Lord Nelson: Collins discusses Welsh village’s slave trade connection
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Thermal drones and laser pulses have revealed that beneath the overgrown vegetation lies a network of routes that led to boat landing locations where escaped slaves fled into Mexico. By using geographic information system (GIS) mapping to match up data from historic maps with modern topography, researchers from Texas pinpointed the secret spots along different parts of the Underground Railroad stretching across the US.
And in Kansas and Ontario, lidar revealed the “buried remnants of 1800s structures at former Underground Railroad-connected sites in towns that no longer exist”, according to the Science Channel.
In South Carolina, researchers used a technique known as magnetometry, which measures small changes in the Earth’s magnetic field to identify particular metals.
This revealed a sunken Confederate ship that was captured by escape slave Robert Smalls.
Mr Smalls and his family escaped from slavery back in 1862, sailing the CSS Planter from Confederate waters into a Union blockade, according to the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.
The findings all these different measures were documented in the new four-part docuseries “Underground Railroad: The Secret History”, aired on the Science Channel.
In South Carolina, researchers used a technique known as magnetometry, which measures small changes in the Earth’s magnetic field to identify particular metals.
This revealed a sunken Confederate ship that was captured by escape slave Robert Smalls.
Mr Smalls and his family escaped from slavery back in 1862, sailing the CSS Planter from Confederate waters into a Union blockade, according to the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.
The findings all these different measures were documented in the new four-part docuseries “Underground Railroad: The Secret History”, aired on the Science Channel.
It is thought that the majority of enslaved people helped by the Underground Railroad escaped border states like Kentucky, Virginia and Maryland.
In America’s South, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made capturing escaped enslaved people a lucrative business because there were fewer places for them to hide.
Fugitive enslaved people were usually on their own until they reached certain points farther north.
A lot of well-used routes along the Underground Railway stretched west through Ohio to Indiana and Iowa.
Many fugitives also headed north through Pennsylvania and into New England, and sometimes through Detroit along their route to Canada.
The exact dates of the Railway have not been pinpointed, but it is thought to have operated from the late 18th century up until the Civil War.
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But new information has now come to light following the Science Channel’s docuseries, which revealed how people built, maintained and used the Underground Railway.
Anthony Cohen, a historian from The Menare Foundation, said that new attention being paid to written records has helped to unearth some previously unknown information.
He told Live Science: “Slave narratives, autobiographies, newspaper reports, court records — people were caught in the act and prosecuted — those records remain to tell the story.
“As those records have been more broadly broadcast and more deeply understood, other information has followed.
“We have a very clear picture of how the Underground Railroad operated — if not every place it operated — and we’re constantly discovering more.”
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