Description
Quindaro Woman Relates History of Old Settlement - Mrs. Mollie Lewis, Former Slave, Recalls Incidents of Underground Railway; Once Helped Ex-Master - - (excerpted from longer article) - - If one knows the right questions to ask, to spend an afternoon visiting Mrs. Molly Lewis, 3422 N. 29th St., (age 85, born ~1852) is to have reproduced for one vivid fragments out of the past of the historic old Quindaro Township and its relation to slavery and the underground railway. The famed railway, Mrs. Lewis explains, was not a railway as it is popularly known, but a series of shelters or stations maintained in the homes of sympathetic freemen for runaway slaves.
In the Fall of 1862, Mrs. Louis, then a child of 10, was brought to Quindaro, one of several runaway slaves from Clay County, Missouri, to whom the underground railway system was a life saver. She had been one of the three children of Sally Moseley who escaped being sold to neighboring slave owners, by seeking refuge inside the Union Army lines at Parkville Missouri.
Once inside the Union lines, Mrs. Lewis points out, a runaway slave was comparatively safe from the white folks. Owners could go after slaves, but the runaways were not compelled to go back. From Parkville the trip to a safer haven in Quindaro was short. In the settlement to which Mrs. Lewis went as a bewildered little runaway slave there were a number of persons who lives were dedicated to looking after runaways. It was with one of these persons that she made her home and spent the remainder of her childhood.
(Irony is) Certainly that must've been how Mrs. Lewis felt several years ago when the son of her former master (and incidentally the one to whom she had been given as a child) came to her modest but comfortable home in Quindaro. The man was in destitute circumstances and in search of food and work. Mrs. Lewis prepared an appetizing meal and set it before the man who had once owned her and her husband promised to help him find work. Three or four years later, Mrs. Lewis recalls that her former master revisited her and that he was in better circumstances but still eager to do justice to one of her well cooked meals.Date(s) of Creation
11/12/1937