If you were a slave heading north, trying to make your way to freedom, one of the likely stops you would make to get a day or two of rest after crossing the Missouri border would be Denmark. It was there that at least one home was set up specifically to help runaway slaves and became known as a station on the Underground Railroad.
Gayla Young, a member of the Denmark Historical Society, now owns and lives in the house on Eighth Street in Denmark.
“Rev. Asa Turner was the first preacher at the Denmark Congregational United Church of Christ,” Young said. “He was in Quincy, Ill., but due to his anti-slavery views, it was highly recommended that he leave the area.”
Young said Turner moved to Denmark, and was followed by a parishioner, Theron Trowbridge, who believed as Turner did. Trowbridge purchased property and built a house on it. While building the house, he put a 4-foot wide by 4-foot tall by 10-foot long crawl space on the second floor of the house. It was hidden behind a bookcase. The space was used to hide escaped slaves until they could move on to Burlington, Augusta or Salem.
Young said Trowbridge was very religious, being a deacon in the church. And he hated to miss church services.
Secret ingredient
One of the things Trowbridge was rumored to have done was make up a batch of hush puppies if runaways were at his house.
“They would put a ‘special ingredient’ in the hush puppies and then take them out and throw them along the countryside and wherever they thought the slave hunters would come,” she said.
Young said slave hunters used bloodhounds to find slaves and the hush puppies were used to see that they didn’t.
“The secret ingredient in the hush puppies was strychnine,” Young said. “Trowbridge used to say, ‘The only good bloodhound is a dead bloodhound.’”
Young said there were no records as to how many people passed through Denmark going north. She said it wasn’t safe to make note of things like that.
“There is some circumstantial evidence of how involved Trowbridge was what he named his second son,” Young said. “He named him John Brown Trowbridge.”
John Brown is the name of a white abolitionist who thought armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow slavery in the United States.
Many Close calls
Young said the people helping the slaves faced several close calls.
“There was one time when a Dr. W.E. Sloat was asked to get a woman from Salem to Augusta,” Young said. “The doctor dressed the woman in mourning clothes, complete with black gloves and a black veil. He put her in his carriage and took her to Augusta.”
Young said in that era nobody would ask to see the face of a woman in mourning so the trip was successful.
At another time, a runaway slave made it to Denmark.
“She almost couldn’t stop crying,” Young said. “Finally she was able to tell Trowbridge that she had to leave her baby behind. Trowbridge apparently didn’t like that idea so he got his gun, climbed on his horse, went for the baby and brought it back to the woman.”
Young said there is no documentation of slaves being caught in Denmark.
This was not the only location where slaves were assisted. Young said it is rumored that two or three others were in town, but her house is the last standing.
Young said other evidence of Trowbridge’s views on slavery came in the form of a newspaper found in the crawl space in the 1940s.
“When my grandfather bought the house, he discovered the crawl space and in it was a copy of a newspaper printed in 1851 called The Anti-Slavery Bugle,” Young said.
In the family
Young said her grandparents purchased the house in the late 1940s at the cost of back taxes, or about $100.
“The house was in disrepair,” Young said. “The windows were out and the doors were barely on.”
Young said they wanted to tear the building down and build a house for her parents, but the people of Denmark told them the house had history and needed to be restored. Once it was, her grandparents moved into the house, giving their farmhouse to Young’s parents.
Young is in the process of getting her home placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Many times, the next stop on the Underground Railroad after leaving Denmark was Salem.
Lewelling Quaker Museum in Salem at 401 S. Main St. is packed with Underground Railroad history.
