John Creighton's Long UGRR Tour

In "John Creighton's UGRR Tour," which was conducted in November 2014, the year before his death, the uninitiated will get a chance to experience a captivating tour in Dorchester County, Maryland where John shares his bottomless knowledge and insights with Don and Vivian Papson, Plattsburgh, NY residents and co-founders of the North Star Underground Railroad Museum at Ausable Chasm, which is a Network to Freedom site.

  • Robin Michel Caudell
    Director
  • Robin Michel Caudell
    Writer
  • Robin Michel Caudell
    Producer
  • John Creighton
    Key Cast
  • Don Papson
    Key Cast
  • Vivian Papson
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    12 minutes 52 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    May 1, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    300 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, iPhone 5
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 25th Silver Jubilee Film Festival National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom
    Church Creek
    July 21, 2023
    North American Premiere
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Robin Michel Caudell

Born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Robin Michel Caudell, holds a BS in Journalism, from the University of Maryland at College Park, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College.
An award-winning Staff Writer at the Press-Republican and a U.S. Air Force Veteran, she is the 2023 Veterans Writing Award Winner for Black Heel Strings: A Choptank Memoir, which will be published by Syracuse University Press in Spring 2025.
Currently, Robin is the director/executive producer/screenwriter for “Witness Tree at Union Road,” a speculative documentary in pre-production about a Dutch-American family and its evolution from enslaver, abolitionist, to Union Army soldier KIA in the Civil War. The film is a collaboration with Skidmore College and the North Star Underground Railroad Historical Association.
Robin is an alum of Cave Canem, Gotham Writers Workshop, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

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Director Statement

In "John Creighton's UGRR Tour," which was conducted in November 2014, the year before his death, the uninitiated will get a chance to experience a captivating tour where John shares his bottomless knowledge and insights with Don and Vivian Papson, Plattsburgh, NY residents and co-founders of the North Star Underground Railroad Museum at Ausable Chasm, which is a Network to Freedom site.

Don Papson and Tom Calarco co-authored "Secret Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City: Sydney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon and the Record of Fugitives," which gave new information about Harriet Tubman's  December 1854 rescue from Maryland's Eastern Shore that included her brothers, Henry, Ben and Robert, who took aliases with a Stewart surname.

John's daylong tour starts on the shores of the Choptank River in Cambridge, Dorchester Co., and ends at sunset along the Choptank in Preston, Caroline, Co. near Anthony Thompson's 19th century plantation down Poplar Neck.

In this 12:53 short, John recounts the sale of Kessiah Bowley, her purchase by her husband, John Bowley, a free Black shipbuilder and blacksmith, and Kessiah's subsequent maritime escape, which "Secret Lives," sheds new light on. This is Harriet Tubman's first documented rescue, less than two years after her own escape in 1849, of her sister Linah's daughter. Enslaver Edward Brodess sold Linah, Mariah Ritty and Soph to the deep South. John explores the psychological impact on Harriet Tubman of seeing her sisters sold and never seen again.

He goes deep in the weeds sorting the Stewarts, pro-slavery and anti-slavery, and their impact on Harriet Tubman and her kin. The film concludes at Joseph Stewart's Canal, and John describes the timber and shipbuilding activities of John Stewart and Anthony Thompson, and the logic behind President Barack Obama's designation of the Harriet Tubman National Monument and the importance of Jacob Jackson in Harriet Tubman lore.

John, Don and Vivian were brought together by Robin Michel Caudell, a Caroline County Native, an award-winning journalist at the Plattsburgh Press-Republican, and a paternal descendant of enslaved BIPOC at Wye House, Talbot County. On her maternal side, Robin descends from a 19th century mariner in Caroline County.
Beyond my education, professional expertise and decades long UGRR/genealogical research on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I possess one attribute that other candidates will not: I wrote the letter to National Park Service Project Managers Barbara Mackey and Barbara Tagger to establish the Harriet Tubman National Memorial at Church Creek.
Summer Vacation 2006. Cambridge Empowerment Center. Pine Street. By chance, Dorchester County Historian John Creighton had invited me to attend a meeting of local/regional stakeholders, who were tasked to articulate why Harriet Ross Tubman’s native place should receive such a designation. At the room’s rear, I ripped a big sheet of paper from a roll and wrote down why.