Galesburg was founded by prairie pioneers in 1837. This origin and heritage was evoked by the city’s native son, Carl Sandburg: “I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover … In those years as a boy in that prairie town I got education in scraps and pieces of many kinds…” This theme of Galesburg and the prairie appears in a long oil canvas in the lobby of the post office (476 E. Main Street), painted in 1938 by Aaron Bohrod, entitled “Breaking the Prairie – Log City 1837”, as part of commission from the New Deal’s Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts. Log City was the temporary settlement that became Galesburg.

http://wpamurals.org/galesbu.htm and https://livingnewdeal.org/sites/post-office-mural-galesburg-il/ and https://www.sandburg.org/SandburgsHometown/SandburgsHometown_Post-Office.html and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Galesburg,_Il_Post_Office_Mural,_Breaking_the_Prairie-Log_City-1837_by_Aaron_Bohrod_(RS).JPG

Galesburg was a fervently abolitionist town, established by George Washington Gale, a proselytizing Presbyterian minister who decried slavery and promoted manual labor colleges and bought land for that purpose, also creating Knox College. Galesburg and Knox College were part of the Underground Railroad. Galesburg had an important anti-slavery society, created in 1839, and which helped to create anti-slavery societies elsewhere in Illinois.

The Knox College Archives hold the journal of Reverend Samuel Wright, a trustee of the college, in which he wrote on February 6, 1843: “another fugitive from slavery came along, which makes 21 that have been through this settlement on their way to Canada.” Knox College was officially recognized in 2006 by the National Park Service as a member of the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program.

Knox College has created the Underground Railroad Center (Lincoln Studies Center, Alumni Hall) with exhibits on the history of the Underground Railroad in the region and a mission to gather and preserve documents pertaining to the UGRR – such as exist, given the secrecy involved. In the Underground Railroad Center the visitor can see: a slave bock exhibit, a map detailing UGRR routes in western Illinois, a map detailing UGRR sites in and around Galesburg, a memorial to escaped slave Susan Richardson, exhibits on the Lincoln-Douglas debate at Old Main, a display about the Galesburg Colony and news stories. An excellent brief video about the Center (actually, an excellent small museum) can be watched here. 

Susan Richardson, a runaway slave who arrived in Galesburg in 1842, is featured in the video. She became involved in the UGRR in Galesburg and helped establish the first African American church in the city. She resided in Galesburg for the next sixty years.

And after the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad reached Galesburg in 1854 and was extended, runaway slaves traveled on railroad cars to Chicago. The current Amtrak route from Quincy to Macomb to Galesburg and on to Chicago is an echo of that early escape route.

On October 7, 1858 Knox College hosted the fifth senatorial debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas at Old Main, now a National Historic Landmark site on campus. Holding the debate in Galesburg was particularly significant because of the then well-known vehemently abolitionist position of the town.

. 

. 

Carl Sandburg was the son of Swedish immigrants, attracted to Galesburg by the prospect of work on the railroad. Indeed, Sandburg’s birthplace home was adjacent to the tracks of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The home we see today was much more rustic when Sandburg was born there in 1878 – without indoor water or plumbing or electricity.

.