The Strength of Archival Research: How the Bowne House was selected to join the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom

In 2021, the National Park Service (NPS) selected the Bowne House to join the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. It is the first location in Queens to join more than 700 other sites admitted to the Network since the National Park Service founded the program in 1998. The Network to Freedom program reviews applications from sites, research facilities, and programs with verified connections to the Underground Railroad. The program was created via legislation titled the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act of 1998 to honor, preserve, and promote the history of resistance to enslavement through escape and flight.?

The Bowne House

The Bowne House was the home to nine generations of abolitionists and prominent New York Quaker activists. Built around 1661, it is the oldest house in Queens and is the best preserved example of Anglo-Dutch residential architecture in the country. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a designated New York City Landmark. “We’re best known for John Bowne, the founder of the house and the patriarch of the family who emigrated from England in 1649 and his later non-violent protest against Governor Peter Stuyvesant –his courageous defense of religious freedom,” said Rosemary Vietor, Vice President of the Bowne House Historical Society’s Board of Trustees. “Recently, we’re focusing on the connection with the Underground Railroad and the Network to Freedom. The program designated us as a facility, not a site. The house originally had 400 acres, and within our archives we believe that we located a place where freedom seekers were concealed, but that site no longer exists. Therefore it is on the strength of our archives that we were awarded this designation.”?

The Bowne House archives include thousands of documents, letters, photographs, maps, architectural drawings, and more that span over 300 years, from 1661 to the museum’s founding in 1945. “Nine generations of the Bowne and Parsons families safeguarded the house and its contents,” said Charlotte Jackson, Archival Consultant to the Bowne House Historical Society. The archives offer a unique look into the history of the house, families, and community over the centuries. Many of the documents are original to the property and were carefully handed down through generations of Bowne and Parsons families. “We have almost everything in our archives that documents historically significant events,” said Veitor. “We have archival materials of the family discussing their views on the American Revolution as Quakers. They were reluctant to participate…some did and some didn’t. Others were involved in spearheading the move for public education in New York State in the early nineteenth century. Our archives are really like a repository of all sorts of different facts of Queen’s history.” Other stories that can be found within the archives are about horticulturists, political and religious leaders, artists and writers, and Walter Bowne, who was the 59th mayor of New York City from 1829 to 1833.

“We don’t know precisely where the Parsons hid enslaved people seeking freedom so although Underground Railroad conductors definitely lived at the Bowne House, we cannot claim that the house itself was a station in the sense that freedom-seekers were sheltered within its walls,” said Jackson. The Parsons ran a nursery business and family farm that occupied over 200 acres. “It would have been more discreet to hide people in remote outbuildings or even in the woods and marshes adjacent to the Flushing Creek,” said Jackson. Most of this land was sold and is no longer part of the Bowne property. The property now belongs to the NYC Parks Department and to be designated as a site under the Network to Freedom rather than as a facility, the NYC Parks Department would need consent and involvement to apply as a site. “However, the Bowne House Historical Society still owns the museum collections, including the archives, so the Society was able to apply for status as a research facility.”

Archives

One of the documents discovered within the archives was a letter of introduction carried by an enslaved person seeking freedom which as Jackson describes was discovered by chance in 2016 during a research project on the Parsons nursery. It was the first documentary evidence that confirmed a long-rumored status of the Bowne House as a stop on the Underground Railroad. “Part of what made the experience so moving was that I didn’t discover the letter in a large university or government archive. The charm of the Bowne House is that due to the nine generations of continuous ownership by the same family, we encounter its collections –artifacts and documents– in the same setting where they were originally read and collected,” said Jackson. “I read the letter sitting in the very house where the letter had almost certainly been handed to and read by William Parsons and then preserved for decades.”?

The Bowne House archives include obituaries for Samuel and Robert Bowne Parsons that describe their long-term involvement in the Underground Railroad but any real-time documentation was usually not kept nor advertised. “These activities were conducted below the radar and they did not publicize the work that they were doing,” said Vietor. “The Quakers were opposed to slavery early on where there was actually a prohibition against enslavement where if you did not free those you had enslaved, you were excommunicated.”

The letter is addressed to William Parsons, Esq. at Flushing and signed by Jocelyn with a request to care for a Person of Color and get him to safety but keeping him hidden before he can continue onto his journey east or north. Jackson notes that the signature was done by a shaky hand, so much that the document was mistakenly labeled “L.I. Jocelyn” when the museum inventoried the collection in the 1980s. L.I. Jocelyn was determined to be S. S. Jocelyn, short for Simeon Smith Jocelyn, a prominent abolitionist and social reformer and is also best known for his role in the Amistad Affair. The letter itself was carried by the freedom-seeker. “Knowing that makes the experience of handling this letter seem more intimate. But the letter still contains a mystery that likely will never be solved –its bearer’s identity and his story,” said Jackson. “The words ‘this is a strong case and great care and caution are required’ suggest a dramatic backstory, even by the standards of the Underground Railroad. It’s surprising to me that the Underground Railroad letter was preserved at all. Most such notes would have been discarded as soon as they had served their purpose—maybe even destroyed. After all, they constituted evidence of a crime and could potentially endanger all parties involved.”

The Bowne House archives includes obituaries for Samuel and Robert Bowne Parsons that describe their long-term involvement in the Underground Railroad but any real time documentation was usually not kept nor advertised. “These activities were conducted below the radar and they did not publicize the work that they were doing,” said Vietor. “The Quakers were opposed to slavery early on where there was actually a prohibition against enslavement where if you did not free those you had enslaved, you were excommunicated.”

