[gentle music]
- Jenny Pederson: Hello, everyone.
Welcome to today's "History Sandwiched In" program
at the Wisconsin Historical Society's
History Maker Space here on the Capitol Square.
We're excited to have you all with us
as we start the afternoon.
For those of you joining us for the first time,
this program runs throughout the year
from March through November,
highlighting a range of topics relevant to the history
of the people, places, spaces,
and events of Wisconsin and the broader Midwest.
For individuals who have attended a previous session
of "History Sandwiched In," welcome back.
My name is Jenny Pederson
and I am the public programs manager
for the Wisconsin Historical Society.
It's a joy to have you all with us today.
A quick note that opinions expressed today
during the presentation are those of the speaker
and not those of the Wisconsin Historical Society
or the society's employees.
It is a pleasure to welcome Kevin Scannell,
public programs and outreach coordinator
of the Milton House Museum and the Milton Historical Society.
In joining us today,
Kevin will be presenting on the founding of the town of Milton
and the construction of the Milton House.
During his presentation,
as you see here and referenced here,
he will also be talking about the role of the Milton House
as part of the Underground Railroad's
Network to Freedom,
as well as the social and political climate of Wisconsin
in the United States in the 1850s and 1860s.
Please join me in welcoming Kevin,
and enjoy the presentation, everyone.
[audience applauds]
- Kevin Scannell: Thank you all very much.
Yes, I'm Kevin.
I'll be talking about the Milton House today.
I usually start off asking a question,
and I noticed that PBS had,
about 20 years prior, had a talk here by my predecessor,
and she asked the exact same question,
so it's good to know we're still doing this.
But I wanted, just a quick show of hands,
how many of you have heard of or been to the Milton House before?
All right, a decent number of hands, yes.
So, the Milton House,
we are the only nationally certified
Underground Railroad site in Wisconsin that you can tour.
And that photograph right there
shows the modern-day Milton House.
So, before I get into this presentation,
I just wanna point out a few of the details from it.
So, if you notice the large hexagon part there at the front
that says "Milton House" on it.
The Milton House, it is known as a stagecoach inn,
or at least that's what it was during the time period.
So, it was built in 1844 by Joseph Goodrich,
and he's the founder of the town of Milton
and the one who built the Milton House.
And he builds that hexagon material as a stagecoach inn.
So, on the very first floor,
that is essentially the waiting room
and the dining room area of this Milton House.
And so, the Milton House had around 26 or so
stagecoaches travel by every single day.
And just off the picture,
there's also train tracks running by,
and there would be about half a dozen trains
that came through the town of Milton.
So, it's a very busy section,
and this is where everyone is waiting for their trains
or their stagecoaches.
On the second floor and the third floor,
which wasn't built for several years later,
but the second and third floor,
that is the inn part of the Milton House Inn,
and that is on each floor six hotel rooms,
one for each side of the hexagon.
Now, the sort of addition,
the rectangular addition, we call that the Block.
And that is the oldest sort of strip mall in the United States.
And on the very first floor of that,
there would be different shops
and different residents of Milton
would rent out these different shops along the block,
and the second floor would be rented out for housing as well.
Frequently that would be the housing
of the shopkeepers themselves.
Now, the material also--
and I'm really talking about the hexagon
and the first section of the Block--
you'll notice a bit of a divider
right there between half of the Block and the hexagon.
The original material is known as grout,
and that is not the stuff you find
in between your tiles back at home.
That is, instead, a sort of primitive concrete.
And the Milton House itself is the oldest still standing
poured concrete structure in the United States.
And this grout material,
it is made out of sand, water, and limestone,
and it comes together and it forms this form of concrete.
The section to the right ended up collapsing,
and I'll talk a little bit about that
in just a couple of minutes.
But if you do see that divider right there,
that is the section that collapsed.
And to the left of the divider on the Milton House,
that is the still-standing portion,
and that is made out of the original grout mixture
from 1844.
And if you look at the very bottom-left part
of that photograph,
you'll see a little wood log cabin.
And I'll talk about that a little bit later.
I just want you to remember what
that little log cabin looks like,
because that is a big part of the history
of the Underground Railroad.
So, moving on to our next slide.
And before I really get into this presentation,
we are part of the National Park Service
Network to Freedom.
