A map provided through a Zoom presentation shows a number of locations in Chautauqua County that were part of the Underground Railroad.

A Fredonia connection is an important piece to the Underground Railroad, participants in a Chautauqua County League of Women’s Voters heard during a Zoom presentation.

Last week’s presentation centered around an interactive map built by Douglas Shepard of the Barker Museum, Nick Gunner of Orbistist.com, and land surveyor Wendy J.W. Straight. Although Shepard passed away last year and was the lead researcher for the project, the map was completed and the presentation was given by Straight, where many attendees got to learn the history of the county’s involvement in the Underground Railroad.

According to Straight, in 1799, slaves in New York were redefined as indentured servants, and were required to work as such until the age of 28 for men and 25 for women, meaning the last indentured servants were technically not freed until 1827. Straight also said that the Underground Railroad started in the 1700s with the Quakers, but peaked in the 1800s, with a couple strong connections to Chautauqua County.

“Here we can look at an intense 25-year period of Underground Railroad activity,” Straight said. “If we piece together snippets of research … we find that there were trunk lines running north and south through the county.

One of them came from Meadville to Corry then through the southwestern point of the county. The other one came from Franklin, Pa., through the northeastern part of the county.”

One rare thing Fredonia has in regard to the Underground Railroad is a first-hand document account, done by Eber Pettit. Petitt and his family were conductors on the Underground Railroad, and while there aren’t many first-hand accounts of the Underground Railroad, Petitt’s does a lot for the sake of posterity.

“He wrote a memoir of the Underground Railroad, which makes this source very rare in the big picture because it was deliberately created for posterity,” Straight said. “People did not talk about the Underground Railroad, but here in Fredonia, we have an example of someone who actually wanted to.”

Though Petitt and his family were active participants in the Underground Railroad, that doesn’t mean they were clear of any prejudices themselves. “Petitt uses language that is extremely condescending toward African Americans,” Straight said. “Like many Baptists at his time, he was true to his religious and political duty, but he still harbored an air of superiority toward his passengers.”

In the south county, Straight talked about Catherine Harris, who was a Black station manager and lived in the section of Jamestown then known as “Little Africa” by other Jamestown residents. In the early 1900s, Harris gave an interview where she detailed all her work done for refugees.

“She sheltered and fed and clothed all the refugees brought to her by Jamestown Baptist Conductor Sylas Sherman,” Straight said. “She lived in the part of Jamestown where you would first drive in to decide if you’re going toward Lakewood and the WCA Hospital and there is a monument to the place where her house used to stand.”

In terms of how the Underground Railroad operated, Petitt described it as an “extremely tight operation” that came down to more than just hiding places, but rather how everyone working on it was able to coordinate.

“It’s not so much about the hiding places,” Straight said. “It was in the amazing cooperation of neighbors.”

The interactive map details places all over Chautauqua County who participated in the Underground Railroad, and is a testament to the hard work that was put in on the project over the past several years. Straight, Shepard, Gunner, and Judith Wellman, Professor Emerita at SUNY Oswego, have come together to help detail a big piece of Chautauqua County’s history.

For more information on the Chautauqua County League of Women’s Voters, visit https://my.lwv.org/new-york/chautauqua-county and to view the entirety of Straight’s presentation, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUvlUvVqVsg.