Amish Country - Day 2

Next morning, we decided to head to the Christiana Museum of the Underground Railroad.  While we didn't know much about it, it sounded interesting.  We love to visit little local museums. The Christiana Museum is a most intriguing place, with a curator (using the term loosely) who gave us a fascinating account of a little known incident involving the Fugitive Slave Act.

Zerchner Hotel.  A stop on the Underground Railroad in Christiana, PA.

In 1851, it was legal for a Southern slave owner to go into the non-slave states and retrieve their "property."  So, for a slave in the South who managed to escape and get across the Mason Dixon line, freedom was not guaranteed.  In fact the Fugitive Slave Law permitted the US Marshals to deputize local non-slave-owning Northerners to help the Southerners capture escaped slaves.  This was a major reason why escaped slaves went to Canada instead of staying in the North.

This man tells a great narrative

So, with all that going on, it is no wonder there were "incidents" all over the North border states when the slave "property" was apprehended.  The Christiana Riot (Rebellion?) is one of the better documented occurrences.

When we left the museum around 2:00, we decided to stop and pick up some real Pennsylvania Dutch scrapple (Linda loves it) and then head straight back to the garage. 

They had told us the day before that the parts would arrive around noon, and we figured we could be on our way by 3:00 at the latest.  Arrghhh.  When we got back to Andersons, they said the parts had JUST ARRIVED.  As is turned out, they did not start the repair until about 3:30, and Linda was a little frantic that they would not be done on time.  However, not to worry.  The brakes were fixed and we were on our way by 4:30.

We headed straight to a nice campground just down the road, and spent the remainder of the day just kicking back:  watching TV, surfing the 'net, having a couple of beers, and planning the next day's trip to our destination in Upstate New York, near Syracuse.