Author’s Note: February is Black History Month, a time to recognize the achievements, resilience, and lasting contributions of Black Americans. This article is part of a series examining how national Black history intersected with local communities in western Washtenaw County.
For generations, stories have circulated in Scio Township and Dexter about hidden rooms, nighttime riders, and freedom seekers moving quietly north. For many years, those stories were treated carefully, shared, but rarely declared as fact.
The Underground Railroad was a loosely organized, secret network of people, routes, and safe houses that helped enslaved African Americans escape to freedom, operating primarily from the early 1800s through the Civil War, until slavery was abolished in 1865.
Michigan played a central role in the Underground Railroad because of its proximity to Canada, just across the Detroit River. The Great Lake State became a final passageway for many people escaping slavery. Historians estimate that more than three-fourths of Underground Railroad freedom seekers passed through Michigan, often making Detroit, known by the code name “Midnight,” their last stop in the United States before a new day would begin for them. From there, they crossed the river by ferry or steamboat into Canada, where U.S. slave laws no longer applied. Along the way, a loose network of local “conductors” and safe houses operated across Michigan, quietly moving people north under constant risk of arrest, fines, or even violence.
Three historians, working independently and from different angles, reached the same broad conclusion that western Washtenaw County, particularly Scio, Dexter, and Saline townships, served as active, intentional links in Michigan’s Underground Railroad.
Those historians are Nickolas A. Marsh, author of Scio Village: Ghost Town with a Past; Carol E. Mull, author of The Underground Railroad in Michigan; and historian Grace Shackman, whose research has documented Underground Railroad activity in the Ann Arbor area. Taken together, their work, drawing on family recollections, church records, newspapers, architectural evidence, and later historical accounts, offers a consistent picture of how freedom seekers moved through this area and the network of locals who helped them along the way.
Designed to Leave Few Records
One reason the Underground Railroad is difficult to document is also the reason it worked.
As Marsh explains, secrecy was essential. There were no tickets, no timetables, no written rosters. Participants deliberately avoided creating records that could endanger lives.
“The Underground Railroad did exist. Clearly, escaped slaves passed through Washtenaw County, and some were helped by people here,” writes Shackman. “However, it is impossible to go much farther with definite details of when they came, who they were, where they went, how many there were, or where they ended up.”
That absence of documentation leads historians to be cautious, but Marsh argues that caution should not be mistaken for doubt. “The lack of written documentation is not proof of absence; it is proof of successful concealment,” he writes.
Michigan a Critical Corridor
All three authors place Washtenaw County on a major northbound escape route.
Freedom seekers often began near the Ohio River or Kentucky, moved north through Indiana, entered Michigan near Battle Creek, and followed routes paralleling early rail lines toward Detroit, the final stop before crossing into Canada.
In that chain, Scio, Dexter, and Saline were not incidental stops. They were active transfer points.
Erastus Hussey’s Testimony
Central to the story is Erastus Hussey, a prominent abolitionist and one of Michigan’s most experienced Underground Railroad conductors.
Hussey was based in Battle Creek and later gave detailed recollections of the people and places he worked with. His testimony is especially valuable because he named agents sparingly, only later in life, and only when he believed it was safe to do so.
Mull records Hussey’s description of the Underground Railroad route eastward, naming specific individuals by town.
“Townsend E. Gidley in Parma; Henry Francisco in Francisco; Samuel W. Dexter in Dexter; Theodore Foster in Scio; Guy Beckley in Ann Arbor; John Geddes in Geddesburg; … Horace Hallock, Silas M. Holmes and Samuel Zug in Detroit,” Mull quotes in her book.
This single passage places Dexter and Scio in the same operational list as Detroit and Ann Arbor as working stations.
Scio’s Theodore Foster
Theodore Foster settled in Scio Township in the 1830s. He built a store and dwelling at the crossroads of Zeeb Road and Huron River Drive, which also served as the village schoolhouse, with Foster as the teacher.
Foster was deeply involved in organized antislavery work. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Michigan State Anti-Slavery Society. He co-edited and published of the abolitionist newspaper Signal of Liberty (published in Ann Arbor from 1841–1847). He supported the Liberty Party. He was an elder in the Presbyterian Church despite the tension his activism created.
