Was Baraboo a Stop on the Underground Railroad?

by Paul Wolter

In the fall of 1856 Baraboo pioneer James A. Maxwell finished a grand house on the outskirts of Baraboo just in time for the marriage of his daughter Emma to Mr. H. H. Potter.  The house was built of over-sized locally-made bricks and decorated with Gothic Revival style details such as gingerbread woodwork along the eaves and wooden scrollwork cresting on the porch roof.  Maxwell was a transplant from Massachusetts and had come to the Baraboo valley from south eastern Wisconsin in the mid-1840s to build a dam across the Baraboo River to provide water power for a sawmill, grist mill and other operations in partnership with his father who was known as Colonel James Maxwell. The Maxwells also built the first store on the square in downtown Baraboo and became very successful.

By the mid-1850s James A. Maxwell was ready to show his success by building one of the area’s largest houses. He experimented by having the house built of bricks which were hollow inside and made out of sand and lime. The house had spacious parlors with glass front bookcases, several fireplaces and a dining room that could reportedly seat over 30 people. There was also a large basement to the house which may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. The one clue to this possible connection comes from a 1907 article published in the Baraboo Republic when the house was being demolished. (It seems those experimental bricks did not stand the test of time and by the time the house was only fifty years old it was crumbling.) The paper stated,

“There is a bit of interesting history connected with the old house:  During the Civil war Col. Maxwell, who was ever the friend of the slaves well as others who were downtrodden, harbored fugitive slaves in the spacious cellar.  John Duckins, an honored colored man, was a fugitive who lived with the Maxwells and Hills until the home was broken up. Before the railroad came through, in the early '70's the space between the Maxwell and Potter places was a dense forest, wild as nature made it.”

By the start of the Civil War James A. Maxwell had already moved his family west to Colorado. His father, Colonel Maxwell had also moved out of Baraboo before the Civil War but returned about 1862 and lived in his son’s house. If the article is true, then Colonel Maxwell somehow became involved in harboring fugitive enslaved people in Baraboo with John Duckens being one of them. Where they came from or where they went to may never be known. The Maxwell House was located near Lake Street on Baraboo’s south side between Maxwell Street and Mulberry Street.