‘North to Freedom’ statue in Brewer only official Maine memorial to Underground Railroad

BREWER, Maine Stories about how fugitive slaves in the 1800s made their way to freedom in Canada by way of Brewer are pieces of local lore that should never be forgotten, historian Richard Dick Campbell said Saturday.

Nothing was documented, he said, but there are lots of tidbits of history that link Brewer to the Underground Railroad.

Brewers Chamberlain Freedom Park is home to the only official Maine memorial to the Underground Railroad, a vast network of secret routes and people credited with helping thousands upon thousands of runaway slaves escape the tyranny of their southern owners.

The park sits at the location of the former Holyoke House, a brick house once occupied by wealthy abolitionist John Holyoke, where a slave-style shirt was found tucked in the eaves of the attic in 1995 and a stone-lined shaft was discovered the following year when the Department of Transportation tore down the house to improve the four-way intersection at State and North Main streets.

The handstitched white shirt is now on display at the Brewer Historical Society, which oversees the park that features a historic display, a bronze statue of Brewer native and Civil War hero, Col. Joshua Chamberlain, and the North to Freedom statue.

The statue depicts a runaway slave looking back toward the south and leaning to the north as he hoists himself out of an underground tunnel to freedom. It serves as a tribute to slaves who used the Underground Railroad, to the abolitionist movement and to the role the state played, Campbell said.

Houlton sculptors Glenn and Diane Hines created the historic figure that sits on a grate over the stone-lined shaft that Campbell, fellow historian Brian Higgins and others believe was used to hide slaves. The shaft is located where the root cellar of Holyokes summer kitchen once stood. The home also was known as the Christmas House.

Oral traditions are that it was the site of the Underground Railroad, Campbell said.

Even though every state in the north had legally abolished slavery in the first decades of the 1800s, thanks to abolitionists who believed slavery was against their Christian faith, the federal government continued to pass laws allowing the capture of runaway slaves, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Centers website states.

The federal government had passed Fugitive Slave Acts as early as 1793 that allowed slave catchers to come north and force runaways back into slavery, the site states. By the 1830s and 1840s, these laws were expanded in reaction to increased Underground Railroad activity. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, assisting or helping hide fugitive slaves became a federal offense, making all Underground Railroad activity subject to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

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‘North to Freedom’ statue in Brewer only official Maine memorial to Underground Railroad