Lecture gives glimpse into slaves' fight for freedom Nearby site was part of Underground Railroad MIGUEL JUAREZ staff During a lecture sponsored by the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society at the Mill House in Allentown on Saturday, Carol Nelson, of Hightstown, displays a replica of a mid-19th-century quilt. BY JANE MEGGITT Staff Writer Local residents last weekend explored Allentown's role in the Underground Railroad. Stephanie Smith offered the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society (AUFHS) use of her historic home, known as the Mill House, for a lecture on Feb. 24. The talk was well attended, with people filling the front room of the house to capacity, a room that was built in 1800. A back room was also opened to seat late arrivals. Sid Taylor, a direct descendant of Harriet Tubman, the former slave who helped hundreds escape to freedom, had been scheduled to attend the lecture but was unable to due to a death in his family. AUFHS member Pat Roveda told the audience that Allentown was an abolitionist Quaker town in the years before the Civil War. MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Carol Nelson, of Hightstown, holds up a quilt during a lecture she gave at the Mill House in Allentown on Saturday. "The Quakers set the standard," she said. "The standard was decency." According to Roveda, about 30 fugitive slaves went through Allentown on their way to freedom. She said that if anyone in town has a house of the right period that has a secret room, the historical society would like to know about it. Lecturer Carol Nelson, of Hightstown, said the time of the Underground Railroad, the mid-19th century, is her favorite period of American history but is also the most shameful. The former English teacher said the name for the Underground Railroad may have come from an incident when a slave was trying to reach a safe house on the banks of the Ohio River with his owner in hot pursuit. According to Nelson, the slave disappeared, and the owner said it was like "he dropped into an underground railroad." During the lecture, Nelson told the story of Patience Tract, a slave who is buried in an East Windsor cemetery. According to Nelson, Tract was a slave who ran away from her owners in the South only to be caught in the North. By law, she should have been returned to her owners, but the Ely family in Hightstown bought Tract from the owner and set her free. She spent the rest of her life as a paid servant of the Elys and died at the age of 92, according to Nelson. Nelson said there was a house near Disbrow Hill Road in Millstone that was torn down in 1960. It had previously belonged to the Ely family, according to Nelson, and was a part of the Underground Railroad. Quoting from a Hightstown man who had been inside the house in the 1950s, when it was in a state of disrepair, Nelson said that like many houses of the era, it had front and back staircases. She also said the witness claimed that one room behind the back staircase had no windows. According to Nelson, the Ely family hid slaves in the room until they could be sent north to Canada. According to "Steal Away, Steal Away," a guide to the Underground Railroad that was produced by the New Jersey Historical Commission (NJHC), most fugitive slaves came from the Upper South, particularly Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Tubman spent the summers of 1849-52 as a hotel worker in Cape May, earning money to finance her trips back to her native Maryland to guide slaves to freedom, according to the NJHC. Local sites authenticated as part of the Underground Railroad include the Enoch Middleton House at 2 Old York Road in Hamilton, which is not far from Allentown. Middleton was a wealthy Quaker merchant, and many of the other locations cited by the NJHC were also owned by Quakers. Roveda said that Middleton was a cousin of George Middleton, an Allentown resident who served in the U.S. Congress. She said that the Middletons hid escaped slaves in hay wagons and took them to hiding places in Allentown in the dead of night. Roveda said that Allentown had three black residents who joined the Union Army. One of them raised the flag in the Union victory at Petersburg in Virginia, she said. Roveda said that Gov. William A. Newell, who is buried in Allentown, was a good friend of Abraham Lincoln's. She said that Newell declined Lincoln's offer to run with him as vice president in the 1864 presidential election because he felt that Lincoln needed a southern running mate. Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, ran on Lincoln's ticket and became president of the United States after Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.