St. Charles History Museum helps register first underground railroad safe house in Kane County.
The St. Charles History Museum recently announced that the Joseph P. Bartlett Farm in Campton Township has been officially placed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom!
The Network to Freedom is a program overseen by the National Park Service, which verifies sites associated with Freedom Seeking across the United States (and a lot more). Each listing requires an application to be filled out, which goes through a strict peer-review process before being approved. Naturally, each site requires owner consent to be listed, so the Museum would like to generously thank the property owners for their kindness!
The Joseph P. Bartlett Farm is located in western Kane County, near the communities of Campton Hills and Maple Park, in Campton Township.
For Kane County, this addition marks the first verified safe house — and only the second site associated with the Underground Railroad — to be added to the Network to Freedom. The other site is located at Newsome Park in Elgin, and was added in 2016. That site tells the story of the “1862 Contraband Train” and the history of Black settlement in Elgin.
Joseph Bartlett originally came from New Hampshire, where he was a well-educated teacher and hard-working farmer. After moving to Kane County in 1843, he purchased farmland, married, and raised a family.
The Bartlett family were well respected in the community, and Joseph held several positions in local government. After Illinois reorganized into townships, in 1850, Joseph even selected the new name of “Campton Township.”
This is a name which has stuck, ever since. It was around this same time, when the Bartlett family began to operate their farm as a safe house on the Underground Railroad.
It is believed that they opened their home to dozens of Freedom Seekers, bringing them onto the many safe houses along the “junction” in St. Charles. In fact, the Bartlett Farm was discovered to be one of the missing links in the dramatic escape of two Freedom Seekers known as “Eliza” and Celia Grayson.
As the first safe house verified in the region, the acceptance of the Joseph P. Bartlett Farm has laid the groundwork for a number of other sites to be nominated across Northern Illinois.
A regional effort is now underway — spearheaded by Eric Krupa of the St. Charles History Museum and many others — to nominate additional Underground Railroad sites for America 250.
This work, in itself, is part of an even larger effort to document and share the history of Freedom Seeking in Illinois.
For more information on those efforts, contact Eric Krupa at ILNTFC@gmail.com, or visit ilntfc.my.canva.site. For information on the St. Charles History Museum, contact collections@stcmuseum.org, or visit stcmuseum.org.