Another look at history
The story goes that Covenant Presbyterian Church, 230 E. Jefferson St., has a room under its sanctuary that served as a stop in the Underground Railroad, sheltering runaway slaves on their way to Canada.
The church's oral history claims its third pastor, the Rev. Loyal Young, took on the task of harboring runaways.
It wasn't without risk for Young. Those who aided escaped slaves faced jail sentences and stiff fines if they were caught.
It's said one of his eight children, S. Hull Young, discovered his father with a group of fugitive slaves.
His father warned, “If you ever say a word about what you have seen to anybody, even your own brothers, you will put us all in great danger. Shut all this tight in your heart and never whisper a word of it.”
Today, in the church's boiler room, an opening in the wall allegedly leads to the Underground Railroad stop.
Leanne Heaton, one of the church members who conducts tours of the room, said a former pastor, the Rev. Jim Swanson, set up a viewing platform and display of the railroad's routes and major figures, such as Harriet Tubman.
The Underground Railroad's story is filled with midnight escapes, ever-present danger and underground passages.
But that's all it is, a story, nothing more, at least as far as Covenant Presbyterian is concerned, says one member.
“It's a complete fiction,” said Jane Hall, who's been a member of Covenant Presbyterian Church since she was baptized there in 1926.
She first heard the story of the church's Underground Railroad connection when she was in junior high school.
“I'm quite familiar with the story. I just wonder where they got the information,” she said.
Written records
Hall said the written records of the church show the Rev. Loyal Young was indeed pastor at the church from 1833 to 1868.“He did shelter people at the parsonage, ”she said, but not at the church.This incident was covered in a scene in “Through Succeeding Years,” a copy of the church's history that contains the text of a church pageant written in 1938 to commemorate the church's 125th anniversary.The narrator remarks the then-aged S. Hull Young recalled hearing voices in the parsonage one night and calling out to his parents.“Do not dare come down here,” thundered the Rev. Loyal Young. “Go back immediately.” Young was sheltering fugitive slaves.Hall said such a one-and-done incident made more sense than the church being a regular stop on the Underground Railroad.“The railroad stuck to the rivers pretty much,” she said. “Butler was not a main route during the time the Underground Railroad was most active.”Hall said the story of the church's Underground Railroad stop is one the church “is pushing out at the time, but they didn't bother to check back on the history.”Heaton said she's heard from her fellow church member about her concerns.“I've repeated the stories that have been told to me,” said Heaton. “All of this is debatable. There were no written records.“On a personal level, I can't conceive of any other use for those tunnels under the church. They are not utility tunnels.“I present the stories as they were told to me. The pastor, Loyal Young, was a renowed abolitionist,” Heaton said. “I'm inclined to believe he was a participant.”“Lois Bouch and her husband Matthew were long time members of Covenant Presbyterian Church,” said Covenant Presbyterian's Clerk of the Session, Lars Morrison. “Lois passed from this world to her heavenly home in the early years of the 21st century at the age of 105.”