Helping a freedom-seeker was a federal crime until 1864. The area’s population seemed divided over abolition. While many sympathized with freedom seekers, others believed that the law should be upheld. Mull documents that Foster was formally censured and later excommunicated for his antislavery agitation.
“Our neighbors accuse us of being ‘worse than horse thieves,’ because we have given to the colored man a helping hand in his perilous journey,” Foster himself wrote. “We are also held up as transgressors of the law and having no regard for the civil authority.”
Hidden Cellar, Child’s Discovery
One of the most striking local accounts comes from Foster’s own family.
Mull records that neighborhood children often played in Foster’s dark cellar, which was filled with crates, barrels, and hogsheads (large casks). During one game of hide-and-seek:
“Some children tipped over a hogshead and were frightened by the sight of a black man squatting there,” writes Mull.
The discovery forced adults to explain why strangers arrived at night and why Foster would “ride off for hours” after dark.
“Because he published the Signal of Liberty, most of the community supposed Foster was involved in the Underground Railroad, but the hogshead incident confirmed their suspicions,” says Mull.
Scio’s Geography Helped
Marsh and Mull both emphasize why Scio worked as a station. The landscape included elevated terrain with long sightlines. Multiple roads led away in different directions. Some properties had at least six possible avenues of escape.
Samuel Foster and Dexter
The Foster story does not stop in Scio.
Samuel W. Foster, Theodore’s brother, laid out the village of Scio, built a mill, and later relocated to a hamlet known as Foster’s Station.
Mull documents, “Samuel Foster and his sons operated an Underground Railroad station in Dexter, west of another Underground station overseen by Theodore Foster in Scio.”
The brothers’ work was known only to a few trusted friends, a deliberate strategy consistent with Underground Railroad practice.
Judge Samuel Dexter, founder of the town that bears his name, was a lawyer, judge, mill owner, and civic leader.
Both Marsh and Mull conclude that Dexter was very likely an Underground Railroad agent or facilitator, though records are cautious in language.
As mentioned above, Mull recounts Hussey’s recollection is revealing: “At Dexter we had Samuel W. Dexter and his sons.”
Historians note that Dexter likely had only one son of age, suggesting Hussey may have conflated Dexter with the Foster family, who did have sons assisting. Still, the association places Dexter firmly within the movement.
Local traditions of trap doors and hiding places at Gordon Hall, Dexter’s home, align with architectural evidence documented later.
Gordon Hall Architecture
Gordon Hall, the 1843 mansion overlooking the village of Dexter, has long been tied to local Underground Railroad lore. For generations, residents have pointed to the house as more than a landmark, suggesting it played a hidden role in aiding freedom seekers.
“Judge Samuel Dexter was a staunch and well-known abolitionist, and there is substantial evidence that Gordon Hall was used as a stop, or ‘station,’ on the Underground Railroad, and that Judge Dexter was an active participant in this moral, but illegal activity,” says Historian Nancy Van Blaricum of the Dexter Area Museum.
Carol Mull adds an important layer to that story by pointing not to legend, but to architecture.
In a 1934 Historic American Buildings Survey, later examined by Mull, Gordon Hall was documented as having a hidden basement room, unlike ordinary storage spaces of the era. The survey drawings show a vent on the south porch that led into a crawl space, which in turn opened into a long, squat room concealed behind the main basement walls.
While highly likely Gordon Hall was a stop on the Underground Railroad, Van Blaricum is quick to caution, “We have no proof that [the secret features] were even there in the 1840s and 1850s when the freedom seekers came through Dexter.”
What makes the space notable is what it lacked.
Mull explains that the hidden room could not be seen or accessed from the main cellar, and for decades, there were no visible doors or windows connecting it to the rest of the basement. Entry was possible only from beneath the porch, rendering the room effectively invisible to anyone searching the house from the inside.
Like Van Blaricum, Mull is careful not to claim direct proof that freedom seekers hid there. But she emphasizes that the room’s design appears intentional, not accidental, built to conceal both people and movement.
The house’s location strengthens that interpretation.
Situated on high ground, Gordon Hall afforded sweeping views across Webster and Scio townships. According to at least one historical account cited by Mull, the site offered “six avenues of escape,” an unusually large number even among suspected Underground Railroad stations.
While written verification of Dexter’s mansion as a stop on the Underground Railroad is nonexistent, what remains indisputable is the physical evidence.