Application Process

The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom accepts applications twice a year (January and July) which go directly to the NPS Underground Railroad Regional Manager. The main components to the NPS Network to Freedom program are to educate the public about the historical significance of the Underground Railroad, provide technical assistance to organizations that are identifying, documenting, preserving, and interpreting sites, travel routes and landscapes related to the Underground Railroad or that are developing or operating interpretive or educational programs or facilities, and to develop a Network of sites, programs, and facilities with verifiable associations to the Underground Railroad.

One of the principal objectives of the program is to validate the efforts of local and regional organizations and make it easier for them to share expertise and communicate with the NPS and each other.?

“We reached out to the Regional Administrator as early as possible for guidance in understanding the application,” said Ellen Spindler, a Bowne House volunteer who led the application process. “I would encourage other applicants to start as early as possible, read the application, decide what category best applies since it impacts the kind of evidence required (site, facility, educational program), read the extensive instructions and map out a strategy of compiling all of the known evidence and how to research for additional information in support of the application.”

Any element (site, facility, educational program) nominated to the Network must have a verifiable association to the Underground Railroad. These associations must be verified using professional methods of historical research, documentation, and interpretation. The supporting evidence must be documented in the application using specific citations that would allow the reader to recreate the research. “The instructions for the application describe the difference between primary sources, secondary sources, etc. and the weight which might be given to various kinds of evidence,” said Spindler. “We needed to include both historical and geographical information and a bibliography which took some time to compile, in addition to the other evidence. Geographical information and historical maps were quite important.”?

To be nominated to the Network of Freedom as a Facility, the Bowne House had to exceed a minimum level of accuracy and professionalism. Under accuracy, the NPS attempts to ensure that the history of the Underground Freedom Network is portrayed accurately by members of the Network to Freedom. Therefore the source material on which interpretation and presentation of information are based must be precisely described in the application. Sources should include primary materials and should be as specific to the story presented in the program or facility as possible.?

The Bowne House submitted three primary sources of direct evidence. The first was the letter describe above and “a letter of introduction of Robert Bowne Parsons, another Bowne resident, by Lewis Tappan, a well-known abolitionist, to Gerrit Smith, an Underground Railroad agent upstate, on a letter with an engraving of a kneeling enslaved person on it,” said Spindler. The third evidence submitted was a letter to Robert B. Parsons by the treasurer of the New York Vigilance Committee about his fundraising and safeguarding the funds for the organization in the Queen Library. The Bowne House also submitted obituaries about the third brother Samuel B. Parsons, who lived across the street after marriage, that describes in detail how he assisted in numerous escapes after hiding freedom seekers on his property. “We were very fortunate to have our archives and relevant correspondence preserved in books and other repositories, and newspaper articles/obituaries,” said Spindler.?

Under professionalism, the NPS does recognize that many facilities and programs operate on a volunteer basis with limited resources. Therefore, rather than requiring professional qualifications for the staff, the Network to Freedom focuses on a professional approach to activities such as interpretation or curation that will indicate a high-quality presentation of the history of the Underground Railroad.?

Another goal of the Network to Freedom is to increase public knowledge and understanding of the Underground Railroad, so providing access to information is a critical component of facilities. Facilities must demonstrate a willingness to share information with the general public and researchers. Facilities also must be able to demonstrate that key staff members have an appropriate level of training and a record of operations through a measurable output such as a past and ongoing production of a journal or reports.?

“I was initially worried that having such a small number of items that directly relate to the Underground Railroad would be insufficient to qualify us as a facility,” said Jackson. “However, in our application I emphasized that our documents illustrate the broader context within which the Parsons made their decision to participate in the Underground Railroad.” In the Bowne Houses’ application to the Network for Freedom, it cites that while the Parsons did not make the decision to participate in a vacuum; their choice arose from nearly 200 years of lived experience and evolving Quaker philosophy which left traces in the archives. “Quaker descendants and scholars draw explicit connections between all these experiences and the Quakers’ anti-slavery activism, and our documents can illustrate such connections.”

What’s next

A year after the Bowne House received Network to Freedom membership, staff and volunteers continue to work to make their archives and research accessible to the public with a mapping project that will expand on the Brown House’s role in the National Underground Railroad and the Underground Railroad occuring in Flushing. In September 2022, the Bowne House received a grant from the National Underground Railroad to Freedom to research, identify, and map Underground Railroad networks and escape routes used by freedom seekers through relatively unknown channels of Queens and Long Island.?

The project, Mapping the Underground Railroad at the Bowne House: Flushing & Beyond will document the museum’s ties to various Underground Railroad networks, the broader abolitionist movement, and other Black history sites throughout Queens and Long Island. “We want to map out the network of sites and other grounds that freedom seeks passing by the Bowne House would’ve used,” said Vietor. “This software will allow us to include archival media like photographs, documents, audio and visual recordings, and text to different locations as well as superimpose historical maps on present day maps.” This project will also allow staff to continue research in the museum’s archives, interview Black history scholars and New York City historians, and create multimedia programming including story maps and walking tours.?

“This place is an amazing place,” said Vietor. “I knew very little when I got involved but you are always finding something. It’s remarkable and never static. It brings great joy to rediscover things that have been hidden. This house and its archives is a survivor and I’ll quote Margaret Mead (cultural anthropologist) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

Learn more about the Bowne House: https://www.bownehouse.org/ and read more about the archival document that was the first documentary evidence that confirmed a long-rumored status of the Bowne House as a stop on the Underground Railroad https://www.bownehouse.org/ticket-for-the-underground-railroad