Until she passed away at age 94 of natural causes Martha Wetzel was in the people’s business. Long before blogging was even a gleam on some programmer’s computer monitor Martha was a citizen’s watchdog of local government affairs. When she thought it necessary she’d be at the school board meeting climbing down their case or writing a letter to the editor blistering the park district or walking through snow drifts, in her mid-70s, to get signatures for a petition in an attempt to hold the library board accountable to the taxpayers.
She won a seat on the Sycamore city council after the library controversy. She resigned the seat before her term was up.
She would not compromise.
I learned that first hand while working with her on a project to commemorate the Underground Railroad era. The house she grew up in was once used by a church that was heavily involved in aiding enslaved blacks in their attempts to escape to freedom. The house had tunnel like structures extending from the basement that had two sets of walls with space in between. Martha did a ton of research on her old house. More than anyone else. She and any other researcher could not connect the dot that would empirically prove the house was ever actually used as an Underground Railroad station. She would not allow anyone to promote the house as an Underground Railroad station.
Martha served as a teacher for more than 40 years. She served in many capacities as a citizen her entire life. In death her body was donated to the University of Iowa College of Medicine.
She served long and well and will be missed.
Click Here To Submit A News Tip Or Story
1 Comment
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
She will be missed.
If every house claimed to be an Underground Railroad house really was one, I think there would be more houses than what originally existed at the time. Good for her–history must be accurate and not based on urban legends.
Older houses had tunnels, more for cold storage, sometimes as way to get to the outhouse or other outbuildings without having to be outdoors as much. Just because a house has tunnels does not automatically make it an Underground Railroad house.
The trouble with documenting Underground Railroad houses is that if folks really were involved, they were not going to write it down. But, a lot of information can be found on a dirt floor of a tunnel and it then becomes the job of an archaeologist, and not a historian.