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‘If these walls could talk…’ A house, a former slave and a story

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – The Levi Coffin house in Fountain City is known for being a stop along the underground railroad.

Coffin and his wife Catharine worked alongside other whites, and some blacks to help slaves escape for years.

One of the blacks that helped others escape was William Bush.

24-Hour News 8 sat down with his great-great granddaughter, Eileen Baker-Wall, to talk family history.

“If these walls could talk, then I could have all those pieces of history that I don’t have right now,” said Baker-Wall. “So that’s what it is, that’s what this house means for me.”

Baker-Wall still searches for answers from the past. From stories that were not written down, just whispered through generations.

“Some of the stories say that he came here and he actually helped Levi Coffin in the underground railroad,” said Baker-Wall.

“He” is her great-great grandfather William Bush, a blacksmith, who made and wore the shoes she holds with care. He was said to have helped runaway slaves to safety. It was a mission that led him to the Coffin house.

“Nothing was written down, it was just what one generation told the next generation,” said Baker-Wall.

Levi and Catharine Coffin were north Carolina Quakers, who were against slavery. They moved to Indiana in 1826, and seemed to have built their third home, which is now the historic “Coffin House,” to help freedom seekers.

“We are in what we call the garret room,” Janice points out. “And the little door here, leads to an area that is about 4 feet deep but it does go the entire length of the room. And Levi talks about hiding them (slaves)  in the garret.”

“I can’t imagine the risk of both the black and the white communities coming together to do something that courageous,” marvels Baker-Wall. “I just can’t imagine it. I’m not sure that I could have. I’m not sure I could have done what they did.”

Extra exits, and an indoor spring in the basement in the Coffin house, so that extra water needed in the house, wouldn’t signal any neighbors that the Coffins might be harboring runaway slaves.

“If that hadn’t happened,” questions Baker-Wall, “where with this country be? Where would we be?”

Baker-Wall volunteers at the coffin house, grounded in her family connection. Janice McGuire, a volunteer and main point of contact for the site, is also connected to the history in these walls, her ancestors were Quakers.

“So to have a building like this that has been kept in such original condition to be able to tell the story is pretty special,” said McGuire.

An almost overwhelming connection for Baker-Wall, a place of peace and pride in a past she didn’t live to see, but one she knows in her soul.

“It feels very, very, good. It’s something that I didn’t know as a child. That my people helped our people get to freedom, it feels very, very, good,” said Baker-Wall.

McGuire says, “As I tell people all the time, this is not just our town’s history or our state’s history, but this is our national history.”

“Precious,” said Baker-Wall, “Freedom is so precious, and I don’t think we today, understand what that freedom from bondage. Just that step, just the freedom from bondage, what opportunity it gave us.”

Baker-Wall made history herself, by becoming the first black female in administration at the Richmond high school in 1978, a job she said was extremely difficult for many reasons.

During her time in education she worked for a few different schools, as a teacher and at one point a principal.

As for the Levi Coffin house, the National Historic Landmark is listed in the top 25 historic sites to visit in the United States.

For more information click here.