Storyteller Sharon Kirk Clifton will present a program as Abigail Gray, an abolitionist farm wife in Indiana in 1859, to teach about the Underground Railroad at the Johnson County Museum of History on Saturday.
Indiana played a key role in helping escaped slaves reach freedom through the Underground Railroad in the 1800s.
Local residents will have the chance to enter that fraught world during a special presentation Saturday at the Johnson County Museum of History.
Storyteller Sharon Kirk Clifton will embody the spirit of Abigail Gray, an abolitionist farm wife living in Indiana in 1859. Her program will reveal stories of the Underground Railroad in southeastern Indiana, as well as areas to the north and south.
“I hope people get a little bit of a picture of what slavery was really about, and why people were willing to put their life on the line,” she said.
Clifton will take the stage at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the museum, 135 N. Main St., Franklin. The program is free and open to the public.
For Clifton, storytelling is a natural part of her personality. She started working as a teacher, educating middle and high school students in English and reading. She had studied theater in the past. As a journalist, she specialized in features, capturing people’s stories and presenting them to the public.
Her entrance into storytelling happened in late 1980s. During a trip to Conner Prairie with her children, she heard a man give a performance as Johnny Appleseed.
“He did three programs that day, and I was there for all three. At the end, I talked to him, and said that I wanted to do that,” she said. “We talked for quite a while, and he said to get a character and develop it.”
Clifton has been performing her shows ever since. She developed the Abigail Gray program in 2004, after receiving a Frank Basile Emerging Stories fellowship. The show premiered at the Indiana History Center the same year.
She uses Abigail Gray’s character to talk about real people, events and occurrences in Indiana’s history.
“I’ve always had an interest in the Underground Railroad — it’s always fascinated me. I could never understand slavery,” Clifton said. “The idea of working on an event on the Underground Railroad was very interesting with me.”
