Ron Reiff
The Abolitionist fight and their organized efforts to help escaped slaves are documented well in and around Sugar Grove. What you might not have learned about is Spring Creek’s efforts in that respect.
Today there is nothing left to see but the lush Northwestern Pennsylvania woodland. It is still called Little Africa.
If you go back to the early 1800s the U.S. made it illegal to import slaves. The last slave ship to dock here was in 1820. But slavery itself was still going strong. Proudly I learned that slavery in Pennsylvania was outlawed much earlier than that. Thus slaves that escaped needed to simply get north of the Mason-Dixon line to freedom. Their first stop was barely north of the line in Mercersburg, Pa. The location became a semi-permanent settlement. When the government made it legal for slave owners to cross into free states to reclaim slaves, the Mercersburg site was abandoned.
A new and harder to locate site needed to be created.
I can’t tell you the specific date that it started. According to three great researchers: Diane Miller, Jan Bemis, and author Cygnet Brown, a place near Jackson Hill in Spring Creek was created by Black Americans for escaped slaves.
Little Africa needed to be really hard for slave hunters to find so it was off any well-traveled routes. Escaped slaves and white sympathizers secretly planted various crops. As escapees would travel through Spring Creek, crops would be tended and harvested. All this was an active support area for those making connections along the Underground Railroad.
There is almost nothing in written history about the area where Little Africa was, other than it existed. Today Bemis, Miller, and Brown have released dozens of short articles online and have participated in public lectures about it. All three ladies grew up in and around Corry. Brown is an author of the Book the Locket Saga.
All of this Piece of the Past is based on their work. Perhaps one day thanks to them, there will be a historical marker to commemorate the dedicated and brave people of Spring Creek who contributed to getting good men and women safely out of slavery.
