This railroad went through the Valley

The Alle-Kiski Valley played a role in the Underground Railroad, a system of safe houses, or stations, for runaway slaves between the 1830 and 1860s. Perhaps as many at 100,000 slaves might have used the network to escape bondage in the South.

Brookland Covenanter Church, Allegheny Township, aided one of the most famous conductors, Harriet Tubman, who was called the "Moses of her People."

One slave named Billy Shafer came from Covenanter Reformed Presbyterian Church in Greensburg to Allegheny Township, and

prominent members of the Brookland church and community helped Shafer make it to the township.

But he couldn't make it any farther north than the Rev. Robert Reed's home. Shafer died in the arms of the newlywed minister's wife, Mary Walkinshaw Reed, in 1854.

On May 28, 2000, a cemetery marker was dedicated to Shafer.

Another house near the United Presbyterian Church in Allegheny Township also served as a safe house for escaped slaves. Some who couldn't survive the journey were buried in unmarked graves at a house there.

Freeport also boasts a 1700s home connected to the railroad.

Arnold resident, Georgetta Holloway, 80, is the granddaughter of Paul Simpson, who traveled the railroad from Bristol, Va. Although she doesn't know her great-grandparents' names, she knows Simpson was the son of a Madagascar slave and an English plantation owner.

Simpson's father wanted to marry his lover after President Abraham Lincoln declared all slaves in the Confederate states free in 1863. But Simpson's grandfather threatened to sell the woman before his son married her. Simpson's father packed a bag for him and his brother and told them, "Go to Pennsylvania, and don't look back."

Holloway estimates the man was about 10 years old when he journeyed north and settled in Smithton, Pa.