My Great Great Grandfather and Grandmother were part of the Underground Railroad                        movement in Iowa up to the US Civil War. Here is a newspaper article from 1872 describing a                                            couple UGRR instances during those trying times:

Nathan and Elizabeth (Winder) Newlon

And the Underground Railroad[*]

 

Transcribed and Reformatted From the Original News Article

by

©2015 Chris Newlon Green

 

Iowa State Register[†]                                        December 15, 1872

 

Winterset Branch

      Something like a year ago the Winterset people celebrated the opening of the Rock Island Branch Road, but years before there was a road running through their town. Night expresses only were used, but they never ran off the track. At Winterset Mr. Nathan Newlon was the presiding genius. His crib has held frequent loads that were never gathered in a field of Yellow Dent nor Flint corn. But he was not alone in the business. The number of stockholders in the Underground Railroad at Winterset were legion. In the country there were Uncle Billy Ruby and David Martin, while Mr. J.J. Hutchings, Judge Pitzer, and a score of others in the village always responded when called on to pay for a darkey’s ticket on this famous line.

 

      Four miles east of St. Charles Mr. Wm. Beard kept a station. There was only one other Abolition family near him; the other neighbors all being pro-slavery Democrats of the strictest sect, and the sharpest lookout was necessary when a train was approaching or departing to prevent running into a Locofoco.[‡] Further on, near Indianola, Uncle Grimshaw, a staunch old Quaker with a heart as capacious as the big loft where he used to hide his sable guests, was station agent. The time table was arranged for trains to reach his house about daylight. Here the passengers laid over for the night express, which would roll out about ten o’clock, halting at the Quaker settlement between Knoxville and Indianola. The next stage was a long one – to Newton or to Taylor Peirce’s, and from there the time table has not been furnished us.

 

      One time a party of five slaves came through the northern part of Madison County on foot, and without a guide. They fell in the hands of some pro-slavery residents of the county, and were captured. That night they were placed in a covered wagon, to which four strong horses were attached, and started under guard to Missouri. But meantime some of the Madison County Abolitionists had heard of the circumstance and started in pursuit. About daylight they overhauled the wagon, rode in front of it, and seizing the horses, ordered a halt. The driver got out his shotgun and threatened to shoot. For fear that he might do so foolish a thing, one of the hard-hearted Abolitionists punch him behind the ear, and he retired from the discussion. By the time he again began to take an interest in this world’s affairs, the blacks and their liberators had disappeared, nor was there any further track of them visibly.

 

      The last train that passed through on the route came from Ray County, Missouri, starting just after the war commenced. They came through Page County, stopped over a day at Quincy and the next day halted at Mr. Samuel Ainsworth’s at Nevin. That night they started for the Winterset station. The mud was knee deep, but in the gray of morning Hon. B.F. Roberts came riding up to Mr. Newlon’s door with the announcement that Ainsworth with six fugitives, was close behind. There was a lively rattle of pots and pans in the farmer’s house, a clearing away of rubbish in the loft, and by the time the train arrived Mother Newlon had a smoking hot breakfast on the table and the quarters for the passengers were all prepared. That night they rested, and at nightfall Mr. Newlon started with them for Indianola.

 

      After daylight the next morning, by a circuitous route, they reached Uncle Grimshaw”s and from there they were sent to Newton. That was the last train, and a few weeks later the blacks began to pass through Iowa without a guide, and none molested them. The rails on the track were taken up, and the conductors handed in the records of their doings. They have been scrutinized by the nation, and pronounced correct; nor is it likely that, when the final accounts of men are entered on the ledger of immortality, there will be any balance on this score against those whose humane sympathy, Christian sentiments and brave hearts, made them active workers on the Underground Railroad.

 

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[*] Nathan, 1812-1878; Elizabeth, 1806-1891

[†] In 1855 the Iowa Citizen began publishing and was renamed the Iowa State Register in 1860. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Des_Moines_Register

[‡] The Locofocos were a faction of the Democratic Party that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s. The faction was originally named the Equal Rights Party, and was created in New York City as a protest against that city’s regular Democratic organization (“Tammany Hall”). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locofocos