Searching for site of escaped slave settlement
Dec. 12, 2001
KALAMAZOO -- A Western Michigan University anthropologist
has begun a search to pinpoint the site of a large settlement
of escaped slaves near Vandalia, Mich., that disappeared more
than a century ago.
Armed with a $21,000 grant from the State of Michigan and
the Michigan Historical Center, Dr. Michael S. Nassaney, WMU
associate professor of anthropology, has begun the process of
narrowing the list of possible sites of Ramptown, a rural enclave
of 100 cabins that was the final stop for many slaves who traveled
north along the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. Today, there
are no standing structural remains of the cabins or the settlement,
which was believed to be near Vandalia, a small community a few
miles east of Cassopolis.
Nassaney's work is part of an effort recently started by the
National Park Service to identify key locations of the Underground
Railroad, a pre-Civil War system that helped fugitive slaves
reach freedom in the North and in Canada. Nassaney, who led a
1998 effort to ascertain the original site of the colonial Fort
St. Joseph in Niles, Mich., was asked to lend his expertise in
the search for Ramptown.
"Supposedly there were 100 cabins located in this area,"
Nassaney says of Ramptown. "For there to be no evidence
remaining from this site is just implausible."
Believed to have been one of the largest escaped slave communities
in southwest Michigan, Ramptown was built on land that was provided
by neighboring Quaker farmers. At its peak, Ramptown harbored
hundreds of escaped slaves and their families, who were given
five-acre plots of land to farm.
"Right now, we want to locate these cabins and examine
how being given their own plot of land helped these runaway slaves
establish new lives," says Nassaney.
According to Sondra Mose-Ursery, Vandalia mayor and executive
director of that community's Underground Railroad Foundation,
many of Ramptown's residents worked the five-acre plots for 10
years before setting out on their own.
"We think that around 1870, all the available land around
the original site was used up, and the community just disappeared,"
says Mose-Ursery.
Nassaney, aided by graduate student Amanda Campbell of Harrisville,
Mich., is currently conducting interviews and collecting historical
documentation to help narrow the actual Ramptown site possibilities.
Based on this information, Nassaney and his colleagues will begin
excavating potential sites in May as part of WMU's 2002 Archeological
Field School. The goal of the field school will be to find artifacts
that can help conclusively pinpoint the location of Ramptown.
"It's like a story that has been told and told and told,
and now we need to find artifacts to confirm the original site,"
says Mose-Ursery.
Media contact: Scott K. Crary, 269 387-8400
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