The Underground Railroad was the name used to refer to a group of people who were against slavery and who helped runaway slaves travel to safe places, like Canada, where slavery was prohibited. The network was formed in the early 1800s and by 1850, one estimate is that 100,000 slaves had escaped.

A religious group called Quakers (or Society of Friends) was very involved in the Underground Railroad. Many runaway slaves who were trying to get to Canada came through Maine. In Windham there was a good sized settlement of Quakers, and some of them hid runaways in their homes, barns or in the orchards for a day at a time until they moved on to another safe place, on their way to Canada. Travel was often by rivers – and Maine has a lot of them.

The family that first settled in the “Quaker” area of Windham was named Pope and so the settlement was called Popeville. In the early 1900s, an elderly lady named Phoebe Pope was interviewed by a Portland newspaper and told what she remembered about the Underground Railroad. The house she lived in is still standing, a two-story brick house, now painted white, on Pope Road. Phoebe Pope recalled runaway slaves were hidden in the orchard. (A copy of the newspaper article is in the archives of Windham Historical Society.)

Slavery was legal in the days before the Civil War. People who helped hide runaway slaves were going against the law so all these activities had to be kept secret, which is why they used the term “underground.” People who hid slaves could be fined thousands of dollars for breaking the law, but many people did not think slavery was a good thing and they continued to help.

There are quite a few houses in Windham that are said to have secret rooms in the cellar, which might have been used to hide runaways. This is very difficult to prove, and to date, Phoebe Pope’s reminiscences are the only definite record.