It's a really unique
piece of Wisconsin history.
Tell people all the time,
you can come
to the Milton House
and I guarantee you
I will give
you an experience
you can't get anywhere else
in the state of Wisconsin.
A lot of people are surprised
to learn that the
Underground Railroad came
through Wisconsin.
The Underground Railroad
was a very loose
network of people who helped
enslaved people escape
to freedom.
It ran
throughout
the entire country.
It wasn't just down south
or just up north.
Most people were
escaping up to Canada
because at that time
that was the only place
you could go
and be truly free
because Canada had
abolished slavery.
Wisconsin
We are fairly far west,
so we weren't a main route,
but we were people
coming up to Mississippi
and trying to go east over
to the Great Lakes
through Wisconsin
They figure at best
they had a few hundred
freedom seekers come
through the state.
The Milton House Museum is
a historic house museum
and we are the only
certified underground
railroad site in Wisconsin
that you can tour.
There are other certified
underground railroad
sites in Wisconsin.
A lot of them
are just a plaque
to an event that happened
or where the building stood.
Or they're private.
So they're a church
or a private home, so
the general public can't go
and experience that site.
We are the only one
that the public can come to.
There's something
really unique about
being able to, as I call it,
walk in the footsteps
of freedom seekers.
You get to walk in
that exact same tunnel.
You get to see the same
windows and doors.
You can touch the banister
that they, you know,
that people touched.
And I think to me,
you can't replicate
that feeling of being able
to touch things that people
touched 175 years ago.
Joseph Goodrich, the
founder of the area,
pretty much came here
with his family
in the 1800s, started
building the
Milton House in 1839.
It started off as a hotel,
and it was also kind of
like a secret network
for the
Underground Railroad.
So it was a business
that doubled as a means
to help people
as they were moving through
the Underground Railroad.
Joseph was a seventh
day Baptist.
Which part of that religion
at that time,
one of the three
pillars was that
you had to be
an abolitionist.
You had to believe
in slavery being wrong.
So not only was Joseph
a seven day Baptist,
the majority of people
who come to Milton
when he founded
the town are also
Seventh-Day Baptists.
He kind of creates
a little insulation
around his operation
of his stagecoach
inn to be an underground
railroad stop.
So he is helping people
that are coming from
the south
and helping to move them,
move them on to freedom.
We know one freedom seeker
who came here by
name, Andrew Pratt.
He escaped slavery
at the age of around
like 19, 20 years old
and made his way
to the union
towards Illinois.
His background was after
he made his way there,
he was arrested
and then he came
into contact with William,
which would be
Joseph's brother,
William Anson Goodrich.
He is the one who
brought Andrew Pratt
here to the Milton House.
So he stayed here
until the end of the
Civil War in 1865.
He was actually the person
who traveled through
the underground passage.
That's how the Goodrich's
referred to the tunnel.
That was in 1861,
stayed down there,
and then he felt
comfortable enough
to live here
in the city of Milton,
where the town of
Milton at the time,
until the end of the
Civil War in 1865,
when the train was
built through here in 18,
I believe, 52,
there was a whole
lot of people
coming through here
and travelers, traders.
So it was a place
where pretty much right
beneath us right now
there were people hiding
and they had to be quiet
because they could hear
the people above
and the people above
could hear them.
And there was people
coming through here
eating breakfast,
lunch and dinner.
Traders.
Travelers coming
in off the train.
So it was super busy.
Our first document of Andrew
Pratt is a scrap of paper
from the Goodrich papers
and it talks about him
coming when he claims
that he used the
underground passage.
Then in 2018, up at
the State
Historical Society,
we actually found a letter
written on Andrew
Pratt's behalf to the
governor of Wisconsin,
basically saying again,
I've escaped from bondage.
I want to volunteer
in the army.
I deserve to get a bounty.
I shouldn't get drafted.
The story has been around.
We were certified
as a national historic
register in 1998,
and those documents
played a huge role in
in that certification.
So as we move forward
in time,
we're finding out
more things, we're
learning more things,
finding documents
that we never had before.
The Milton house is a
one of a kind,
especially in Wisconsin.
I've had people from
I've taken people
from Ireland,
from England, from Africa,
from some of the islands
out in the Pacific.
And,
you know, they just love it.
And I think a lot of people
are really appreciative
of the fact that we
preserved history
the way we did here,
been on the National
Historic Register.
We were
one of the first ones
in Rock County to be
put on the register.
So all of that kind of
just continues to lead
to why this place
is so important.
And it's a really unique
piece of Wisconsin history.
I tell people all the time,
you can come to the
mill past.
I guarantee you
I will give
you an experience
you can't get anywhere else.
It's kind of cool
that it's right here
in Little Old Milton,
as people like to say.
It's a great place
to come to actually,
like, confront
the truth and learn
and walk out of here
with a better understanding
and education about
the United States
and how things were at
one point in time.