And part of that means we like to use some
of the terminology that they use.
So, I'm gonna use a few of these words on this slide show
throughout this presentation itself,
and I just wanna talk about what a few of these words mean
just so we're all on the same page.
So, first point is the Underground Railroad.
That is defined as, "The resistance to slavery
through escape and flight."
It is not an actual underground railroad,
contrary to the belief of many schoolchildren
who tour the Milton House.
But, no, it is part of the resistance to slavery.
Freedom seeker is another word that we like to use,
and that describes "an enslaved person who is escaping
and traveling along the Underground Railroad."
You've probably heard the term fugitive slave or runaway slave.
This is the word we use in place of those terms.
Enslaved person is someone who is,
you can imagine, enslaved under the system of slavery.
An enslaver is someone enforcing that system.
An abolitionist is someone opposed
to the practice of slavery.
And then, the final three terms are all sort of thematic terms
that fit the naming of the Underground Railroad,
and that is a conductor,
who is escorting individuals or freedom seekers
between stops along the Underground Railroad.
A station master usually controls
or owns one of these stops.
And the station themselves
is a stop along the Underground Railroad.
So, those are just a few of the terms.
Now, we're gonna start talking about the important dates
of the Milton House itself.
So, in 1839, the Goodrich family--
and Joseph Goodrich, again,
he's the one who built the Milton House
and settled the town of Milton.
He and his family and nine others arrive at a town
that they call Prairie du Lac.
Now, the Goodriches are all coming from a place
known as Alfred, New York,
and they are Seventh Day Baptists.
They are sort of escaping from the area of New York
and founding what becomes a Seventh Day Baptist community.
And they originally call it Prairie du Lac,
but they have to end up changing the name of Prairie du Lac,
and they end up choosing the name of Milton.
And our theory as to, "Why Milton?" is,
if you've heard of the poet and author John Milton,
he wrote Paradise Lost and he wrote Paradise Found.
And they like to say that Milton is paradise found.
So, Joseph Goodrich comes here with his family
in 1839 to settle the town of Milton.
In 1844, Joseph Goodrich builds the Milton House Inn
out of that grout structure.
It is, again, the oldest still standing
poured-concrete structure in the United States.
Earlier in 1844,
he builds the Milton Academy out of a similar grout material,
but very quickly he realizes that mixture is flawed.
It starts showing cracks,
and he realizes he doesn't want to use that exact formula.
So, he ends up testing a new formula
on a small blacksmith shop just outside modern-day Milton House,
and he's satisfied with that,
and then he builds the much larger Milton House Inn
out of that material.
Several years later, the Milton Academy does collapse.
In 1861, the freedom seeker--
and if you remember the term freedom seeker
from the previous slide--
the freedom seeker named Andrew Pratt
arrives at the Milton House Inn.
And Andrew Pratt is the one freedom seeker
that we know by name,
who we can confirm came to the Milton House.
We estimate at minimum three, most likely several dozen,
and then high estimates of around a hundred or so
freedom seekers came to the Milton House.
It's very difficult to actually count
because there aren't many written records or details
provided from back then.
We'll talk a little bit about that later.
And then in 1948,
about a hundred years after the Milton House was built,
sections of it collapsed.
And I'll actually skip ahead onto the next slide
and show this photograph here, documenting that.
As we can see, the Milton House hexagon is there on the left.
And then, the part of the Block,
every two windows is a different section
or a different unit of it.
So, if you look every two windows,
we can see block one, block two,
and then blocks three and four have collapsed.
And at the very end, still standing is block five.
So, this is 104 years
after the Milton House was originally built
by the Goodriches.
Descendants of Joseph Goodrich, several other Goodriches,
still owned the Milton House at this time.
And just before the collapse,
it is falling into disrepair and they are looking to sell.
Many of them have left the town of Milton,
and they're actually also considering
just demolishing the building itself.
But the people of the town of Milton,
they end up forming the Milton Historical Society
to purchase the Milton House
because they recognize it has some historic value,
both to the town of Milton
and the history of the Underground Railroad.
While the two sides are negotiating
over how much they should sell the Milton House for,
it ends up collapsing.
And there's actually two people sleeping
inside the Milton House at the time.
One person is on the second floor
of the part that collapsed, and he ends up falling through,
and he's badly injured, but he does survive.