Morrison said before her death, Bouch allowed him to interview her about her century of life, including the church's participation in the Underground Railroad.“Her parents and grandparents were alive during the years the church operated as a station on the UGRR,” Morrison said. “When Lois was deemed old enough to both understand the story and also to understand the need for complete secrecy, the parents passed on the knowledge of the UGRR at First Presbyterian to Lois.“Lois described the events that (purportedly) took place in the years … dealing with the succor of runaway slaves through this area, ” Morrison said. “It is from this body of oral traditions passed down to us that shape and form the narrative backbone of the story we continue to pass on at Covenant.”History bookBradley Pflugh's 2003 history book, “Butler County in the Civil War,” published by the Butler County Historical Society, mentions the Covenant Presbyterian Church site.Pflugh writes, “Located in the basement are visible holes that have been carved into the foundation wall that lead to hideaway spaces that go into chambers perhaps twenty feet deep.”In fact, Pflugh writes several sites in Butler County are also rumored to have been Underground Railroad stops.Abolitionists would move escaped slaves north from Pittsburgh along the Butler Plank Road (present-day Route 8) to Erie and then freedom in Canada.Harrisville was mentioned as a way point, as was the Leslie-McBride farm on Leslie Road and the Glasgow home at the corner of Sandy Hill Road and Brown's Hill Road.Pflugh said sewer work turned up tunnels connecting several homes in Harrisville.An antique shop in Zelienople was believed to be a safe house, as was the Old Stone House at the intersection of Routes 8, 173 and 528.Pflugh writes that physical evidence and oral histories “give proof to the sentiment that at least some Butler citizens were involved at a serious level along the path to freedom.”Bill May, of Butler, a Civil War historian and founder of the Civil War Roundtable, said, “Here's my thought: The current (Covenant Presbyterian) church was built in 1862, which means it's meaningless to talk about the Underground Railroad because the Civil War had started and there weren't any slave catchers here.“But the church was built over top of the foundation of the church that was built in 1832, so it's at the same location and puts it in the right time period,” he said.Probably was used
May, who's prepared a new talk on the Underground Railroad that he hasn't been able to deliver because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said while there is no definite evidence the church was used in the Underground Railroad, it probably was.He said Rev. Young was a well-known abolitionist.“There were a lot of people who would have been in agreement with Loyal Young's involvement,' May said.The incident at the parsonage, alluded to in the church history “Through Succeeding Years,” was no doubt a one-time event at the parsonage at Moore and Pearl streets, May agreed.That's because, May said, “Young had seven sons and one daughter, and 'loose lips sink ships.'“He could not have had a steady stream of escaping slaves coming to a home with eight children. Children talk,” he said.May theorized the escapees had to be brought to Young's home out of desperation because slave catchers were in the area and the usual routes couldn't be used.May said he spent months going over letters and accounts preparing his Underground Railroad talk.“I wouldn't call Butler a main route, but it was a secondary route,” he said. “Butler didn't have a lot of escapees moving through this community.”He said the main route would have taken fugitive slaves north from Pittsburgh to New Castle and Mercer, or west to Ohio.But because of Young's close association with abolitionists, May believes he had on occasion harbored fugitives in the church.“I don't think it was the main place he would have kept them,” he said.Another hiding place, May said, may have been the Witherspoon Institute, a private high school Young founded in 1849 on the site of the present-day First English Lutheran Church at 241 N. Main St.May said the institute moved in 1877 to First and Jefferson streets in the neighborhood, now known as Institute Hill.“It's also likely in desperation that he may have hid slaves there,” May said. “It kind of makes sense that the founder of these two places would have used them when they were vacant.”Even in Young's autobiography, “From Dawn to Dusk,” the minister did not mention his involvement with the Underground Railroad, May said, because Young felt such a revelation could still do him harm.Covenant's bicentennial history program noted that, in the 1950s, the church was one of the few racially integrated churches in the area at that time.No written recordsWhile the program noted the congregation's commitment to racial justice has a long history, and tradition holds the church was a stop on the Underground Railroad, no written records were kept of these activities, so First Presbyterian was never mentioned in county histories or recorded as having participated in this effort to give passage to those who were seeking to be free.Still, May said in the days before the Civil War, the city of Butler was a center of abolitionist sentiments. He cited the actions of a Butler judge John Bredin.May said when slave catchers caught a fugitive, they would bring them before Bredin, who would take custody of the fugitive and jail him. Bredin would send the slave catchers to bring back documentation proving the captive was a slave.While the slave catchers were gone, Bredin would release the fugitive from jail.As for other rumored stops of the Underground Railroad in Butler County, May said, “Any time someone found a bricked up space or door, that would start the stories. But it usually wasn't the case.”However, May said he has found documentation that a house in Harrisville across from the post office could have been one stop. It was owned by a man named William P. Brown, who did work with the Underground Railroad. Harrisville is 20 miles from Butler and along the route to Erie.
