The Underground Railroad in North Carolina

A few years ago, I spent a week wandering around the Outer Banks in search of History....any United States history that I could locate. Fortunately for me, the Outer Banks is full of it. One of the places that I had the opportunity to visit was Roanoke Island.

Roanoke Island is famous for the Lost Colony. Sir Francis Drake had set up a colony on this island and then had to go back to England. When he returned, the colony was gone....vanished....and the only thing left were the letters "CRO" carved into a tree. To this day, no one knows for sure what happened to this colony. But this island is famous for something else. This island had a Freedman's Colony on it. This is what the memorial to the Freedman's Colony says:

Front of Memorial
First Light of Freedom
Former slaves give thanks by the creek’s edgeat the site of the island - “If you can cross thecreek to Roanoke Island, you will find ‘safe haven’.”

Back of Memorial
1862-1867. A year after the Civil War began, Roanoke Island fell to Union Forces. Word spread throughout North Carolina that slaves could find "safe haven" on the Island. By the end of 1862, over a thousand runaway slaves, freed men, women and children found sanctuary here. This colony, a precursor to the Freedmen's Bureau, was to serve as a model for other colonies throughout the South. Once again this small island, site of the first English attempt at permanent settlement in the New World, became a land of historic beginnings.

The Freedmen's Colony encompassed unoccupied, unimproved lands from Manteo to the north and west shores, including some of the land today known as Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. A sawmill, hospital, a school for black female teachers, and homes were established. Able-bodied men were offered rations and and employment to build a new fort. They also enlisted to form the First and Second North Carolina Regiments. The colony could not remain self-supporting without men and became a refuge for three thousand women, children, aged and informed.

Upon the war's end, the federal government discontinued rations and supplies to colonists and returned land to original owners. Reminiscent of early English efforts, the Roanoke Island Freedmen's colony was abandoned in 1867. Many freed people remained and their descendants would become respected local residents. Others settled in communities Throughout the region and would become an integral part of eastern North Carolina culture.

Its funny how we don't think about the Southern states having anything to do with the history of freeing the slaves....yet North Carolina played a HUGE part. The Underground Railroad was a major part of the freeing of the slaves and to think that this particular piece of property, although not technically a part of the Underground Railroad, was still a vital force in this process. The United States government did a good thing when they started this colony.