So, after the collapse,
this obviously, as you can imagine,
changes how much the Goodriches are going to ask for
in return for selling the Milton House.
And I want you to quickly come up with a guess in your head.
You're probably a little bit high.
They end up selling the Milton House for exactly $1.
That is a little more than $1 in today's money,
but still just $1 back then, so not a whole lot.
And the Milton Historical Society takes over
the Milton House.
Six years later, in 1954,
the Milton House officially opens as a museum.
And I'll skip back to this slide, actually.
They end up taking down
and clearing out the rubble from blocks three and four.
That's the collapsed section.
Block five is unattached,
and they end up taking down that section as well.
And then about a year after it collapses,
block two ends up falling away from the Milton House.
And it just falls off.
So, in order to ensure that doesn't happen for block one,
they put some beams connecting it to the hexagon part
of the Milton House.
So, when we looked at the original photograph
on the first slide,
we could see the hexagon and only block one
were out of that original material.
And that is why, is because of that collapse.
In 1998, the Milton House Museum is granted
a National Historic Landmark designation.
And then, in 2006, the addition is put on,
and that is in the footprint-- in the modern-day footprint,
I should say-- of the original Milton House.
So, it still looks the exact same from the outside
in terms of its shape,
although it is made out of modern-day materials
and not 1844 grout mixtures, which, again,
as we look at this slide is maybe a good thing
for structural integrity.
So, there's another photograph on the left
of the historic Milton House prior to its collapse.
And then, on the right we can see still the original section.
And that is another photograph
that if you look at the very right end of that picture,
you'll see the little divider there
separating blocks one of the original section
and block two of the historic section.
Here is a photograph of the Goodrich family.
And these two are Joseph and Nancy Goodrich.
They are the founders of the town of Milton,
and they are the two builders of the Milton House Museum.
Joseph Goodrich, as I hope you can guess,
is the one pictured on the left.
When-- and I skipped one of our more favorite stories
we like to talk about, so I'll briefly go back to that.
The reason Joseph Goodrich made it out of a grout mixture
as opposed to any other material that exists out there,
is, when initially planning the Milton House,
he is evaluating how much it will cost.
And he first considers building it out of brick,
which is, he estimates, around $6,000 in money,
which is a lot more back then.
He then looks at wood, which is about $4,000.
And he doesn't actually consider straw,
contrary to the common story about the wolves and the pigs,
but instead he looks at the grout mixture,
and that is only around $1,000.
So, it's significantly cheaper
for him to build it out of this grout structure.
So, as I already mentioned, they came from New York
and they traveled to Wisconsin.
They found the town of Milton.
They are Seventh Day Baptists,
which is a religious sect that they are a part of.
And I'll talk a little bit more
about the Seventh Day Baptists later on,
but it is an important part of both the Goodrichs' lives
and the history of the town of Milton.
And they also are the founders of the still standing
modern-day Milton College.
And that was built in around 1854 or so.
And it opened as a college,
and it served as a college for about a hundred years or so,
and it finally closed in the 1960s or '70s or so.
But it's also still standing,
and he decided to make that one out of brick
and not any other materials.
So, what was the Underground Railroad?
Well, I'm gonna steal another definition
from the National Park Service Network to Freedom.
And they talk about the Underground Railroad
as "a loose network of peoples and places
that aided freedom seekers."
And the Underground Railroad also operated from 1619 to 1865.
And we get those two dates from--
1619 is sort of considered the beginning or origin
of the transatlantic slave trade in the modern-day United States.
That is the arrival of a Dutch slave ship from Africa.
And so, if you've heard of the 1619 Project, that is,
as you might note, the same exact date here.
And 1865 is the end of the Civil War.
That is what we consider sort of the abolishment of slavery
and the end of, I should say,
legalized slavery in the United States.
Another question I happen to get a lot
working at the Milton House is,
"Why is it that we have an Underground Railroad site
"all the way in the North in Wisconsin, right?
Isn't Wisconsin a free state?"
And yes, Wisconsin was a free state,
but the Underground Railroad ran in both the North and the South.
So, we really think about the Underground Railroad
as just a Southern sort of practice,
but in reality, freedom seekers
very much were not safe once they reached a free state.
Bounty hunters certainly had the rights to travel north
and bring freedom seekers back down to the South.
