McKeela Wiley performs a freedom dance for a group of visitors to Brookfield Center who were on a tour of sites that were on the Underground Railroad.
Mercer County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Farrell Juneteenth Celebration stopped in Brookfield Center June 13 to note the homes connected to the Underground Railroad – the network of homes and businesses that sheltered slaves escaping to freedom.
There are at least four homes in the center with known or suspected ties to the Underground Railroad. Brookfield Historical Commission President Barbara Stevens pointed out the homes to a crowd of about 35 people. Those buildings are the Lane Family Funeral Homes-Madasz Chapel; the Obermiyer building across Route 7 from the funeral home; the Paul and Lisa Ferm home next to the Obermiyer building; and Briceland Funeral Home.
Stevens also showed participants a child’s shoe and a shackle found in a tunnel in the basement of the Obermiyer building that were believed to have come from escaping slaves.
Reenactors from Greater Pentecostal House of Prayer in Farrell performed, including Sherry Chambers, who portrayed Harriet Tubman, who is credited with bringing dozens of former slaves to freedom, and Mckeela Wiley, who performed a freedom dance.
Peggy Mazyck, director of the visitor’s bureau, said the tour also stopped at the Gibson House in Jamestown; a cemetery in Stoneboro where blacks who lived in Liberia are buried; Mercer for a tour of safe houses; and Pandenarium, a former community of former slaves.
