CAROLINE QUARLLS 1842 JOURNEY ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

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As Told by Her "Conductor," Lyman Goodnow
Caroline Quarlls, a 16-year-old fugitive slave from St. Louis, Missouri, was the first passenger on Wisconsin's "Underground Railroad" in 1842. While it is not clear that she ever "stepped foot" in Burlington, she was hidden on farms just outside Burlington in Spring Prairie township and was met and helped by several Spring Prairie and Burlington citizens, including Solomon Dwinnell, Josiah O. Puffer, George and Moses Arms, and Richard Chenery, of Spring Prairie, and Dr. Edward G. Dyer, of Burlington. Palmer Gardner, a resident of the Spring Prairie area adjacent to Burlington known as Gardner's Prairie, who later moved to Burlington, is also reported to have sheltered Quarlls in his home.
The following account of Quarlls' 1842 Underground Railroad journey appeared in The History of Waukesha County, Wisconsin. (Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1880, pages 458 - 466). It was written by her "conductor," Lyman Goodnow, of Waukesha (earlier known as Prairieville).
With bounty hunters closing in, Goodnow and Quarlls traveled by horse and wagon from the Prairieville area into the Spring Prairie area near Burlington, where she was hidden for several days, before they resumed their journey, by horse and buggy, through Illinois and Indiana, and into Michigan, where Caroline was taken across the Detroit River to Sandwich, Ontario, Canada, where she lived the rest of her life..
Similar accounts of Quarlls' journey -- each a version of Goodnow's account -- have appeared in other sources, including The Olin Album, 1893, by Chauncey C. Olin (Indianapolis: Baker Randolph Co., 1893, pages XXIII - XLI).

NOTECaroline's last name has been spelled various ways in different sources. Quarlls is the spelling Caroline used in an April 23, 1880, letter she wrote to Lyman Goodnow (which appears later in this article). It is also the spelling used in her death certificate.
In the 1880 letter, Caroline states that her father's name was Robert Prior Quarlls. Other sources, including censuses from 1810 and 1820, show Robert Quarles. The copies of those censuses available on the internet did not include any "Quarlls," "Quarrels," or "Quarrells."
"Quarlls" is also the spelling used by the Quarlls-Watkins Heritage Project , a family history organization started by Kimberly Simmons, a great great great granddaughter of Caroline Quarlls Watkins. The Project is a National Program Partner with the U.S. National Park Service's Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

FIRST UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
By far the larger portion of the people of the present day have no correct idea of what meaning was intended to be conveyed by the term "underground railroad," as it was used in the early days of active Abolitionism. Very many think it was literally a railway for the passage of locomotives and cars beneath the surface of the earth, and have inquired where the ruins of one could be seen. For the purpose of properly explaining a term familiar to all Waukesha from thirty-five to thirty-seven years ago, if for no other reason, an extended account of how passengers traveled by that famous line might properly be given in this work; but there are still more weighty reasons for historically preserving such an account, as the first underground railroad established in Wisconsin had Waukesha for its northern terminus; was established by Lyman Goodnow, its first conductor, a Waukesha man, with some help from his neighbors, and the first passenger was Caroline Quarlls, whom he safely conducted by this line from Waukesha to Canada. Mr. Goodnow, still a resident of Waukesha, and whose mind and body are strong and active, tells the story substantially as follows:
"There probably was never more excitement in old Prairieville than during the search for, and escape of Caroline, a fugitive slave girl from St. Louis. In fact the whole county—then Milwaukee, was in a fermentation, and the leading citizens of the day, many of whom afterward became prominent in the State and nation, were the chief actors in that long-to-be-remembered drama of reality.
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