And even non-bounty hunters,
even residents in these Northern cities and states
wouldn't always be abolitionists.
They wouldn't always be opposed to slavery.
So, very much not safe even staying
in a free state like Wisconsin.
And that is especially true following 1850
and the Fugitive Slave Act or Fugitive Slave Law.
And I'll talk about that a little bit later as well.
I'll point out the very large photograph there on the right,
and that is the underground tunnel of the Milton House.
So, if you remember all the way back on the first slide,
when I mentioned that very small wood log cabin
and I said,
"Don't forget the wood log cabin in that photograph."
This tunnel runs from the hexagon,
just below the hexagon,
in the root cellar of the Milton House,
all the way down beneath the log cabin
and up into the log cabin itself.
So, the tunnel connects these two places,
and freedom seekers staying at the Milton House
would use that tunnel to travel between the log cabin there
and the root cellar of the Milton House.
Because, as we were talking about earlier,
the Milton House, it's very much the hub of the town of Milton.
It has really the first strip mall
or shopping mall of the United States.
There's 26 stagecoaches coming through every day,
there's six trains, and it's a hotel as well.
So, everyone's staying here in the area of the Milton House.
So, if you're a freedom seeker, you can't exactly walk in
through the front door of the Milton House.
That's sort of what the tunnel is being used for.
Now, this is a map,
and I have this from the website of the National Park Service.
And you can see the lines there on the map.
They're a little bit blurry,
but they do show the most commonly used routes
from freedom seekers traveling along the Underground Railroad.
So, as you see, they're originating from the South
and heading up into the North.
Many of them are headed towards Canada.
Canada had abolished slavery in the 1830s,
as it was a British territory.
You also see some of them heading south into Mexico.
And Mexico also had abolished slavery in the 1830s
as part of its founding constitution.
You'll see some heading into Florida,
and actually some of them are gonna stay there in Florida.
And these are known as maroon colonies,
and these are colonies that consist of primarily
formerly enslaved freedom seekers
or emancipated formerly enslaved people
building their own towns and communities in Florida.
And they sort of serve as a safe haven or a community
where freedom seekers can live safely
as free individuals.
And I'm gonna run through a few of the common misconceptions
about the Underground Railroad,
and I'm gonna work right to left here, actually.
So, starting with the right.
Canada: Canada is the number-one destination,
but as we saw in the previous map,
it wasn't the only destination that freedom seekers are taking,
although it is still the most common and the most desirable.
But in many cases, it's also the furthest destination
and the hardest one to get to.
It is also not actually underground.
The Underground Railroad is not physically underground,
despite the fact that the Milton House
has an underground tunnel, and it is not an actual train
despite the fact that a train runs about 20 feet
from our front door.
So, that can cause a little bit of confusion
with some of our tour groups.
And the most common myth that we do hear about
is to do with quilts.
And I'm sure many of you have heard of the story of quilts
playing some role along the Underground Railroad,
where quilts would be hung outside buildings or in windows,
and they would signify information
to freedom seekers traveling along the Underground Railroad
about, you know, where to continue
or information about the next safe house
or this current safe house.
As far as we know, there's no real evidence
to suggest that's actually true.
Despite the fact that there have been many books written
about quilts along the Underground Railroad,
we can't really say with any confidence
that quilts played any significant role
along the Underground Railroad.
So, I have a very long slide here
where I have a lot of history to talk about.
So, I'm going to begin with the Texas War of Independence.
And that sounds very unrelated and very far away,
but I promise, by the end of the slideshow, it'll all make sense.
So, in 1835 to 1836, Texas secedes from Mexico,
and they do so out of a desire for independence
and their own territory.
Immediately after seceding and granting their independence,
they have a lot of territorial disputes with Mexico,
as you can probably imagine.
About 10 years after they become their own independent republic,
the United States decides to annex the now new state of Texas
into the United States as well.
And the U.S. inherits this territorial border dispute
that Texas and Mexico had.
Now, America and Mexico has this territorial dispute.
And this very quickly culminates in the Mexican-American War.
It takes one year for the U.S. and Mexico
to go to war over this territory.
And from 1846 to 1848, there is the U.S.-Mexico War.
This war ends with the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848.
