H o u s e   o f   d r e a m s

By Greg Olson

Art Wilson is living his dream. Residing in a 164-year-old house, the Jacksonville historian is surrounded by the past, especially one aspect that intrigues him the most.

Over the last ten years, Wilson has become well-versed in the local story of the Underground Railroad, and his current residence played a role in that drama.

Last January, Wilson moved into the old brick house on Woodlawn Farm, located about four miles due east of Jacksonville and a short distance south of I-72. The farm was established in 1824 by Michael Huffaker, one of Morgan County's earliest settlers. According to Huffaker family history, the grain and cattle farm also served as a station on the Underground Railroad, a secretive network of safe houses that helped runaway slaves from the South gain their freedom in the North. For Wilson, the Huffaker farm is a tangible reminder of an important part of black Americans' past.

"For me, it's definitely a dream come true," Wilson said. "It's an opportunity for me to live within the history that I enjoy researching. My dream is to have Woodlawn Farm become the gateway to introducing people to the local history of the Underground Railroad as well as to other facets of Jacksonville and Morgan County history." Wilson, a member of the Underground Railroad Committee of the Morgan County Historical Society, serves as caretaker of Woodlawn Farm, which the Historical Society bought late last year.

The purchase price included the eight-room house, several outbuildings, and six acres. The sellers, Leon "Bud" and Trudy Gierke, gave the Historical Society an additional four acres and a cash contribution. Wilson first met the Gierkes in 1999, after he stumbled across a history of the Huffaker family while doing research on the Underground Railroad at the Jacksonville Public Library. "I didn't know that the Huffakers had any connection to the Underground Railroad," Wilson said, "I was just reading biographies and luckily came across Michael Huffaker's."

The biography steered him to the Morgan County Courthouse in search of more clues. There, employees of the county clerk's office helped him locate the old Huffaker farm, then owned by the Gierkes. Wilson telephoned Mr. Gierke, who gave him more details about the Pluffaker family and the location of cabins used by former slaves on the farm. When meeting the Gierkes, Wilson recalled: "I teased them. . . about the possibility that if they ever decided to sell the house, I would be interested in buying it." But the Gierkes weren't selling the place they had called home for about 50 years.

Not long after visiting Woodlawn Farm, Wilson had photographs taken of the house and used them in slide shows he presented on the history of the Underground Railroad in the Jacksonville area. And then last summer, Wilson helped form an Underground Railroad Committee to try to buy the Porter Clay House at 1019 W. State Street in Jacksonville.

The Clay Flouse was built in about 1836 by Mr. Clay, a brother of famous U.S. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky. Porter Clay's wife, Elizabeth, owned slaves who were kept for a time at the West State Street house. "I was interested in that house not only because slaves were kept there, but because of all of the people connected with the history of the house, its architectural importance and the fact that it was for sale," Wilson said. "The Porter Clay House, though, was not a station on the Underground Railroad. In fact, it was the exact opposite. I include it on Underground Railroad tours to show both sides of the slave story."

Nevertheless, Wilson said the Underground Railroad Committee was interested in buying the Clay House until the Huffaker farm went on the market. The Huffaker farm "better meets the goals of the Underground Railroad Committee," he said. The goals of the committee are ambitious. "We want to make the house and grounds into a living history museum where re-enactors will portray members of the Huffaker family, their black farm laborers, and the fugitive slaves harbored by Mr. Huffaker," Mr. Wilson said. "We also will focus on the agricultural aspects of life on an Illinois farmstead in the antebellum period, complete with farm animals."

The Illinois Department of Transportation has expressed interest in helping the committee by improving access and providing signs to the farm, according to Wilson. "They also said they could help us plant native grasses on the farm," he added. In addition, plans are being made to strengthen a bridge over the middle fork of Mauvaisterre Creek, just south of the farm. Other long-range committee goals are to reconstruct a wooden fence and the cabins of the black laborers on the farm. Wilson credits the committee for pulling together to make this potential living history museum a reality.

"In the same way it took many people to establish an Underground Railroad system in the early 1800s, it took that same commitment by a group of people to establish our local Underground Railroad Committee," he said.