(gentle violin music) - My name is EJ Murphy and I am a local Civil War era historian.

I am also a tour guide here at the Waverly Community House for the Destination Freedom Underground Railroad Walking Tour of Waverly Program.

Here at the Comm we try to tell the story of Waverly's role in the Underground Railroad.

Waverly was a centrally located town which made it a prime location for people trying to escape slavery to freedom in places like Waverly.

Other centrally located places like Montrose, Pennsylvania, Binghamton, New York onwards to other places in New York, or eventually onto Canada.

Waverly was really unique in that it's settlers came from all different places, some from other parts of Pennsylvania, many from parts of New England and it was a lot of this movement of people that brought different perspectives to Waverly.

- I was home one weekend in Morristown, New Jersey, where I grew up.

And growing up in Morristown you're steeped in the history of Washington's headquarters and where the soldiers slept during that terrible winter during the revolutionary war.

And I was visiting Jockey Hollow where Tempe Wick famously hid her horse under the bed.

We don't have that here.

And they had the walking tour of Morristown in Jockey Hollow.

When I looked at this map and it occurred to me, why can't we do this in Waverly?

It's not such a large area.

So I brought the map back and I sat down with Jia and we met with a graphic designer and set about developing the actual walking tour of Waverly.

We determined that was the best and most practical way to introduce the concept to as many people as we could.

We wanted it to be available to families who could just stop by the Comm and pick up a piece, a document, a map and do it on their own with their children.

- [E.J] This is the former residents of Leonard Bachelor.

Leonard Bachelor was one of the Waverly residents who took the ultimate risk by aiding and helping fugitive and slave people on their way to freedom.

In our United States Constitution, there was a clause from the very beginning that stated that if you were a citizen of the North and you knew of an escaped enslaved person that person had to be returned to their owner.

On the decades, leading up to the civil war, this topic became really contentious and people like Leonard Bachelor, who was a New England transplant to Waverly, he was one of the people who, again, put a lot of risks in helping aid these fugitive enslaved people or formerly enslaved people again on their route to freedom.

Also on the tour is the home of Dr. Andrew Bedford.

Dr. Andrew Bedford, he was one of the early Waverly settlers.

His house is actually one of the oldest houses, not just in Northeastern, Pennsylvania but in Waverley specifically.

He was an area physician and made his name locally as an area doctor who covered a lot of ground in the area, all the way from Waverly to Scranton which again at the time was a pretty far trek.

But he also has been noted to in his home have different compartments in places that were believed to have helped escaped and slave people make their way to freedom.

This is the Fell house.

The Fells were another New England transplant family.

They were a local abolitionist Baptist family and the Fells not only played an important role here religiously and politically but they also had two sons that would go off to fight in the civil war, after the war broke out in 1861.

One of the cemeteries that we stop at is the cemetery for Waverly's United Methodist church.

It is one of the oldest cemeteries in the area and it is actually the final resting place of George Keyes.

George Keyes was the very first escaping slave person to come to Waverly and actually stay and settle here.

This is the Hickory Grove Cemetery.

Hickory Grove Cemetery is also the home and final resting place of some of Waverly's African-American residents both a freeborn and formerly enslaved, many of whom went to go fight in the Civil War.

(gentle music) - [Maria] We had a grandmother come from Manhattan.

She had looked up Underground Railroad, to Google it and what she found was Waverly, Pennsylvania.

She came in with a van with her kids and did the whole tour.

And broke down in tears at one point and saw the gravestones of some of the free slaves.

(gentle music)