The hidden room at Gordon Hall aligns closely with concealment techniques documented elsewhere in Michigan, spaces designed to be undetectable during hurried or hostile searches.
Resistance was not Universally Celebrated
Both books make clear that antislavery activism fractured communities. Churches censured outspoken abolitionists. Neighbors criticized or ostracized participants. Some activists relocated to avoid conflict.
As Marsh notes, this resistance was not symbolic. It carried personal, financial, and social consequences.
Saline had a Different Kind of Defiance
While some Underground Railroad sites relied on secrecy, Saline Township produced one of the most public acts of antislavery defiance in Washtenaw County.
Carol Mull documents that hiding places throughout the region varied widely from “crannies in rocks to swamps and woods to barns or other outbuildings,” and, when necessary, inside private homes. Some families went to great lengths to shield freedom seekers not only from slave catchers, but from their own neighbors and even their children.
Others did the opposite. They were quite open about their activities.
“Liberty to the Fugitive Captive”
Among the most striking examples was Captain John Lowry of Lodi Township. Lowry and his wife Sylvia openly welcomed freedom seekers, defying both social pressure and the law.
To make his position unmistakable, Lowry erected a large sign above the gate to his yard, high enough for a hay wagon to pass beneath, that could be read from the road. Mull writes that his daughter, Mary E. Lowry, later described the image in detail:
“The figure at the right is a female form, with heavy chain in the left hand, but broken are the links… in the act of rising, is the figure of a man of darker hue… clad in freeman’s garb… and just below appears this motto: ‘liberty to the fugitive captive and the oppressed over all the earth, both male and female of all colors.’”
Station Invited Attention
Unlike most Underground Railroad operatives, Lowry did not hide his convictions. Mull notes that antislavery lecturer Giles Stebbins recalled the daily stagecoach would stop so passengers could read the sign. Lowry reportedly took satisfaction in knowing that travelers altered their route along the Ann Arbor–Saline Road specifically to see it.
Multiple accounts cited by Mull verify Lowry’s role in transporting freedom seekers north. One recalled that he “drove a number of loads of fleeing negro slaves from Mr. Lowry’s home to the Detroit River and saw that they were safely carried across to Canada.”
Neighborhood of Abolitionists
Lowry’s farm sat at the northwest corner of Textile and Ann Arbor–Saline roads, surrounded by a remarkable concentration of antislavery allies. Mull notes nearby homes belonging to Eli Benton, Ira Weed, and members of the Wood family, along with the Congregational church parsonage and Nutting Academy, whose students boarded with local families.
“Nearly every neighbor was a staunch abolitionist,” Mull writes, adding that every place Professor Nutting resided was associated with Underground Railroad activity, even when direct documentation has not survived.
Secrecy and Silence
Despite the bold signage, Mull emphasizes that families involved in the Underground Railroad still practiced discretion. Lowry’s descendants recalled that the illegal activity was not openly discussed, even within the household, underscoring the constant risk faced by those who chose to help.
In Saline Township, the Underground Railroad took many forms such as hidden cellars, borrowed barns, nighttime wagon rides, and, in one extraordinary case, a public declaration of principle. Together, they reveal a community where resistance to slavery was not isolated, but woven into daily life.
What the Records Show
Taken together, the research of Nickolas A. Marsh, Carol E. Mull, and Grace Shackman shows that Scio, Dexter, Saline, and Lodi were not isolated exceptions, but functioning links in a much larger Underground Railroad network that stretched across Washtenaw County, through other communities such as Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and outward along routes that connected Michigan to other free states and, ultimately, to Canada.
As Marsh cautions, the historical record preserves only fragments. If Scio, Dexter, and Saline formed part of this chain, and the evidence strongly suggests they did, then, as he writes, “People passed through the hamlet at night whose names we will never know, on their way to Canada.”
Sources
- Nickolas A. Marsh, Scio Village: Ghost Town With a Past
- Carol E. Mull, The Underground Railroad in Michigan
- Grace Shackman, The Underground Railroad in Ann Arbor
Featured photo: Gordon Hall, the home of Samuel Dexter and rumored to be a station on the Underground Railroad. Photo by Doug Marrin
8123 Main St Suite 200 Dexter, MI 48130
