I think you'll be glad you stayed with us so far.

Danielle and I have been speaking with Judy Sweets, and we've been talking about the Underground Railroad and Canada, the Canada connection.

And we've also been talking about the number of places in Lawrence.

Absolutely.

For Underground Railroads that I had no idea about including Grover Barn which we talked about, but Judy and her son have written a book geared toward children.

And why is that important?

Well, we're just starting.

I mean, we've just kind of we just got about 12,000 words right now.

So we're just you know, at the start of it, we were really excited about it because it's historical fiction.

But all this research for years.

You know, it's we're using a lot of facts that actually happened.

It's about John Doy, Dr. John Doy, who actually lived just about 800 feet from my house.

I just couldn't believe how I just accidentally found out about that.

He was an underground railroad conductor.

And exactly who was he for those of us who don't know about him?

Well, he was an Englishman and he was, you know, an abolitionist even back then when he came he was born in 1812 in England.

And he came to Lawrence from Rochester, New York, in the First Immigrant Aid Society of people that came to Lawrence and settled, Lawrence, it's interesting that the same time that he had a group, he had 13 freedom seekers who needed to be taken further north, and he offered to take them as far as Holton, Kansas did a dry run for a few days to see who would and he would use phrenology, which is the study of...

He looked at people's shapes of their heads to see whether he thought they were honest or not and and trustworthy.

So the same night that John Brown took his 11 freedom seekers and a newborn baby, a John Doy, I was taking another group of 13 people to further north, but unfortunately his group was captured eight miles north of Lawrence, Kansas, and they were in jails.

Doctor Doy and his son were jailed and the freedom seekers were all sent back to their slave owners.

Oh, my goodness.

You mentioned you're going to be putting some plaques up in Lawrence at those sites.

But back in the day, how was a location, a station identified?

Well, that's the thing.

The Underground Railroad, you had to be very secretive and you usually even a station master may not know where the next station is.

The conductors would take them between stations, and they constantly had to be on the lookout for slave catchers because they were they were everywhere, you know, and sometimes people you thought you could trust, you couldn't trust.

So it was better not to know too much because otherwise somebody could try to get the information out of you.

So very secretive.

Were there a lot of children that were a part of the Underground Railroad?

That's a great question.

In fact, I was going to tell a little bit about this one family.

That was Jim Daniels was down in southern.

He was in Missouri.

He was about to be sold with his family to settle an estate.

His name was Jim Daniels.

He had a wife named, Narcissa and two children, one named Missouri, age five, and Willis, age three.

And when they were going to be sold, it's possible they could have been separated.

And he was just terrified of that.

You know, he just didn't.

So he heard about John Brown.

That was in southern Kansas.

And he he went over there to sell brooms pretend, like he asked his slave holder, can I sell brooms?

And he said, sure, go make some money over there and sell these brooms.

But the reason he went and he wanted to talk to John Brown and John Brown said, Sure, I can liberate you, you know, tomorrow night.

And so he and his men went over there and they liberated three families, the Harper family, the Hamiltons and the Daniels.

So, you know, that was just wonderful that they took them a while before they got to Canada.

I mean, took them a couple of months, actually, but because the wife was Daniels wife was pregnant and she actually had a baby in Franklin County and her house was not good after the baby was born.

So John Brown, you know, he's been portrayed is kind of rough, but he is he had such a gentle disposition.

He was like, we are not moving until the mother is well enough to travel.

So even though they were in danger out there on almost the prairie in the cabin, you know, he said, we're not moving.

So that's why it took three weeks out of the trip.

But then they got to Grover's barn next.

And, you know, we're there for several days and moved on to Topeka and kept on going.

This is fascinating.

Judy, thank you so much.

And we hope this is piqued your interest to find out more about the Underground Railroad.