Jon Musgrave

Several miles from where I live, in the eastern part of the state near the tiny town of Equality, Illinois, there sits a rather nondescript ancient house, far back from the road. It's been known as the Old Slave House for as long as I can remember, and up until 1996 it was open to the public for touring and is on the list of historic places in this state. The story is that the man who built the place, John Hart Crenshaw, owner of the nearby salt mines, made his fortune not only from the mining of salt, but from the horrible business of human trafficking and slave breeding. One of the main stops on the "reverse Underground Railroad," the Crenshaw place was notorious in local legend and struck fear in the hearts of black people throughout the southern states nearby from tales of kidnapping and torture. It's supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Illinois, and having visited it once in the early 1990's I can attest to that. The upstairs attic region is the site of the atrocities, where Crenshaw kept black females chained in tiny cubicles and one or two black men in cages, using them to breed children to be sold into slavery to line his pockets. Walking into that attic is like walking into a freezer, even on the hottest July day, and the pain and suffering that those poor souls endured in that place is a tangible thing even now. Paranormal specialists refer to such a thing as an "imprint," a place where the emotional and physical pain suffered was so intense that it remains for centuries after the victims are dead and gone. I couldn't go up there. Some may not be as sensitive to such things as I am, but nearly everybody I've ever talked to about that place said it gave them "the creeps."

Well, this book is the history of that house and the horrors it contained. I'll be honest with you and tell you that I skimmed through a lot of it (the damn thing is huge -- over 600 pages -- and has three appedices!) on the history of salt mining in Illinois (who cares?) and some of the mundane history of the Crenshaw family. But the story of the black man known as "Uncle Bob" was riveting. Six feet, five inches tall and weighing 245 in his prime, Bob was of Mandingo descent. During the years that he was held by John Crenshaw in "the breeding room" on the third floor, he fathered 300 children. Later, he fought for the South during the Civil War until he was freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. He entered the Elgin State Hospital for Veterans in 1940 at the age of 105 and resided there until his death in 1949 at the age of 114, and gave many interviews during the 1930s about his years in the house known then as Hickory Hill. This book was an eye opener for me, gave me chills at times, and made me marvel at the cruelty of the human animal. It was slow and draggy (a lot) but still very much worth the read.… (mehr)