Underground Railroad Quilt

Underground Railroad is actually a name of the secret route, which was taken by African slaves to escape from Americans prior to 1860. It was given this name because it was difficult to find out the slaves on this route due to the number of safe hiding places. Secret cods were used by all these people to reach from one safe place to another. According to a recent study, it ahs been found that an Underground Railroad Quilt Code was used to guide these escapees to freedom.

Actually, these escapes were illiterate, so they made use stitches, patterns, designs, colors and fabrics of the American quilt to exchange their intricate messages to one another. After stitching their messages, these coded quilts were sent to the slaves as secret maps.

There were several designs and patterns that were used for Underground Railroad Quilt. It included monkey wrench, bow ties, wagon wheel, flying geese, carpenter’s wheel, drunkard’s path, crossroads, bear's paw, crossroads, north star, log cabin, shoofly, had symbolic messages for others fugitives. Hidden meaning of some of the patterns used in Underground Railroad Quilt Code by the escapees is given below:

Monkey Wrench: Monkey wrench pattern was used to collect all the tools that might be needed on their way to liberty.

Bow Ties: Bow ties pattern was designed to get nice clothes, as it was easy to spot them in tattered clothes.

Wagon Wheel: Wagon wheel pattern was used to arrange and pack all the things that would be needed at the time of journey.

Fly Geese: This pattern was symbol to follow migrating geese toward Canada. Actually, these flying geese pointed to north direction. Thus, slaves had the idea of the direction. Besides that geese would take some rest and eat at waterways. In this way, slaves had to take cues on direction and timing etc by these migrating geese.

Carpenter’s Wheel: It must had been very significant for skilled slave like carpenters. It told to slaves to towards the north-west Territories.

Drunkard’s Path: It was used to give warning to escapees to move in a staggering fashion so as to avoid any following slave seekers.

Bear’s Paw: This code was used to help escapees to go after the path of the bear and discover landmarks on the border of the agricultural estate.

Log Cabin: It was instruction to move towards the safe houses. This pattern was used by those people who must have helped these escapes by drawing this pattern in the dirt as a signal.

Thus, Underground Railroad Quilt came into existence that was used as code for all fugitives. it is not yet sure how much truth lie behind this story of Underground Railroad Quilt, however, one thing is definite that even today these quilts seem to reveal some hidden meaning.