And out of the treaty,
the United States gets quite a bit of new territory.
So, really everything that we consider western United States,
a lot of that is just coming out of this war.
So, Congress has several things
that they want to figure out during this time period,
and it takes them two full years to do so,
and this culminates in the Compromise of 1850.
And a lot of this debate is what to do with this new territory.
So, the Compromise of 1850 has five main components
that I'll be talking about very quickly.
The first is it creates the New Mexico Territory,
and that is modern-day New Mexico
and modern-day Arizona.
It creates the Utah Territory,
which is modern-day Utah, modern-day Nevada,
modern-day Colorado, has a little bit of Wyoming as well.
And it creates those two territories and says
that they have the right to decide
whether or not they want to be
free or slave territories by, essentially, popular vote.
It also creates the state of California.
California gets fast-tracked to being a state.
Because if you've ever heard of the forty-niners,
this is sort of what spurs the Compromise of 1850 into action
and getting California entered in as a state.
They-- the U.S. wants all of this gold
that is being found in California.
So, California is entered as a state,
and it's entered actually as a free state as well,
although the two senators who come from California,
even though it's a free state,
they say that one of them must be a supporter of slavery
and one must be opposed to the practice of slavery
to keep the Senate balanced at this time.
The other two sections are,
the slave trade is banned in Washington, D.C.
That is not to say that the practice of slavery
is banned in Washington, D.C.,
but simply the practice of purchasing
and selling is prohibited.
And then, the one that is considered least at the time
but is far and away the most influential
for at least what we're gonna be talking about
as this leads to the Civil War,
is the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
So, what does the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 do?
Well, it makes it much more illegal, I should say,
for people to assist freedom seekers
as they're escaping from slavery and traveling north.
If you are caught assisting someone
who is traveling along the Underground Railroad,
you can be given a $1,000 fine
and around six months of jail time as well for doing so.
It grants more powers to bounty hunters,
or "paddy rollers," as they're sometimes referred to,
who are traveling from the South to the North
and trying to return these freedom seekers back
into the practice of slavery itself.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
also becomes really the height of the Underground Railroad,
because this is when slavery is arguably
at its most protected by federal law,
and therefore it is more important
for the Underground Railroad to remain secret,
as the penalties for being caught are higher now
than they ever have been before.
And the person we like to talk about most
for this story is the Joshua Glover incident.
So, Joshua Glover, he is an enslaved person in Missouri.
Not too much is known about him before this time.
But in 1850, he is--
There's documentation that he is purchased
and enslaved in Missouri.
Two years later, in 1852, he ends up escaping from Missouri,
and he makes his way all the way north towards Racine,
so just south of Milwaukee.
And he works there as a free man for two years until 1854,
when he ends up being turned in by someone
he believed was a friend,
and this friend turns him in to the authorities.
Joshua Glover is arrested,
and he is taken to the Milwaukee County Jail.
They are planning on putting Joshua Glover on a train
and sending him back down to Missouri,
where he will be returned into enslavement, but around--
And the numbers vary between 100 and 1,000,
but I've most commonly heard 500 abolitionists from Racine
march on the Milwaukee County Jail,
essentially bust him out of jail and escort him north to Canada,
where he can live out his life as a free man.
Now, why do we like to talk about the story
of Joshua Glover?
Well, it shows several things,
the first of which is that Joshua Glover,
he escapes, right?
And he does so as part of his own agency,
traveling along the Underground Railroad.
But even when he makes it to a free state like Wisconsin,
he's still very much not safe,
as seen by the fact that he is quite literally arrested
and taken to jail.
Out of this exact incident,
out of the Joshua Glover incident, I should say,
the state of Wisconsin decides to find
the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 unconstitutional.
And the state of Wisconsin is the only state to do so
and say that they are not going to adhere
to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
because if they're a free state
and many of the residents of Wisconsin are abolitionists,
why should they have to assist in the capture
of freedom seekers traveling along the Underground Railroad?
The federal government, unsurprisingly, disagrees
and stands in favor of the federal law
and says that Wisconsin does continue
to have to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
but they continue to not do so.
Several other states also end up having their own ways
to combat the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
but none of them declare it unconstitutional
like the state of Wisconsin.
If any of you have ever heard of the Republican Party before,
the Republican Party also gets founded
about ten days after the Joshua Glover incident.
