A recent chance discovery by professor David Maas of Wheaton College has awakened interest in Wheaton’s abolitionist roots, and suggests the school might have harbored runaway slaves.

While doing unrelated research two months ago for his book on Wheaton College students who fought in the Civil War, Maas stumbled across a passage written by former student Ezra Cook.   

Because many of the state of Illinois’ archives have been scanned and posted online, Maas was able to get information about Cook, such as the color of his hair, how tall he was and how old he was when he signed up to fight in the Civil War. But one key tidbit he found was the regiment in which Cook fought.

Knowing that many regiments published books containing its soldiers’ stories after the war, Maas did a simple Google search for Cook’s regiment.

He found a book of collected anecdotes by the regiment’s members did exist. Someone had scanned it and published it online.

The statement, found on page 490 of “The History of the Thirty-Ninth regiment Illinois Volunteer Veteran Infantry,” is in a short autobiography Cook wrote for the book. Cook writes that he and his two sisters attended Wheaton College, “which had a national reputation as an Abolitionist school in an Abolitionist town. So strong was public sentiment that runaway slaves were perfectly safe in the College building, even when no attempt was made to conceal their presence, which was well known to the United States Marshal stationed there.”

Until then, there were only rumors and word-of-mouth about runaway slaves being harbored at Wheaton College.

“It just about knocked my socks off,” Maas said.

The statement is almost too good to be true, he said. And it goes on to say even more. Cook’s next sentence: “With hundreds of others, I have seen and talked with such fugitives in the college chapel. Of course, they soon took a night train, well guarded to the next station of the U.G.R.R.” Cook actually mentions the underground railroad.

Alberta Adamson, president of the Wheaton Historic Preservation Council, said the city was founded by abolitionists, the same people who brought Wheaton College’s precursor, the Illinois Institute, to the city.

“DuPage County was sort of known as an abolitionist county. We even had a newspaper called the Wheaton Flag that was (an) abolitionist newspaper,” Adamson said.

As illuminating as Cook’s brief account is, Maas was slightly suspicious. He asked himself, if hundreds of students witnessed runaway slaves as Cook describes, why are there no other accounts?

Maas said he wants to take Cook’s word for what it is, but he would feel better if he could find at least one other witness.

On the other hand, there is an argument for believing Cook. Maas said Cook mentioned he saw runaway slaves at the college, “with hundreds of others.” Cook also was a Christian and the son of a preacher.

“They’re not going to lie,” Maas said.

There is also the fact that the school’s president Jonathon Blanchard was a well-known abolitionist. Maas said Cook’s wife — who was Blanchard’s daughter — also is known to have said runaway slaves were harbored at the college.

Adamson is familiar with Maas’ find, but, she also is skeptical.

“Well, it’s somebody’s writing in a book. It could be true, it might not be true,” she said. “The tricky part is people didn’t document that they were helping on the underground railroad, because it was against the law. So you just did it, and you kept it a secret.”