Shelby Township, MI
Home MenuShelby Township on the Underground Railroad
One mile northwest of Utica, just off River Bends Drive, one can still see slabs of pitted concrete above the thick brush in River Bends Park in Shelby Township.
The slabs are remnants of Spring Hill Farm, a 19th-century refuge for freedom-seeking African Americans flight to Canada. As part of the Underground Railroad, Spring Hill Farm was one stop of many on a route for freedom seekers away from slaveholders to Canada.
Slaves traveled by night and sheltered during the day. Their shelters called "stations” were secured by “conductors” or “stationmasters,” who aided the freedom seekers' transport.
The Lerich family's Spring Hill Farm, named for its spring-in-the-hill, was a station on the Underground Railroad during the decade before the Civil War. Peter Lerich and his family were willing conductors as the Beacon Tree marked their station.
Just above the spring-in-the-hill, on a June morning in the 1850s, Peter Lerich’s daughter, Libereta Lerich Green, recalled her neighbors digging a deep hole, "until their heads were out of sight."
Then, Lerich and neighbors carefully placed an immense cedar tree carried by three oxen-drawn sleighs in the hole. It came to be known as the Beacon Tree, and Green recalled, “many dark-skinned men and women have blessed the day they sighted (it)." The Beacon Tree stood 24 miles directly north of Detroit City Hall and 12 miles east of Pontiac Court House.
For the next 10 years, until the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, legions of freedom seekers fled toward the Beacon Tree.
They crept along a fence at the spring, slid down the top pole and slipped through a small door in the hillside. Sustained by food and drink from the Lerich kitchen, the freedom seekers waited for the cover of night to resume their journey.
Slavery in America was abolished in 1865 by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and the Beacon Tree fell in 1888 when Peter Lerich sold Spring Hill to the McVitte family, who chopped it into fence posts.
Archibald McVitte later sold the farm to Charles Weeks of the Weeks Lumber Company, who owned the property for nearly 30 years. Herman Breede, an employee of Weeks, settled into it with his family and spent many years as Spring Hill's caretaker.
In 1939, heavyweight champion boxer Joe Louis' manager John Roxborough closed a deal securing the 500-acre farm as a training camp for the famous boxer from 1939 to 1944. As part of the development, they dug a well and installed the first electric lines on Hamlin Road. When Louis acquired the farm, "Uncle Peter Lerich," was still stenciled on a roadside barn.
Source - ( The Source Newspaper 6-29-92)
The slabs are remnants of Spring Hill Farm, a 19th-century refuge for freedom-seeking African Americans flight to Canada. As part of the Underground Railroad, Spring Hill Farm was one stop of many on a route for freedom seekers away from slaveholders to Canada.
Slaves traveled by night and sheltered during the day. Their shelters called "stations” were secured by “conductors” or “stationmasters,” who aided the freedom seekers' transport.
The Lerich family's Spring Hill Farm, named for its spring-in-the-hill, was a station on the Underground Railroad during the decade before the Civil War. Peter Lerich and his family were willing conductors as the Beacon Tree marked their station.
Just above the spring-in-the-hill, on a June morning in the 1850s, Peter Lerich’s daughter, Libereta Lerich Green, recalled her neighbors digging a deep hole, "until their heads were out of sight."
Then, Lerich and neighbors carefully placed an immense cedar tree carried by three oxen-drawn sleighs in the hole. It came to be known as the Beacon Tree, and Green recalled, “many dark-skinned men and women have blessed the day they sighted (it)." The Beacon Tree stood 24 miles directly north of Detroit City Hall and 12 miles east of Pontiac Court House.
For the next 10 years, until the first shot of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, legions of freedom seekers fled toward the Beacon Tree.
They crept along a fence at the spring, slid down the top pole and slipped through a small door in the hillside. Sustained by food and drink from the Lerich kitchen, the freedom seekers waited for the cover of night to resume their journey.
Slavery in America was abolished in 1865 by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and the Beacon Tree fell in 1888 when Peter Lerich sold Spring Hill to the McVitte family, who chopped it into fence posts.
Archibald McVitte later sold the farm to Charles Weeks of the Weeks Lumber Company, who owned the property for nearly 30 years. Herman Breede, an employee of Weeks, settled into it with his family and spent many years as Spring Hill's caretaker.
In 1939, heavyweight champion boxer Joe Louis' manager John Roxborough closed a deal securing the 500-acre farm as a training camp for the famous boxer from 1939 to 1944. As part of the development, they dug a well and installed the first electric lines on Hamlin Road. When Louis acquired the farm, "Uncle Peter Lerich," was still stenciled on a roadside barn.
Source - ( The Source Newspaper 6-29-92)