{"id":633,"slug":"dr-richard-eells-house-illinois","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["On the night of August 21, 1842, a man named Charley swam the Mississippi out of Missouri and came up dripping in Quincy, Illinois. A free Black man named Barryman Barnett found him and brought him to the back door of Dr. Richard Eells at 415 Jersey Street — the president of the Adams County Anti-Slavery Society, four blocks from the river, at what was effectively Stop Number One on the northern route out of a slave state.","Eells gave Charley dry clothes and drove him toward the Mission Institute, but the slave catchers were already watching the road — they saw Charley's head lift from under the buffalo robe. Charley jumped from the carriage and ran across the cemetery; he was captured that night and returned to Missouri, and his fate is unknown. The posse forced their way into Eells's house and found the wet clothes — the evidence that convicted him.","The case went all the way up. Justice of the Peace Henry Asbury charged Eells with harboring a fugitive; Stephen A. Douglas — Lincoln's future debate opponent — presided over the circuit court trial and fined him $400. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed; the appeal was headed to the U.S. Supreme Court when Eells died on a steamboat crossing the Ohio at Cincinnati — and the Court heard it anyway. He had become president of the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberty Party's presidential candidate while his conviction for helping a man who swam a river to freedom was being appealed.","The Eells House is the archive's harboring file — the house where a wet man at the back door became a Supreme Court case, and where the crime of sheltering a fugitive was prosecuted by the nation whose conscience the defendant was trying to change."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Dr. Richard Eells House is the archive's first-station file — the Quincy house where Charley arrived wet from the Mississippi in 1842, whose owner was convicted by Stephen Douglas's court and appealed to the Supreme Court, in the town that was the first stop out of slave territory.","A house where harboring was prosecuted keeps its back door — the file's suggestion being that the Eells House's hold is the knock: the wet man at the door, the wet clothes as evidence, the fine and the appeal, in the house four blocks from the river that was freedom's first address in Illinois."]}],"name":"Dr. Richard Eells House","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_SITE","type_label":"Historic Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD_HISTORY","AFRICAN_AMERICAN_HISTORY","HISTORIC_SITE","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites"],"desc":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","full_desc":"A historic site in Quincy, Illinois, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing, Dr. Richard Eells 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. The site is open to visitors.","address":"415 Jersey Street","city":"Quincy","county":"Adams","state":"Illinois","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":39.933675,"lon":-91.379304,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":"NPS public listing access field: Yes. This is a listing snapshot; current arrangements still require confirmation.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 02IL02, source row 26. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":62.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.35,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Dr. Richard Eells House's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer the museum itself interprets. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Dr. Richard Eells House is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. Dr. Richard Eells House's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer the museum itself interprets. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The detail is preserved in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Eells’s case 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. The record appears in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry. The account stays in the file — reported, retold, unresolved.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Historic site; verify hours and access with the managing agency before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Underground Railroad","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","incoming_value":"The Quincy house—where the doctor died for the fugitives.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"historic_designation","existing_value":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","incoming_value":"NPS Network to Freedom","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 02IL02, source row 26. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","incoming_value":"UGRR enrichment wave 3; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"South Side German Historic District","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Side_German_Historic_District","desc":"Historic district in Illinois, United States","extract":"The South Side German Historic District is a neighborhood within Quincy, Illinois, United States just south of downtown. The neighborhood includes most of Quincy's rich German architecture. The region is also widely known as \"Calftown\", named for the number of calves once owned by its inhabitants. It was added into the National Register of Historic Places in 1992 with a boundary increase in 1995.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Quincy_State_n_8th.JPG/960px-Quincy_State_n_8th.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":64,"lat":39.92655556,"lon":-91.40327778},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":3,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}