By Signe K. Skinion

On top of Hickory Hill near Equality a black mark on Illinois history stands closed for the season, but reminds us there is more to the past of Little Egypt than most people want to remember.

The Crenshaw House, more commonly known as the Old Slave House, was built in 1838 and is the only known place in Illinois where African-Americans were kept as slaves before, during and after the Civil War.

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John Hart Crenshaw, who built the house, went to work in the area salt refinery around 1811. After many years of his work in the mines, he found a way to make more money. Illinois began allowing employers to lease slaves from the South to work the mines, and Crenshaw saw his chance by getting slaves to work for him, and not letting them go.

Ron Nelson, a Southern Illinois historian, said the salt mines Crenshaw had control over were prosperous and the slaves were cheap for the work they did.

In order for the work to be done, Illinois made an exemption to have slaves work the mines, Nelson said. A slave, or an indentured servant as most people called them at the time, usually had to put their mark on a sheet of paper signing their bodies for 99 years of work for $1. Crenshaw ended up having more indentured servants than anyone else in the state.

Nelson said there are a lot of stories about the Old Slave House, but most of the truth about the house is ignored or hidden by people because of its disgraceful past.

These stories of the house have been taken the wrong way, Nelson said. There are some people that want to say the house was used for the Underground Railroad near the end of Crenshaw’s life, but it was not. This house was an enslavement place, not a free place. Crenshaw’s house was a place of slavery surrounded by a sea of emancipators.

Nelson said Crenshaw was known for breeding, kidnapping and selling free slaves back into slavery.

The Crenshaw issue was like the abortion issue of today, Nelson said. Many people were anti-slavery, but were anti-black. They wanted slaves to be free, but they didn’t want them in Illinois.

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One story associated with the house is of a man named Uncle Bob, whom Crenshaw used to sire more children. Supposedly this man fathered around 300 children. Nelson said he believes this story.

There were a lot of children listed on Crenshaw’s property, somewhere around 30 or more, Nelson said. Where did these kids come from? There have always been stories of mulatto children on plantations, and most of them had their master as their father. I don’t know if that is the case with Crenshaw. I do know there were a lot of children on the property though. That’s in the history books.

James Ralph, a Southern Illinois historian, said it is difficult to prove there were slaves at the Crenshaw House because of the power the man held at the time.

People who knew Crenshaw, and the records kept, have never said he kept slaves in the house, Ralph said. There was a report once of someone seeing slaves in the house, but there is no more mention of it.

However, the third floor of the house holds shackles, and a whipping post. There are small cubicles along the hallway of the third floor and there were bars on the windows.

It (the third floor) looks like a place for keeping zoo animals, but it wasn’t. It was used for humans, Nelson said.

It is even said that President Abraham Lincoln spent a night at the Crenshaw House.

Crenshaw was the most important and political person in this part of the state and I don’t doubt Lincoln went to him for support, Nelson said. At one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln was charged with waffling both sides of the slavery fence. But the bottom line is Lincoln did it, against his cronies advice. He freed the slaves and he was the great emancipator.

The Old Slave House is closed for the season, but will be open again in May.