From the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway Driving Tour Guide website:
"Willow Grove - Stop 37 (page 42) Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway Driving Tour Guide.
Freedom seekers reaching the Delaware
state line, also the Mason-Dixon Line, still
were in a slave-holding state and had 75
miles to go before they reached the free
state of Pennsylvania.
Harriet Tubman mentioned the
crossroads of “Will’ Grove” to historian,
Wilbur Siebert, in an 1897 interview
about her Undergound Railroad
journeys. She also noted other
Delaware place names and key people.
This byway route visits many of those
sites. Willow Grove Road enters the
state at Sandtown and travels through
Willow Grove, where Quaker
abolitionist Henry Cowgill and his family,
and free black Underground Railroad
conductor Samuel D. Burris lived. Across
Willow Grove Road, abolitionist Henry
Cowgill housed freedom seekers at his
farm, according to oral tradition.
From this locale, fugitives could have
chosen to venture to Camden, where
free blacks Abraham Gibbs, and
brothers Nathaniel and William Brinkley,
joined forces to carry them further
north. The travelers’ movements varied,
but likely included pathways near and
through Dover, Smyrna, Blackbird,
Odessa, New Castle and Wilmington.
The Mason-Dixon Line was surveyed by
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon by
1767 to resolve a colonial border
dispute. It was not made to separate
states where slavery was illegal from
those where it was legal."
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visit link)
TEXT on the historical marker:
Samuel D. Burris, a free African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad resided in the Willow Grove area during the 1840s. He helped enslaved people find their pathway to freedom in Philadelphia. Caught for aiding and abetting runaway slaves in 1847, Burris was tried and convicted in the Kent County Court of General Sessions. He was imprisoned in accordance with the law and sold into servitude. Purchased with abolitionist funds, he was taken to Philadelphia. The family moved to San Francisco shortly after California was admitted as a free state. He continued to help others gain their freedom by raising funds for the cause until his death in 1863.