Good Morning! Thanks Pip for all you do!
Last Wednesday, I left for Des Moines, Iowa, USA, at 4:30 am to drive 5 hours to meet with David Holmgren of the Iowa Historical Society! He is retired, and volunteers a few days a week, for a few hours a day, to work on a project called the Iowa Freedom Trail project, which for the past 20 years have been collecting information on any one connected with the UGGR (underground railroad) in Iowa.
Meet David:
Now, all the file cabinets you see in the picture are 20 years worth of research, mainly by volunteers like David. Now he is the only one working on it. I asked him are these files on line? Can I access them. He said NO! They have made pdf files of each person profiled, but one would have to email him and ask for a specific person, then they would email the pdf information sheets they have on file.
I asked him, what happens to all these files when you retire? Who carries on? "I don't know!" was his reply.
I asked him about Thomas Mitchell and does he have a file on him! I was curious because my great great grandfather, Ira Dillingham Draper was a station master on the UGRR and lived close to him, even naming a son Thomas Mitchell Draper! There had to be a connection, and yes there was! A big one!
Turns out both my gg grandfather and Thomas Mitchell lived about a mile apart, and both were station masters on the UGRR at the same time.
I told him my gg grandfather, Ira, had a bounty put on him, wanted "Dead or Alive", for his activities on the UGRR, so he took his family and fled to Nebraska! I was told by my historians it was the slave owners in Missouri that sent the bounty hunters. David stopped me and said "That is probably incorrect!" In 1864, the confederacy was falling apart and the Iowa militia groups had grown very strong, so bounty hunters trying to reach the middle of Iowa would be extremely difficult.
Well, who wanted him killed? David replied, "Well the local sheriff and government officials did not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act! They would have helped your gg grandfather! It was probably the Knights of the Golden Circle that wanted him dead!
I have never heard of them! They were very active in the Des Moines area, and very secret, and probably "double agents" that ratted out my gg grandfather!
When I got home, I fell asleep watching YouTube videos on who they were and what they did! At any rate, I will now have to make edits to the profile of Ira, and explain who were after Ira Draper!
After I left, I visited the area my grandfaher was supposed to have lived, just south of Mitchellville, then headed down to cemeteries where the rest of my gg grand uncles and aunts and cousins are buried! Now I have original pictures I can add to their profiles.
I didn't expect the feelings of emotions that came over me as I visited them! I never knew them or what they did in their lives. But still I had to wipe the tears away as I took pictures! 
My gg grand uncle and aunt, William and Nancy (Means) Draper who probably cared for Ira's farm when they fled to Nebraska. More Draper burials in the background!
