Free Frank and David Nelson in Kentucky and Illinois

Abolitionists were organizing across the country
as soon as a territory became a state in the United States. Some antislavery
Americans met at lectures or rallies, and some serendipitously crossed paths as
they traveled west to the new states in the expanding nation.

Free Frank (later McWorter) purchased his
freedom in 1819, and lived in Kentucky for over a decade before moving to Pike
County Illinois. His time as a free man amidst a dominant slave culture on the Pennyroyal
plateau frontier of western Kentucky was spent earning as much money as
possible to purchase his family members and prepare for a new start in the free
state of Illinois.

While saving money to liberate himself and
his wife, Lucy, Free Frank mined for saltpeter in the plateau area’s plentiful
caves. He developed a profitable saltpeter business and in the 1820’s expanded
it to Danville, Kentucky, about 40 miles from his farm in Pulaski County.
Danville was a hub of activity and commerce where many pioneers stopped to
restock their supplies before continuing westward. In the 1820’s Free Frank
also purchased farmland from wealthy Kentucky politicians and landowners for
future speculation. He was in contact with many prominent citizens while in
Danville.

Originally from Tennessee, Dr. David Nelson arrived in Danville in
1827, having previously lived there while studying medicine. After his brother
Rev. Samuel K. Nelson’s death in 1828, he replaced his brother as minister of
Danville’s Presbyterian Church. From
1827-1830, Nelson was also on the board of trustees at Centre College, founded
by Presbyterians in 1819 in Danville. His anti-slavery stance grew during this
period and he soon made plans to move to Marion County, Missouri.

Free Frank traded his saltpeter business for his son Young Frank’s
freedom in 1829. He then sold his farm and purchased Pike County, Illinois land.
He made plans to leave Kentucky for Illinois in the fall of 1830. Some sources
claim David Nelson also left in the fall of 1830, but no documentary evidence
of this move has been uncovered.
However, their locations continued to synchronize after they left
Kentucky.

Nelson
spent the next few years in Missouri preaching, and denouncing slavery. In 1831, he established Marion College in
Philadelphia, Missouri as a Presbyterian preparatory college. He later met
radical abolitionist Theodore Weld in St. Louis in 1835 and became more openly
abolitionist. In late May of 1836 Nelson was chased from Missouri to Quincy by
proslavery forces. After making it to Quincy he hid at fellow abolitionist
Rufus Brown’s hotel at 4th and Maine Streets before the slavers
confronted him. He was rescued by John Wood and a team of thirty abolitionists.
The rowdy pro-slavery forces returned across the river to Missouri. Later that
same year, Nelson established the Mission Institute east of Quincy, near
present day Maine and 24th Street.

During this same period, Free Frank and his family were
establishing their farm in Pike County, Illinois. In 1835 Free Frank purchased
one hundred acres of Pike County land at Quincy’s federal land office on the
north side of the square (now Washington Park). He and his sons Squire and
Commodore returned to buy more acres in May and June of 1836. New Philadelphia
was officially platted in September of 1836, and by that time, Free Frank
McWorter owned 600 acres of land.

New Philadelphia, which was
about 30 miles south of Quincy, was organized as a town and divided into 144
lots. Free Frank needed legal protection to secure his land and town. Pike
County farmer and surveyor Reuben Shipman signed the plat book for the new
village. He was a neighbor of Free Frank’s in Hadley Township, and his son
William Shipman became a student at David Nelson’s Mission Institute in Quincy.

Fellow student Jane Stobie was from a family of abolitionists in
Quincy, and she and William Shipman later married in Quincy before voyaging to
the future state of Hawaii as missionaries. It was not unusual for students
from the Mission Institute to marry and became missionaries. Many went to Canada to help escaping slaves. Free
Frank and his family had known the route to Canada from Kentucky since at least
the 1820’s and the family’s oral history acknowledges they were helping
fugitives while in Illinois.

Free Frank’s first free-born child Squire McWorter helped his wife
Louisa Clark escape from Kentucky to Canada in the early 1840’s. Their son
Squire, Jr. was born in Chatham, Ontario in 1846 where Elias and Elizabeth
Kirkland, former Mission Institute students taught at the British American
Institute and helped escaping slaves.

In the 1850’s, after both David Nelson and Frank McWorter’s
deaths, a verifiable antislavery connection between New Philadelphia and Quincy
became known. The Clark family from New Philadelphia moved to Quincy in the
1850s and worked for the seasoned abolitionist and sawmill owner John Van Doorn. Jane
Stobie Shipman’s brother and fellow abolitionist Alex Stobie also worked for
Van Doorn.

Because teamwork and
communication were key to the success of the ant-slavery Underground Railroad movement
the possible early meetings between David Nelson and Free Frank McWorter are
intriguing, and perhaps their early associations led to a more organized
abolitionist network in western Illinois.

Underground Railroad activities in the
Eastern U.S. are widely chronicled and memorialized. The fugitive slave stories
of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William Still and
others have been extensively researched told and re-told. As more forgotten documents are discovered
and shared, the contributions of more local heroes such as Dr. David Nelson and
Frank McWorter will be recognized and honored.

Sources

Ankrom,
Reg. “Rev. Nelson and Abolition Come To Quincy”.

Quincy Herald Whig,

Dec.
23, 2012.

Asbury, Henry.

Reminiscences of Quincy, Illinois.

Quincy IL: D. Wilcox & Sons,
1882.

Bangert,
Heather. “Black Abolitionist Network Grew With City”.

Quincy Herald Whig

,
Jan. 11, 2015.

Bangert,
Heather. “Families Paved Pathway That Led to Slaves’ Freedom”,

Quincy Herald
Whig

, Sept. 18, 2018.

Cahill,
Emmett.

Shipmans of East Hawaii.

University
of Hawaii Press, 1996.

Centre College
Special Collections, Digital Archives, Centre College Board of Trustees Minutes (vol. 2- 1828).

Deters, Ruth.

The
Underground Railroad Ran Through My House!.

Eleven Oaks Publishing, 2008.

Quincy City
Directories 1855-1875.

Ripley, Peter C., ed.

The Black Abolitionist Papers

, Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press,
1985.

Shackel,
Paul A.

New Philadelphia: An Archeology of Race in the Heartland

.
Berkeley CA: University of California Press,
2010.

Walker,
Juliet E.K.,

Free Frank: A Black Pioneer
on the Antebellum Frontier

. Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky,
1982.