We have to remember that everything we "google" on the Internet is not true. There are no checks and balances re: what someone puts on the Internet. The only way to do accurate research on the Internet is to check the sources and reliability of the article/authors you are reading and to get as much info as you can from source documents (original, validated writings such as period letters, journals, etc.) The journal and quilt piece found in the hiding place mentioned above is a good example of a source document. It is concerning that we are becoming so trusting of everything we read on the Internet. There are even Internet groups that say the Holocaust never happened!

But....but...I'm friends with the gal that has a "French Model" for a boyfriend! Say it isn't so!

A lot of the research and documentation came from oral histories. Really, would you document what the symbols are and what they stand for? If it fell into the wrong hands it would all be over. Fact or fiction?? I don't know but then our history books don't promote the fact that many African-Americans were confederate soldiers either. As I do genealogy research I find that all too many things are not written down or preserved

Myth or not, I too love the story. It's very similar though to days of the past when hobos (vagrants, transients) would mark houses in small towns that were friendly. They would mark at the railroad crossings such as ll>lll^ which would mean 2nd street go left 3rd house on north side of street. I know this because when I grew up in a small town in Northern Indiana along the tracks a vagrant was caught illegally entering a house. He said the house was marked as friendly. He also stated there was no mark stating he had to knock. no wonder he met an older gal with a 30-06. LOL! Have to also remember back in the days of the underground railroad very few slaves could read and therefore had to relay on different signals. I'm still going to believe it to be non-fiction.

I'm listening to Jennifer Chiaverini's book, The Runaway Quilt, right now. Very interesting. I think a lot of "myth" is based on some "fact" - but just my opinion. I would love to see the presentation.

How disappointing to read that the UGR story is a myth. I made an underground railroad quilt for my grandson and gave him the story to read with it. When I was telling him about it he listened with his mouth open and was very
sad what the black people had to endure. So I thought I made a point how blessed we are to live in a free country.
He took it all in and he treasure his quilt.

I dated that guy before your friend did. That is how I know everything on the Internet is not true! ;)

Just as FYI. There were two houses in my area used for the undergraound railroad. While it is not known if a quilt was used as a signal, one had a quilt survive from that era. But the story told most was that they used words set to familiar songs to convey the trail route. That being true, why would a quilt not be believable? Hobo's used symbals on fences in later decades to show what was lurking at different houses. A quilt could've been used. Maybe it wasn't the block in the quilt, but that there was a quilt hanging was the signal.
Worse myths have survived.

This isn't quilt related, but I lived in Leavenworth, KS for several years. Leavenworth is just across the river from Weston, MO which did have a slave trading landing. Since Kansas was a free state, many people did their best to escape across the river to freedom. Friends of mine bought an old (1850's) house. It had false walls with a vertical space wide/tall enough for about seven adults to stand fairly comfortably. This was in the upstairs, with access through a nursery room just off a bedroom. It would have been easy to hide the access behind a chest or bookshelf. The story was that this home was a known part of the Underground Railroad and had been built by a Quaker family who sheltered runaways during the initial search for them. Leavenworth did become a fairly safe slave refuge, with a black Catholic orphanage, a black Catholic school and hospital system, and so forth from about the mid-1850's. No one made much of the history anymore, though. It seems to be a chapter best forgotten amid today's tensions.