice’s Story,” a number of real people involved in the Underground Railroad appear, and half the book takes place in Maine. The event is free and open to the public.