FAIRFIELD – Evergreen Cemetery in Fairfield has been officially recognized for its role in the underground railroad by the National Park Service.

The National Park Service announced in September that the cemetery in Fairfield was one of 23 new listings on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Evergreen Cemetery joins more than 750 other sites and programs already in the Network, which provides insight into the experience of freedom seekers who escaped slavery.

According to a news release from the National Park Service, Evergreen Cemetery has served as Fairfield’s central burial ground since the town was founded in 1839, and is the “final resting place of freedom seekers and allies of the Underground Railroad.”

“Its headstones and unmarked plots give visitors a glimpse into the lives of freedom seekers crossing the Missouri border and the allies who helped them,” stated the news release.

Carnegie Historical Museum interim director Lawrence Eyre said that Fairfield residents began helping with the Underground Railroad as early as 1844.

“They were helping freedom seekers mostly coming from Missouri, and sending them north and east,” Eyre said. “They were often going to Pleasant Plain and Richland.”

Eyre said that escaped slaves did not necessarily feel safe in Fairfield because the town was split between those who supported slavery and those who opposed it, like the Quakers.

“Not everybody was inclined to say where they stood,” Eyre said. “From 1842 onward, Fairfield was a land office, and whoever came here had business to do, and you didn’t know their stand on abolition. Whoever was in the network of those helping people to gain their freedom, operated in a lot more clandestine style.”

On top of that, an escaped slave had to watch out for bounty hunters sent by their former slave master.

“The [slave masters] paid in advance, saying, ‘This is your percentage if you catch my property,’” Eyre said. “They really viewed them as escaped contraband, not people. They saw them as having as much rights as a sofa.”

Eyre said that a couple of the most well-known members of Fairfield’s Underground Railroad were James and Nancy Yancey, who were both born into slavery in what is now West Virginia, and who later gained their freedom while living in Ohio. Nancy attended Oberlin College, and she and James came to Fairfield as free people in 1857, making them the city’s first black residents. James set up a barbershop, and though Nancy was highly educated, she was not given an opportunity to teach, and thus set up a laundry.

“From the very start, their home was a place where [freedom seekers] could find safe haven on their way out,” Eyre said.

Eyre said he’s so proud that Fairfield and Evergreen Cemetery are being recognized for their role in ending slavery. Seventeen soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War are buried at Evergreen Cemetery, including a few black men who fought in the Union’s Colored Troop division.

“They were formerly enslaved men who enlisted and fought, and then came here after the war,” Eyre said.

U.S. Sen. James Wilson, who hailed from Fairfield, was the Senate’s Judiciary Committee Chairman, and he drafted the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery.

“For a town of 10,000, that’s a big contribution to the cause of freedom,” Eyre said.

The National Park Service states that its National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom serves to honor, preserve, and promote the history of resistance to enslavement through escape and flight, which continues to inspire people worldwide. The Network currently represents over 740 locations in 40 states, plus Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“Through its mission, the Network to Freedom helps to advance the idea that all human beings embrace the right to self-determination and freedom from oppression,” the organization stated.

For more information, visit https://www.nps.gov.

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com