It is not exclusively because of the Joshua Glover incident,
but it is out of the same sort of anti-federal power
of general opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
and saying there should be sort of states' rights
to decide whether or not they want to enforce
the practice of slavery.
So, the Republican Party really gets founded
out of this anti-federal outreach
against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in Wisconsin.
So, that's a lot of information.
Now, I want to talk about
how this applies to the town of Milton itself.
So, I already mentioned several times that the Goodriches
and several of the founding members of the town of Milton,
they are all Seventh Day Baptists.
So, the Seventh Day Baptists
have several main components to their religion.
The first is that they are temperate,
so no smoking and no drinking.
And the arguably more important one
for a talk about the Underground Railroad
is that they had to not only be abolitionists,
they not only had to be opposed to the practice of slavery,
but they actively had to be making strides
to abolish the practice of slavery.
And we think that is why the town of Milton itself
was a stop along the Underground Railroad,
because so many of the residents here were, and still are,
Seventh Day Baptists.
Despite the fact that Milton today
is only around 5,000 people,
I have been informed by Seventh Day Baptists
it remains to be the capital, or I should say the headquarters
of the North American Seventh Day Baptist community,
which is somewhat impressive for such a small town.
I also mentioned how Joseph Goodrich built
the Milton Academy and Milton College.
Also at the Milton College,
there are a large number of Wide Awakes,
and the Wide Awakes are a sort of political
or paramilitary group that consist of a lot of young men,
many of whom are attending college,
and their name comes from the fact
that they are wide awake to the evils of slavery,
and their main sort of push is to abolish slavery.
And their claim to fame throughout their long career
is to help get Abraham Lincoln elected,
which they do succeed in doing in 1860.
Now, I have another photograph there of the underground tunnel.
It is not very well illuminated in this photograph.
That is because the original tunnel itself
was about half the size as it is in that photograph.
In that photograph, it's six feet tall.
So, if you take a tour of the Milton House today,
you'll walk through a six-foot-tall stone
and very well illuminated tunnel.
But the original tunnel back then
was about two and a half to three feet tall.
It was made entirely out of dirt,
and it had absolutely no lights.
And there wasn't even a staircase.
We have a nice staircase for our guests today,
but, no, back then you'd have to really crawl down a small hole,
using a ladder to get in and out of the tunnel.
So, that tunnel connects to the pioneer log cabin
that we saw on the very first slide.
And, yes,
the tunnel would be used to transport freedom seekers
between the cabin and the root cellar of the inn.
We have one of my favorite stories
about freedom seekers traveling along the Underground Railroad
coming through Milton.
And there's a story told not by William Coon Davis,
but it is a story passed along by his daughter
to her great-granddaughter.
And we have that story telling the tale
about William Coon Davis and the Elkhorn Tavern.
So, in this oral history that we have, Joseph Goodrich,
who, again, is the founder of the town of Milton,
he instructs William Coon Davis to drive a wagon filled with hay
all the way from the Milton House
to the Elkhorn Tavern,
and under no circumstances is he to look underneath the hay
at the back of the wagon.
All he has to do is drive this wagon to the Elkhorn Tavern,
have a nice meal, have a drink maybe--
Well, actually, he was a Seventh Day Baptist,
so he was not allowed to have a drink--
and then he would have to come back to the Milton House.
And, again, under no circumstances
should he look under the hay,
and he did not even have to unload the hay.
And in this oral history,
William Coon Davis and his daughter,
who was accompanying him along for the journey,
they hear voices underneath the hay
as they're driving to the Elkhorn Tavern,
and they do not hear voices on the way back
as they're returning to the Milton House.
So, obviously, this story's telling us
that the Elkhorn Tavern was a stop
along the Underground Railroad,
continuing onwards from the Milton House east.
Many of the freedom seekers
who traveled through the town of Milton
would be heading east towards Racine or Milwaukee.
Racine in particular has the,
I believe it is the A.P. Dutton harbor there,
or warehouse right next to the harbor,
and Dutton would help get around a hundred,
over a hundred freedom seekers onto a boat towards Canada
during his time being involved with the Underground Railroad.
So, that is the story of William Coon Davis
and the Elkhorn Tavern.
