Quaker Meeting House

Side A: Despite the fugitive slave laws that prohibited harboring runaway slaves, fugitives found refuge in the Quaker village of Chesterfield, now Chesterhill. Legend tells that no runaway slaves were ever captured here, although many were hidden and helped on their way to freedom in Canada. A well-organized branch of the Underground Railroad ran through Morgan County with Elias Bundy as a principal conductor. Bundy sometimes concealed fugitive slaves in the woods east of Chester Hill. Historian W.H. Siebert says Bundy, Jesse Hiatt, Nathan Morris, Abel W. Bye, Joseph Doudna, Arnold Patterson, and Thomas Smith “belonged to the inner circle of old and reliable Friends [Quakers] upon whom dependence could always be placed.” The first Monthly Meeting was held on October 21, 1839 at the location of the present Meeting House, which was built in 1834. Side B: Same