AfriGeneas States Research Forum
[WI] The Freedmen of Wisconsin
From Alabama to Wisconsin..a journey in search of Freedom
Dec 27, 2013
In the summer of 1862, a 31-year-old slave named Samuel Mathews and his family freed themselves by escaping from their plantation in Franklin County, Ala. With the army of Union Gen. William Rosecrans nearby, local Confederates had been talking of impressing Mathews into service as a cook. Unwilling to serve the rebel army, Samuel, his 25-year-old wife, Sarah, their 8-year-old son, Richard, and their 7-year-old daughter, Ellen, snuck away to a Union Army camp in nearby Tuscumbia, in the northwest corner of the state. But it was only the first step in their journey to freedom, which would last eight months and finish 700 miles north in the unlikely locale of rural Dodge County, Wis.