We also have other stories,
one of which is a man who has an oral history
claiming to have brought freedom seekers
under wagons filled with potatoes
as he was restocking the kitchens of the Milton House.
But that is coming to the Milton House
and not leaving the Milton House.
And this tunnel here photographed,
that is shown by Ezra Goodrich,
who is the son of Joseph Goodrich.
And he shows that to his niece, Mabel Davis, in the 1890s.
And this is really how the Milton House
and the history of the Milton House
as part of the Underground Railroad
becomes more public knowledge,
as it had been entirely a secret from the 1840s and '50s
when it, you know, originally began
as part of the Underground Railroad,
until the 1890s, as it's passed along by Ezra Goodrich.
Joseph Goodrich has long since passed away in the 1890s.
Now, I'm going to talk about Andrew Pratt.
Andrew Pratt I mentioned on the timeline,
if you remember all the way back then.
Andrew Pratt is the only freedom seeker
that we know by name who stayed at the Milton House.
Obviously, that is not a photograph of Andrew Pratt,
but that is a photograph of a reenactor
walking through the tunnel.
Andrew Pratt arrives in the Milton House
in the town of Milton in 1861.
We know a little bit about Andrew Pratt,
but, again, a lot of this information is not documented.
As talked about in the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,
it's very much illegal to be caught assisting someone
traveling along the Underground Railroad.
So, these people, these conductors or station masters,
they're not exactly writing down in their diary,
you know, how many people or the information of people
that they're helping escort along the Underground Railroad.
But in fact, Ezra Goodrich does exactly that,
and he does write down in his diary
that Andrew Pratt is taken in in 1861.
He's cared for in the tunnel beneath the Milton House.
And he mentions that Andrew Pratt
is formerly enslaved
and had been actually imprisoned in Illinois in the 1860--
I should say in 1860 itself.
And he ends up escaping from Missouri into Illinois,
where he's temporarily imprisoned,
and then he is sort of rescued
and brought north into the town of Milton.
And he stays in the town of Milton until 1864,
which is very much uncommon and very unusual
because most freedom seekers, they're,
as we have mentioned multiple times,
trying to get to Canada because Canada has abolished slavery.
But if you know your history,
in 1861, we have the beginning of the Civil War.
So, it's very unlikely that a bounty hunter
is gonna come all the way north into Wisconsin
and attempt to return Andrew Pratt
back down to the South.
And the town of Milton has a lot of abolitionists in this town,
so he's very unlikely to find much opposition to him
staying there in the town itself.
We also have a letter from Andrew Pratt,
and we believe he wrote this letter himself and was educated.
We know he writes many letters later on in his life,
but we believe Andrew Pratt wrote a letter
to the governor of Wisconsin
where he asks to serve in the Wisconsin--
in the Union Army, I should say.
And he's actually rejected
and he is not allowed to serve in the Wisconsin Army
on account of his race.
Now, Andrew Pratt, in this letter,
he complains about the fact
that he is eligible to be drafted into the Union Army,
but he's not eligible to enlist.
And his main grievance here is that, by enlisting,
he can receive a bounty
and he receives a sort of monetary reward for enlisting.
So, he points out how it's unusual that--
and unjust, even-- that he can be drafted against his will,
but he cannot voluntarily enlist into the Union Army
for this monetary reward.
And the governor actually does respond to him in a letter,
although the response is especially dull and boring,
and he essentially says that's the way things are,
and there's not much you can do about it.
He continues to stay in the town of Milton,
and he does so really until we have this kerfuffle,
or "imbroglio," as it's described.
An imbroglio is, I believe,
an Italian word that means the ultimate embarrassment
or the ultimate humiliation.
And this culminates in--
Andrew Pratt, he's involved in this fraternal organization here
in the town of Milton.
It is the Good Templar Lodge of the town of Milton.
And there's around 80 to 100 members
in this fraternal organization.
And three of these men approach Andrew Pratt,
and they inform him secretly that they
and many others in the Milton Lodge--
in fact, over half of the people in this organization--
all want him removed on account of the fact
that they're uncomfortable with his race.
Andrew Pratt agrees reluctantly
and doesn't want to make a big deal about it,
so he quietly submits a withdrawal card,
and he's gonna withdraw from this fraternal organization.
Ezra Goodrich, who, again, is the son of Joseph Goodrich,
he's very good friends with Andrew Pratt,
and he finds out about this.
