Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
MONMOUTH — Aurthor Mark Alan Leslie will speak about Maine and Monmouth’s role in the Underground Railroad at 7 p.m., Monday, March 15, in a author talk sponsored by Cumston Public Library.
Leslie’s talk is at 7 p.m. on Zoom, and the link is avaiable on the library’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/cumstonlibrary or by calling the library at 207-933-4788. It is free and open to the public.
Maine’s crucial part in the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape to Canada in the early-to mid-1800s, included at least four Monmouth families who put their lives and fortunes in peril by breaking the law — the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Monmouth author Leslie said hundreds of Mainers from Kittery to Fort Fairfield formed a network of illegal “safe houses” operated by “conductors” and “station managers” to hide slaves from slave hunters. Homes on Monmouth’s Main Street, North Main Street, Academy Street and Norris Hill Road were among the places slaves found protection on their way to Freedom Land.
Leslie will discuss how families who housed and fed slaves in hidden rooms, attics and elsewhere en route to the next secret “way station” on the “railroad.”
“Slavery was the one issue that has been able to tear America apart, and that included Mainers,” Leslie said. “Reportedly half Maine’s population thought slavery was essential to the economy, while many others reviled it as ‘the absolute power of one person over another — the vilest human behavior and institution.’ The rift was tangible and dangerous. Americans were bound by law to not only turn over slaves but to help law officers find them.”
Maine’s Underground Railroad itself was “a marvel of secret connections from churches to hack stands, second-hand clothing stores and people’s homes,” Leslie said. “Slaves sometimes escaped aboard ships, but more often northward on land, and that included through Monmouth, Augusta and eastward along the Boston Post Road through Vassalboro and China to Bangor.”
