Rural Kentucky site among 31 additions to National Underground Railroad Network

Aaron Mudd, Lexington Herald-Leader on May 7, 2025

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A historic Kentucky site has joined the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program, which commemorates the stories of people who freed themselves or were helped by others to escape enslavement.

The site, located in rural Greenup County near the present-day community of Lynn, is the place where, on Aug. 14, 1829, 58 enslaved people revolted as they were being forcibly marched to Mississippi.

The group killed two of their traffickers before 16 of them attempted to escape, though all were later recaptured, a May 1 National Park Service press release states.

A history of the event written by Shawnee State University Professor Andrew Feight notes five members of the group were later executed near the Greenup County courthouse.

It was a time in American history during which thousands of Black people were being sold “down-river” to the new cotton plantations of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, Feight writes.

Feight helped secure the NPS listing by directing research and outreach with Greenup in Greenup County, he told the Herald-Leader in an email Monday. The work is part of the broader Appalachian Freedom Initiative, which spans nine counties across Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia and seeks to locate and document Underground Railroad sites in the region.

The initiative is currently working to create a regional tour of sites similar to Greenup County’s, a press release from the group states.

“Our research is recovering important lost chapters of local history that will transform our understanding of the past and help draw interest and visitors to the region,” Feight said in the release.

Marlitta Perkins, an outreach specialist for the project, wrote the Network of Freedom application.

“It is an honor and a privilege that I have been given this opportunity to uncover this mostly forgotten part of Kentucky history. It illuminates both the struggle for freedom endured by enslaved individuals and the remarkable courage and resilience they demonstrated,” Perkins said in the Appalachian Freedom Initiative release.

A site’s inclusion in the NPS Network to Freedom means it’s able to benefit from grants through the program, as well as receive help with historic preservation, including caring for artifacts and developing interpretive tours and exhibits.

What happened in Greenup County Aug. 14, 1829?

As Feight writes, one account comes from Julius A. Bingham, “the sole proprietor, editor and printer” of the Western Times newspaper of Portsmouth, Ohio, which reported the first news of the uprising.

The article, titled “Affray and Murder,” quickly spread. It was later picked up by David Walker, whom Feight describes as one of the most radical abolitionists of the age. Walker later included the story in his famous pamphlet “Walker’s Appeal.”

The account reported by the Portsmouth Western Times tells of a slaver named James Gordon, who bought about 60 enslaved Black people in Maryland with plans to take them to Mississippi.

The men were hand-cuffed and chained together, but escaped their chains with the help of a file. At about 8 a.m., while the party was leaving Greenup County, two men dropped their shackles and a fight broke out. A man named Petit, in charge of driving the wagon, rushed in with a whip before he was hit in the back of the head with a club by another man and killed.

Gordon was then seized and shot twice with a pistol, with both shots grazing his head. He was then beaten and left for dead, but ultimately survived, later escaping to a plantation on a horse.

The group took $2,400 from Gordon’s trunk and 16 of their members and took to the woods to escape. They were ultimately recaptured, however.

Seven men and one woman were put on trial in Greenup County. While they were initially termed the “Greenup Eight,” it was ultimately five men who were executed by hanging, Feight writes. Each met their fate with “firmness and resignation,” and one man shouted several times “Death! Death, any time, in preference to slavery!”