38. Willow Grove

Crossroads to Freedom

Freedom seekers reaching the Delaware state line, also the Mason-Dixon Line, still were in a slave-holding state and had 75 miles to go before they reached the free state of Pennsylvania.

Harriet Tubman mentioned the crossroads of “Will’ Grove” to historian, Wilbur Siebert, in an 1897 interview about her Undergound Railroad journeys. She also noted other Delaware place names and key people. This byway route visits many of those sites. Willow Grove Road enters the state at Sandtown and travels through Willow Grove, where Quaker abolitionist Henry Cowgill and his family, and free black Underground Railroad conductor Samuel D. Burris lived. Across Willow Grove Road, abolitionist Henry Cowgill housed freedom seekers at his farm, according to oral tradition. The Historic Marker about Samuel D. Burris stands at the entrance to the Caulk Tract of the Norman G. Wilder Wildlife Management Area on Route 10/Willow Grove Road. Learn more about Samuel Burris’ story at the Old State House in  Dover and at the New Castle Court House Museum.

From this locale, fugitives could have chosen to venture to Camden, where free blacks Abraham Gibbs, and brothers Nathaniel and William Brinkley, joined forces to carry them further north. The travelers’ movements varied, but likely included pathways near and through Dover, Smyrna, Blackbird, Odessa, New Castle and Wilmington.

The Mason-Dixon Line was surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon by 1767 to resolve a colonial border dispute. It was not made to separate states where slavery was illegal from those where it was legal.