Franklin’s Underground Railroad connection remains a mystery

Editor’s note: This story is part of a series on Black history in Johnson County in celebration of Black History Month and the county’s bicentennial.

A Franklin doctor may or may not have helped slaves escape to freedom during the Civil War era.

Local legends and rumors have long spread the story that one house at 798 E. Jefferson St. in Franklin was a station in the Underground Railroad, the secret transportation network used in the pre-Civil War era to help slaves escape to freedom in the North.

But the stories about the house are just that — rumors, at least for now, said David Pfeiffer, director of the Johnson County Museum of history.

People involved in the Underground Railroad generally did not keep a lot of records, largely because their activity was illegal at the time, Pfeiffer said. Many of the stories about Johnson County’s involvement in the railroad stem from personal accounts and word-of-mouth stories spread around years later.

Dr. Theodore Pinkney lived in a home that formerly stood at 798 E. Jefferson St. sometime in the 1850s through the Civil War. Little is known about Pinkney and who he was because the museum does not have a lot of documentation on him.

Pinkney’s house was rumored to have several secret rooms and underground passageways that led through the city of Franklin. The rumor is the home was a station on the Underground Railroad, where slaves could take a tunnel to Hurricane Creek, according to several articles published over the years in the Daily Journal.

The home, which sat at the corner of Jefferson and Edwards streets, was destroyed by a fire in November 1966, so it no longer stands today.

A 1987 article from the Daily Journal titled “Franklin harbored slaves” details the history of the house, along with its Underground Railroad ties. Pinkney lived there through the Civil War and then sold it to banker Richard Overstreet in 1866. Franklin College then bought it in 1906 as the president’s home. The house was eventually sold to the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

After the 1966 fire, the house did get some historical confirmation as an Underground Railroad stop in the fall of 1967, when a state historical marker was erected to recognize the spot as an official station.

The marker read, “site of Doctor Theodore A. Pinkney’s home, traditional stop on a central Indiana route of the Underground Railroad. This system of aiding escaping slaves to freedom existed for half a century, ending with a Civil War.”

The marker stood on Jefferson Street for decades, before it was knocked down by a car in 2006, Pfeiffer said. After that, it was never replaced.

A standard procedure for the Indiana Historical Bureau is to review any marker before it is re-installed, to ensure the text is still accurate. With the Pinkney marker, the bureau determined there was a lack of primary documentation to support the text, so it was permanently removed and recycled.

Primary documentation would be any hard evidence to prove the site was an Underground Railroad stop, such as some sort of records or handwritten diaries, Pfeiffer said.

There are rumors that there are diaries somewhere detailing accounts of the Underground Railroad at the Pinkney house, but they have never been found, Pfeiffer said. One those diaries allegedly details the tunnel to Hurricane Creek. It also does not help that the house doesn’t exist anymore.

“It’s just been a struggle trying to find those exact diaries, or anything like that because now we’re looking for something that’s, you know, 150 years old,” Pfeiffer said.

The reason the historical marker was erected in the first place likely had to do with Indiana celebrating its sesquicentennial, and one way the state celebrated was by placing a lot of historical markers, Pfeiffer said. This was also around the time of the Civil War’s centennial.

“They were pushing a lot of history topics, and that was right after the centennial of the Civil War right then too, and it was a popular topic,” Pfeiffer said.

Still, there are several personal accounts and newspaper interviews that hint to the Pinkney house being a station, but nothing is concrete.

A 1940 obituary for former Franklin College professor Rebecca Jane Thompson, who had lived during the Civil War, details she saw the workings of the Underground Railroad. She had said she recalled “mysterious conversations” between her parents, who would leave the house carrying a market basket, saying it was for people in need, which she thought were possibly slaves.

In the 1987 Daily Journal article, Pinkney is described as a “Union Patriot, who helped slaves to escape freedom.” He was also a member of the Franklin College board of directors.

The article also details that a man named Elmer Goodwin discovered the “remnants of a tunnel with brick floors, walls and ceiling.” He said at the time it ran from the basement of the house to Hurricane Creek.

Another article titled “Underground railway mystery may remain” from years prior in the 1960s also details Goodwin’s account with the alleged tunnel. The article states the fraternity occupying the property, SAE, was considering excavating on the property after the house burned down. Goodwin, who was a contractor, had been clearing debris when he found the tunnel, but he covered the entire area with dirt to prevent “possible injury to children playing in the area.”

Back to the 1987 Daily Journal article, it featured several interviews with former fraternity members of SAE who lived in the former Pinkney house. They described they had heard about the tunnels in the basement, and one former member, Michael Loveall said, “it was in fact a slave house.”

In one interview with Lloyd Hunter, a Franklin College history professor, he alleges that the college may have also been involved in the Underground Railroad, but most of that was just rumors. He also described the stories of the Pinkney house as “awfully mythical,” but he also said “I have no doubt that this would have been an area where slaves might have come.”

That article also says there are rumors the house next door to Pinkey’s at 740 E. Jefferson St., home to Kappa Delta Rho, also “was a hiding place for slaves” with tunnels connecting to the Pinkey house.

After the first 1987 article in the Daily Journal, the paper received several calls from locals detailing other personal accounts about the Pinkney house, according to a follow-up article published that year.

In that article, it details a call with a woman named Mrs. Howard Isley, who said she spent time in the house in the 1920s. At the time, a Dr. Whiteside lived there, and she was friends with his children. She recounted venturing into tunnels under the house with her friends at the time.

“It was in the northwest area of the house,” she said in the article. “Mrs. Whiteside said the slaves used to hide in there during the day and then go out to the creek at night and that’s how they would leave.”

Other homes throughout the county have also been rumored to have houses Underground Railroad stops, but Pinkney’s was the only one to receive a marker, and it’s one of the most talked about locally.

The Hougham House on Greensburg Road in Franklin also has been alleged to have connections to the railroad, according to county museum documents.

There were also rumors connecting a house at 243 Madison St. in Greenwood to the Underground Railroad. The house also allegedly has “long, dark passageways and rooms branching off in all directions of the basement.”

Despite these stories, Johnson County’s connection to the Underground Railroad remains largely a mystery, without primary source documentation. Pfeiffer still hopes the county museum can find some sources or diaries on the Pinkney house, or maybe they could find more information on Pinkney himself to see if he had any documented connections to the Civil War or abolitionists.

“That’s why we never stop researching,” Pfeiffer said.