National Register status sought for Lombard Underground Railroad stop

The Lombard Historical Society is again trying to get an abolitionist’s home, which was part of the Underground Railroad, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Sheldon Peck Homestead is already listed on the National Park Service’s “Network to Freedom” list of places where enslaved people were helped.

“We thought this was an important time to reapply,” Alison Costanzo, the society’s executive director, said Friday at a roundtable discussion about preserving history.

In particular, it was important as the nation prepares to mark its 250th anniversary, she said, that all aspects of history be included in the nation’s official tale, including slavery.

The society applied for the historic register in 2011, but withdrew its application in 2012, after the integrity of the house was questioned by reviewing authorities.

Costanzo believes the society has a better application this time around, including more information about the site and the people who lived there.

To be included on the national register, a site’s age (at least 50 years old), integrity (does it look like it did in the past) and significance (ties to significant events, people, activities, architecture, landscaping, engineering or development) are considered.

The first step was submitting a letter of intent to the Illinois Historic State Preservation Office. The IHSPO will then decide whether to recommend it to the National Park Service, which maintains the register.

“We know more about Charley. We have done more archaeology,” Costanzo said. Charley, or Old Charley, was a Black man who stayed at the Pecks’ home. His last name is unknown.

He may be the same Charley referred to as having guided other people again and again through Illinois to freedom in the North, including Canada, according to a display in the homestead.

The Underground Railroad was a network of locations where people escaping slavery could stay safely.

The house was built by Sheldon and Harriet Peck when they moved to what was then Babcock’s Grove in 1837.

Sheldon was a prominent folk artist who made a living painting portraits. Harriet raised their surviving 10 children and ran the homestead’s farm.

They were abolitionists, advocating for the elimination of slavery of Black Americans, and for racial equality. Sheldon was a “conductor,” delivering people to the next stop on their journey.

Participating in the Underground Railroad meant the Pecks were breaking federal law. Escapees who did make it to free states in the North could be captured and returned to the people who enslaved them.

The house is small. And given that descendants of the Pecks lived in it until 1991, it should be expected that it was revised over the years, said Jeanne Schultz Angel, president of the Illinois Association of Museums and the former executive director of the Lombard Historical Society.

But more mundane buildings, where people did significant things, should be on the register, Costanzo said.

“It’s not the National Register of Wealthy Places. It’s not the National Register of Incredible Mansions,” Angel said.

The family donated the home to the society in 1996, and a major restoration was finished in 1999.

“This place is vital to understanding who we are as a people,” Costanzo said.

“He’s (Sheldon) doing something that is illegal, something that is uncomfortable, something that is breaking the rules. But he is an everyday person,” Costanzo said.

Furthermore, being on the register would elevate Charley’s voice, as well as that of Harriet.

“It makes it (the National Register) a more inclusive site,” Costanzo said.