MAPPING THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AT BOWNE HOUSE: FLUSHING AND BEYOND

BOWNE HOUSE STORYMAPS: A PREVIEW

In 2021, Bowne House was inducted into the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom, which recognizes sites and cultural institutions with documented ties to the Underground Railroad. Following its construction in 1661 by John Bowne, a Quaker known for his defense of religious freedom, Bowne House was home to nine generations of a family that came to include abolitionists, Underground Railroad operatives, and founders of Black schools. Over the course of its 350-year history, it also housed a number of African-American residents, both enslaved and free. Today, as a museum we seek to place the site in a larger context and deepen our understanding of the journeys undertaken by the freedom-seekers who passed through Flushing and of the African-American community active in Flushing at that time.

With the aid of a Network to Freedom grant, we are currently in the process of conducting research and curating interactive, multimedia StoryMaps using the ArcGIS geospatial mapping software platform. Here, to mark Juneteenth, we present a brief preview of the project, which we hope to launch live soon.

BYWAYS TO LIBERTY

“Byways to Liberty” depicts a network of Underground Railroad sites, including Quaker homes and free Black communities, that freedom-seekers may have passed through after leaving Flushing. Scroll down the gallery below to see a few of the views and features:

Byways to Liberty: An Underground Railroad Network near Flushing

This screenshot depicts a network of Underground Railroad sites , including Quaker homes and free Black communities, that freedom-seekers may have passed through after leaving Flushing.

Underground Railroad sites near Flushing: Historic Map Overlay

“Map of Long Island, with the Environs of New-York and the Southern Part of Connecticut,” J. Calvin Smith, 1847. (New York Public Library) overlaid on present-day geography.

Bowne House on 1847 Long Island

The location of Bowne House on the 1847 map of Long Island.

Bowne House on the present-day map

Zoom in to see sites on the present-day street map.

"White Pot": Jarvis Jackson House and Barn

Historic photographs attached to individual points on the maps allow us to visualize Underground Railroad sites as they were in the past. Photo: Queens Public Library

As we flesh out this StoryMap, we will add more sites and different networks. Using the ArcGIS software platform, we can attach historic photographs, oral histories, documents, and interpretive text to each site. We can also overlay historic maps onto the present-day landscape to illustrate the terrain that 19th-century freedom-seekers traversed during their perilous escapes, as seen below. Scroll down the gallery below to see examples:

We are also embarking on a second map, African-American and Abolitionist Flushing, that portrays sites in and around Flushing connected to the area’s long-standing Black community and the Abolitionist movement. See the gallery for examples of a few included sites:

Flushing, 1852

Map of Kings and Queens Cos., from Dripps’ Atllas, 1852 (NYPL Digital Collections)

Flushing Female Association School.

FFA school on Liberty Street (now 38th Avenue) between Union and Main (Queens Library Digital Collections)

Macedonia A.M.E. Church, Flushing

The now-demolished Macedonia A.M.E. Church in 1927. (Queens Public Library)

Olde Town of Flushing Burial Ground

The Olde Town Burial Ground was known as the “colored cemetery.” (Queens Topographical Survey)

"Black Dublin," Flushing, 1841.

Detail of a 1841 map of Flushing showing the Macedonia A.M.E. Church, the Free School, and the property of George and Ann Cropper and other Black homeowners.

Deed of Trust from George & Ann Cropper

George Cropper and his wife Ann place their “Black Dublin” property in trust with Samuel & Robert Bowne Parsons, 1839.