Borough reporter Erin Clarke continues our look at the city's place in the Underground Railroad with a visit to a once heavily traveled route to freedom in the Bronx.
Thousands travel the Bronx's Third Avenue, mostly to visit its many shops. But in the 1800s it also carried runaway slaves to freedom. It began at what was then the Harlem Bridge - on the site of today's 3rd Avenue Bridge.
Freedom seekers then trekked about a half mile north to their first stop.
"On 143rd Street and 3rd Avenue there was a villa owned by a lawyer. And in the basement of his villa was a room he had put in there, a secret room that he could hide them," explained Lloyd Ultan, a Bronx borough historian.
From there, escaped slaves continued up Third Avenue, until just above 163rd Street, and then the rest of the way up Boston Road to the Mapes Farm. Mapes Avenue in West Farms is named after the prominent family.
"Daniel Mapes was a very rabid abolitionist," Ultan said.
But it was the women of the family who secretly transported fugitive slaves by wagon.
"They covered the people with blankets or tarpolines or some sort of cover. They traveled only by night and also without lanterns or any other type of illumination so nobody could see them," Ultan said.
Helped by those brave individuals many slaves continued their trip up through what is now the Bronx Zoo to New Rochelle and on to freedom in New England.
Not much is known about these people though. Since they were breaking the Fugitive Slave Act, few records were kept. The borough historian gets information in random nuggets, like a letter a Mapes descendant called saying he found.
"His grandmother who was one of those women in the Mapes family who was involved in the Underground Railroad detailing the whole method by which it was done," Ultan recalled.
It's these unknown stories that shed a light on the Bronx's role in African American history.