And he is very much upset because, as it turns out,
those three men who claim to have spoken
to many of the other members of the lodge,
who all stood in support of them and against Andrew Pratt,
they actually didn't talk to anyone else in the lodge,
and it was those three acting on their own accord.
So, Ezra Goodrich is very unhappy about this,
and he gains the support of--
He gains around 50 or so signatures,
and all these signatures say
that if Andrew Pratt is kicked out of the lodge,
they will also quit the lodge itself.
And that's over half of the members of this organization.
That would mean the doom and the end
of this fraternal organization.
So, you think it would end there,
but unfortunately it does not.
One of those three men,
he writes in a letter to his father,
and his father is a higher ranking member
of this organization.
And I'm not going to quote it verbatim
because I do not remember it verbatim,
but, essentially, in this letter to his father,
he says that he is uncomfortable with Andrew Pratt
because of his race.
And while he is in support of the Civil War
and the abolition of--
or I should say the abolishment of slavery,
he is not in favor of equality
and, essentially, integration as well.
Now, obviously, that's very powerful.
And this father is-- stands with his son
and is similarly, of a similar belief, I should say.
And they end up moving up the date of the next meeting
or the next-- yeah, meeting of this fraternal organization.
And now, most of the people
cannot attend this meeting to vote
on whether or not Andrew Pratt should stay in the lodge
or be expelled from the lodge, so they no longer have a quorum.
But in order to reach this quorum,
they end up inducting new members into the lodge.
And by "they,"
I mean this father-and-son duo causing all of this trouble.
And they induct these new members
so they have a quorum,
and they tell these new members to vote how they vote,
and they vote in favor of expelling Andrew Pratt
from the Milton Lodge.
But due to the support of Ezra Goodrich
and the 50 signers,
they end up backtracking this decision
and he is invited back into the lodge,
but by this point, he's had enough.
He's planning on leaving anyway,
and he chooses to remain outside of the lodge.
So, why is that an empower-- an impactful story?
Well, it's one of the few stories I have of Andrew Pratt
in his time in Milton,
so I would have talked about that story anyway,
but also it shows very much
that there's a very large difference
between being opposed to the practice of slavery
and actually supporting equality,
which we very much see in that story,
and also the story of him writing the letter
to the governor of how he's able to enlist in--
or he's not able to enlist in the Civil War.
He's-- The state of Wisconsin
is opposed to sort of the integration of the armed forces
at this time,
even if they're attempting to abolish the practice
of slavery itself.
So, Andrew Pratt, he ends up moving to Wells, Minnesota,
and he lives there for the rest of his life.
He owns, we know, a barbershop there.
And we know he writes a lot of letters
to the editor in the local newspaper,
so that's how we know he's able to write
at least later on in his life.
And then, finally--
Well, he ends up marrying a Danish immigrant
and having several children, and then he passes away in 1893.
And he ends up leaving quite a bit of land
to his children and his daughters as well,
which was a very uncommon practice for the time.
And that is the story of Andrew Pratt
and the Milton House itself.
So, how can you attend and learn more about the Milton House?
Well, we have our tours.
You can find all of this information
on our website, miltonhouse.org.
Year-round we are open for tours.
On the weekends, we are open in the summertime.
Usually we are Tuesday through Friday,
but during the summer, and it's summer right now,
you can tour Tuesday through Sunday,
10:00 to 4:00, last tour starts at 3 o'clock.
We also have a lot of events going on.
Some of the information can be found outside
on some of those brochures out there,
or I'm happy to answer any questions about events.
We have a Civil War reenactment that goes on annually.
That is the third weekend of May.
So, if you're interested in Civil War history especially,
we have several dozen Civil War reenactors
camp around for the weekend,
and you can talk to them and learn about history
and what life was like during the Civil War.
If you're a teacher, you can ask me about what's on that slide.
And that's pretty much it.
You're also welcome to become a member of the Milton House.
You can donate, volunteer, follow us on social media.
And I'll quickly end with this last quote.
"No one needed a ticket to ride on the Underground Railroad,
just a deep desire for freedom."
So, thank you all very much for coming today.
My name is Kevin.
I had a great time talking to all of you.
If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them now.
So, thank you.
[audience applauds]