In-Person: The Underground Railroad Station in Ridgefield, with Jack Sanders

Uncle Ned and Aunt Betsey Armstrong were a popular African American couple who ran a “station” on the Underground Railroad in Ridgebury near the top of a hill still today called Ned’s Mountain.

Two of their Ridgefield-born grandchildren went on to fight slavery via the Civil War, and one became among the last victims of the conflict.

Uncle Ned was “a man who devoted a life to an idea, the freedom of his colored brothers of the South,” said an 1879 article in The New York Tribune. “So well did he plan and execute that, to this day, … near neighbors only knew ‘Uncle Ned’ and ‘Aunt Betsey’ as good, kind colored people, handy to have around to assist with the house or farm work.”

An editor of The Ridgefield Press for 45 years, Jack Sanders has written many articles and columns about the town’s history, as well as four books. His website, RidgefieldHistory.com, has a large collection of his writings on Ridgefield’s place names 7,500 followers. Sanders has also written books on natural history, including The Secrets of Wildflowers, and has served as a consultant and writer for the Ridgefield Historical Society. He and his wife, Sally, also a newspaper editor, live in a late 1700s house in the village of Ridgefield and have two grown sons.

This program is part of the Library’s Understanding Race initiative, supported in part by the Friends of the Ridgefield Library.

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