Black History Month is a time to celebrate the Black community’s culture and history. One of the most significant parts is the Underground Railroad.

Locally, Chautauqua County and the Jamestown areas were very involved in the Underground Railroad operations, including with well-known people such as Catherine Harris. With the involvement comes many rumors over the centuries.

Fredonia resident Wendy Straight wrote a booklet for the Fenton History Museum last summer discussing some of these rumors. She is also the director of the Chautauqua County Antislavery Map, and also the director of the 45-minute film, “Underground Chautauqua Three Freedom Trails.” Straight described rumors getting so out of hand that soon every 19th century house in Chautauqua County was thought to have been an Underground Railroad house.

Besides that, Straight said a lot of the rumors were focused on the Underground Railroad actually being underground — which it was not.

“For many years, people in the 20th century thought the Underground Railroad actually operated underground, in hidden rooms and tunnels,” Straight said. “In the 21st century, Dr. Judith Wellman from SUNY Oswego, and many other people, have found firsthand accounts, such as those of Catherine Harris, which prove that’s not true. In other words, freedom seekers stayed in homes and barns overnight, not in elaborate hiding places.”

In the 1920s, the myth was intensified by people making jokes about hiding alcohol in hidden alcoves.

“The hidden room myth was intensified during Prohibition in the 1920s, because people made jokes that they were hiding their illegal liquor in their Underground Railroad room,” Straight said. “Children who heard that thought it was true.”

In reality, the Underground Railroad simply meant secret, similar to the French Underground Resistance during World War II.

Following similar lines, specifically in the Jamestown area, there were also thought to have been tunnels dug at an intersection to help those using the Underground Railroad to cross the street.

“That rumor began only because three of the four houses at that intersection contained anti-slavery families,” Straight said. “They didn’t use tunnels to cross the street; the rumor only began because of the well known anti-slavery activity of the people there. Tunnels would have been difficult to secretly excavate, impossible to properly ventilate, and extremely dangerous due to risk of collapse.”

Other stories focus on well-known Underground Railroad operator Harris, and whether her neighbors were helping her. This is specifically the case for escapee Harrison Williams — the only slave to be recaptured in Southwestern New York.

“He was a freedom seeker from today’s West Virginia,” Straight said. “He was living and working at the farm of William Storum, an African American resident of Busti. He was in the company of six other refugees from slavery, who were working on other farms, and going to school in Busti. But, he was recaptured, taken to a hasty trial in Buffalo, and returned to enslavement.”

Straight’s anti-slavery map details many of Harris’s neighbors who may have been related to her and helped with hiding any freedom seekers such as Harrison Williams and his group. Straight said the other freedom seekers in the group were hidden in the swamp by Chautauqua Lake, part of the large land holdings of R.P. Marvin.

“Four from his group were hidden in the Marvin Swamp overnight, and then led through the people-network of the Underground Railroad to Canada, perhaps through the port at today’s Barcelona,” Straight said. “The other two in his group had been previously recaptured, but the details are sketchy. Harrison’s story appears in the newspapers at the time of the capture, which means his details are known with more certainty. The other details came from the memories of Busti and Jamestown natives 40 years later.”

Straight’s anti-slavery map can be viewed at https://chqgov.com/ugrr. The documentary is available on YouTube.