It was another ordinary day. Reading about the Underground Railroad and three generations of the Gibbons family who ran an Underground Railroad station near Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania. They helped move hundreds of freedom seekers toward safety. It was on this past April 22nd that the National Park Service recognized this contribution to anti-slavery history by naming the burial site of Quakers Daniel and Hannah Gibbons to its National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The Gibbons' are buried in the 1728 graveyard at Lampeter Friends Meetinghouse in Bird-in-Hand. The National Park Service designation resulted from a yearslong effort by members of Lampeter Meeting to gain recognition for the role some of its former members played in the Underground Railroad. "It was a very uphill battle," says Saving Morrison, a Lancaster lawyer, meetinghouse member and early leader in the effort. Lori Cabirac assembled information for the application. The designation honors the graves of the most signifiant Quaker Underground Railroad operators in Lancaster County. Daniel Gibbons (1776-1853) and Hannah Wierman Gibbons (1787-1860) processed nearly 1,000 freedom-seekers. Daniel took charge of the logistics of the operation while Hannah was a full partner in her husband's work. One might ask why the family's small limestone grave markers in the meetinghouse cemetery have been designated part of the Network to Freedom instead of, or in addition to, the house where they lived and sheltered freedom-seekers.
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The Gibbons family's 1815 home which was used as an
Underground Railroad station. It was demolished in 1986. |
That's because the Gibbons' stone and brick Underground Railroad house built in 1815 along Beechdale Road about a mile north of Bird-in-Hand, was destroyed nearly four decades ago by a temporary owner who believed he could obliterate a historic building without consulting anyone. It is amazing that the conservative county - that has preserved more farmland than any other county in the United States and has belatedly, but enthusiastically, embraced conserving forested land as well - cares so little for its built environment. The city of Lancaster has ordinances to stop or at least slow demolition of historic structures. So do several other county municipalities. But, most rural townships have no rules and don't regulate what new owners do to old properties. The reason for the destruction of the Gibbon's home was quite different. The Gibbonses and Brubakers, the Scribbler's family, are related by marriage. The Brubakers eventually turned the Gibbons property, then called Beechdale, into a large duck farm. After the Scribbler's grandfather sold that farm in 1961, a succession of wealthy, short-term owners used the place as a vacation destination. In 1984, James Cason, a Fresno, CA businessman and carriage collector, purchased Beechdale. Cason and his wife, Angie, stayed in a large, early 20th-century stone house during their periodic visits to the place. They restored the exterior of the Underground Railroad building. But then the Casons reversed course. One morning in the summer of 1986, Angie woke up at Beechdale and decided the view from the stone house would be improved if the Underground Railroad house were removed. Workers demolished the building by day's end. A few years later, the Casons sold the farm. Should someone who does not live here full time have destroyed part of this county's heritage on a whim - and with a whimper from Upper Leacock Township? So...we are left with Daniel and Hannah's tombstones. Kudos to Lampeter Meeting and the National Park Service for recognizing their significance. If their tombstones had not meant as much as they did, they too might have been destroyed as was the rest of the property. How sad! And...it can never be replaced. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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