Freddie Parker, a history student in the Carolina Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, is attempting to uncover information about the days of slavery by analyzing advertisements for runaway slaves.
From Colonial days through the Civil War, a number of slaves, aided by slave watermen and sympathetic whites, escaped by the Maritime Underground Railroad, an ocean-going route to freedom along the North Carolina coastline.
Quakers in the Piedmont originated the first national Underground Railroad in the 1700s. This was a secret network of people and places set up to help slaves escaping to the North. It was not without danger for the Quakers, for anyone caught helping runaways could be punished.