John Freeman Walls Historic Site

The Underground Railroad was a series of routes that were established to hide and transport former slaves escaping servitude from the Southern United States.

More specifically, it was a web of hidden, interconnected, man-made paths that were shrouded by forests and brush which assisted in the concealment of former slaves until they could reach a terminal location.

The routes all headed north and towards the free soil of the Northern United States, Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick; and at various points along the way they all intersected with Underground Railroad stations where runaway slaves could take shelter and would be given food and clothing.

[1] In the mid-nineteenth century, black slaves were fleeing the United States by the thousands and coming north to Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick, via the Underground Railroad, the vast majority of these fugitive slaves arriving in Southwestern Ontario, crossing mainly over the Detroit River and to a lesser extent the Niagara River.

As early as 1846, meetings were held by local church leaders to help remedy the situation, and later that year, the Refugee Home Society was founded.

The Walls family crossed Lake Erie in a steam boat the Pearl and arrived in Amherstburg, Ontario, in 1846.

John had a favourite passage in the Bible, Proverbs III, "My son forget not my laws, but let thine heart keep my commandments for length of day and long life shall they bring thee".

[12] The site also commemorates the modern Civil Rights Movement with a Peace Chapel created in honour of Rosa Parks, inside of which hangs a cross made from bricks from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.