LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - MAY 23, 2021 by Lynne Belluscio This year the Historical Society has been working with Jen Bertrand at the school to prepare some virtual learning videos for the students. One of those topics was the Underground Railroad, and at first, we thought it might be something that would work with the Wolcott Street School, but then, Jen reached out to Bob Zoeke, the seventh grade history teacher and learned that they would be covering the Underground Railroad this month. So, I began writing a script for a video we would be making to take the seventh graders on a tour of LeRoy to learn about the Underground Railroad. In the meantime, I offered to send to school enough copies of the booklet that the Historical Society published a while ago, so that each student could have one. It’s a little outdated and I plan to rewrite that soon, but then it dawned on me, that the LeRoy Underground Railroad sign was still out at the Town Highway Department, and I should try to get it put up. The sign was bought in 2007, and was supposed to be put up on West Main Street near the intersection of East Bethany Road where we know the Underground Railroad route “crossed the State Road” as Route 5 was called at the time. The problem was, the New York State Department of Transportation would not grant permission to put it on the state right of way. So, the sign didn’t get put up in 2007. Then, a year or two later, the sign was put up near the Keeney Road Cemetery which was a few miles away from where it should have been. I called the Town Highway Department and asked them to take it down and they did and it was at the highway department garage. I wanted to make sure they still had it, so I drove out to Asbury Road to talk with Erick Stauffer to see what he could do to help. He told me that there was no way the State was going to budge, and I should call Tim Hens at the County Highway Department. A quick call, and Tim said, “We’ll get it taken care of. We can put it on East Bethany Road, just south of Route 5. That’s a county road. Call Kristina Sanner, at the Genesee County Sign Shop and she will see that it gets done.” A quick call and Kristina got right back to me. “I can meet you on Friday on East Bethany Road. “Sure enough, in the rain, we walked along the east side of East Bethany Road, looking for a good spot. “Yep, I’ll fill out the paperwork, and the sign can go up. I’ll coordinate with Eric, and they can swing over and put it in. “ On Monday, I had to get my truck to the garage early, so I first headed out to East Bethany Road and it wasn’t up yet, but no sooner than I had pulled into Bob’s Automotive, I got a photo on my phone. Eric and the crew had put the sign up. So now we’re ready to include it in the video, and this important chapter in LeRoy History is documented by a historic marker – albeit 12 years later. One hundred and seventy years ago, there were no road signs that led fugitive slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Even the thought of what it must have been like, traveling at night, with no lanterns, and no map, only the words from the last “conductor.” As far as we can tell, the route through LeRoy was short lived. It was accidently discovered and Daniel MacDonald, LeRoy’s conductor, moved west toward Buffalo. He took young Elijah Huftelen with him to help with his secret mission. And when Elijah was an old man, he wrote down the stories of working on the Underground Railroad. I must include a disclaimer in this story. There has been for many years a story about the ”signal quilts.” The story told that people along the route would hang quilts out on their porches, or on the clothes lines that would tell the fugitives which way to go, or who had a safe house. This is totally a fabricated story. The woman who started the rumor wanted to sell quilts, and she could sell quilts with a story for more money. She claimed that a former slave had told her about these signal quilts. Unfortunately, there were many untruths. Many of the quilts that were supposed “signal quilts” were made frommaterial that wasn’t manufactured until after the Civil War. Some of the material was even as late as the 1930s. Many of the quilt patterns were not in use before the Civil War. Historians tried to validate the stories and not one came up with any validity. They could not locate the “former slave” nor were they able to find any clues to her existence. Between 1936 and 1938 the Federal Writers Project collected 2300 first person accounts of slavery and not one mentioned anything about a signal system that used quilts. Unfortunately, the story was so good, and everyone wanted to believe it, that children’s books were written about the signal quilts. Very simply, they are not true. So now there is an official sign. Thank you to everyone who made it possible. As they say, it takes a village - - well in this case, it takes the County Highway Sign Department, the LeRoy Town Highway Department, and the Tech Support Staff at LeRoy Central School. Signs on the Underground Railroad