CHAPMAN HARRIS HOUSE
Historic Site — Dr. and Mrs. Paul Cronen, Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana
Status: Operating · Access: Restricted access
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/chapman-harris-house-indiana/

NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.

A historic site in Madison, Indiana, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing, Chapman Harris House is filed here for what the record attaches to it. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. The archive files it under dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 3 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Access is restricted, and the file says so plainly.

An 1880 profile in the Indianapolis Journal described the man it called 'the hero of the underground railroad': 'As black as ebony, tall, strong-limbed, deep-chested, he looks like an Abyssinian chieftain... a natural grace and dignity inseparable from fearlessness.' Chapman Harris was born free in Virginia in 1802 — free because his mother was — and arrived in Madison, Indiana, in 1839 by steamboat, planting himself deliberately on the border where the Ohio separated slave Kentucky from a nominally free shore.

THE EAGLE HOLLOW STATION
He worked as a teamster for Lewis Evans, then blacksmith, farmer and Baptist preacher — a cover-perfect trade, hauling goods by day while a wagon with a seventy-five-dollar false bottom hauled people by night. He bought the freedom of Patsy Ann, a Kentucky slave, for a year's blacksmith wages and a hundred dollars, married her in 1841, and bought land out at Eagle Hollow, three miles east of town; family tradition holds the deeds ran in Patsey's name, where a man's UGRR record couldn't reach them. Slave catchers assaulted him; an 1847 Madison arrest put a 'causing a riot' conviction on the books against him — the record of the law being used as the catchers' tool.
He and his sons signalled across the river by striking an iron plate hung in a tree, family accounts say, and his reputation ran Indiana-wide after the war. The house near Eagle Hollow is the file's entry: the giant conductor's station, kept in a deed a wife's name protected.

HISTORY — 3 documented facts
· NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.
· Chapman Harris House is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. Chapman Harris House's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer the museum itself interprets. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. 'NPS Network to Freedom listing' documents the entry. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.
· Harris’s work is documented. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'NPS Network to Freedom listing' carry the record. The record keeps it — history, not lore. The claim holds its place in the ledger.

SOURCES — 3 cited
· Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01 — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223
· NPS Network to Freedom listing — National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm
· Underground Railroad — Wikipedia
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad

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