Underground Railroad: The Jan Ton Farm

Near here, along the Little Calumet River, Dutch immigrants Jan Ton and his wife Aagje ran a farm that served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. They had come from Holland and settled the farm in eighteen fifty-three, and they sheltered freedom-seeking people at real personal risk. Their farm became part of a clandestine network of safe houses stretching through the Calumet region south of Chicago, helping enslaved men and women move toward freedom in the years before the Civil War. Their story is a reminder that the Underground Railroad was built by ordinary people of many backgrounds, most of them now little known, who made extraordinary choices.