BATTLE CREEK, Mich. – Two Michigan sites were added to a National Park Service (NPS) program recognizing their connections to the Underground Railroad and the history of resistance to enslavement.
Two Battle Creek locations are now part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom—the Erastus and Sarah Hussey Store and House and Oak Hill Cemetery, where Perry Sanford is buried.
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There are more than 30 locations in Michigan that are part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
The nominations were submitted as part of a summer internship partnership between the University of Michigan Department of History and the Michigan History Center. Sara DeSmet and Michael Delphia, two undergraduate students selected by the university faculty, worked on researching and writing the nominations.
The Erastus and Sarah Hussey Store and House
The Erastus and Sarah Hussey Store and House, nominated by DeSmet, was opened by the family to freedom seekers, providing them with food and shelter.
The Hussey family was part of an organized network that helped freedom seekers in many communities, including Battle Creek and Marshall.
DeSmet uncovered details about the Husseys' public dedication to the antislavery movement. In 1885, Erastus recalled in an interview in the Battle Creek Sunday Morning Call about enslavers heading to Battle Creek:
“Once word came that thirty armed men were on their way here to capture the slaves in Battle Creek. Dr. Thayer and I printed 500 hand-bills, stating that we were prepared to meet them, and that they had better stay away from Battle Creek. Some persons condemned this very much. Dr. Moffitt said that it was treason against the government. I sent the bills along the road by an express messenger by the name of Nichols… He threw them off at every station. At Niles he met the party on the train coming east. The slave-catchers read the bills and turned back. They said that there was no use going to Battle Creek.”
Today, a Michigan Historical Marker commemorating Erastus Hussey stands at the site of the Husseys' house, now the headquarters of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Perry Sanford and Oak Hill Cemetery
Delphia’s nomination focuses on the gravesite Sanford was laid to rest.
Sanford escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1847 and was involved in what later became known as the 1847 Kentucky Raid in Cass County. During the raid, the enslavers kidnapped nine freedom seekers.
The freedom seekers were taken to the county jail but slowly escaped. Sanford and other freedom seekers found shelter in Battle Creek with the Hussey family. Sanford talked about the raid in an Aug. 3, 1884, edition of the Battle Creek Sunday Morning Call.
Instead of continuing to travel to Canada for further safety, Sanford stayed in Battle Creek. He worked at Nichols, Shepard & Co. factory. In 1887, he helped plan celebrations of the Emancipation Proclamation and the freeing of the enslaved in the British West Indies.
Sanford had an active life with the community through the Battle Creek Workingmen’s Society and Strother Lodge of Black Freemasons.
Sanford died in 1905. The last remaining physical evidence of his life is his grave marker in Battle Creek’s Oak Hill Cemetery.
