On June 15, 2026, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear posthumously granted pardons to 43 people. They were men and women, young and old, both Black and White, who were convicted and imprisoned for the crime of “harboring, aiding or enticing Black slaves to escape enslavement.” Among those pardoned was Elijah Anderson, a Free Black Virginian whose efforts as an Underground Railroad “conductor” had a huge impact here in Boone County.
Anderson, who relocated from Madison to Lawrenceburg, Indiana in 1847, was known to lead unusually large groups of people to freedom. Although he risked attracting attention, the method seemed to work. He claimed to have helped over 1,000 people escape enslavement, 800 of those after 1850, a busy period for the network of the UGRR. After his arrival across the river, several escapes that began in Rabbit Hash and Petersburg have been documented. From the fall of 1852 to the early spring of 1853, nearly 70 freedom seekers left the county; it’s likely Anderson was involved in some of these.
Another group of UGRR agents lived quietly in Rising Sun, beginning in the 1830s. The coordinator of operations was once-enslaved Sam Barkshire, who was manumitted in 1833 by Joseph Hawkins in Boone County. He was a cooper by trade, but his role as an operative and station master was well known to Levi Coffin and the anti-slavery society in Cincinnati. Coffin referred Michigan abolitionist conductor Laura Smith Haviland to Barkshire and his associates, Joseph and Mary Edrington, for help in freeing a family enslaved near Rabbit Hash. Barkshire’s three sons acted as conductors both on the river and along land routes. The youngest of the sons, a teenager, led people all the way to Canada. The three daughters were also likely to have helped in the running of a “station” near the river to hide at-risk freedom seekers.
Nancy Hawkins, Joseph’s widow and former enslaver of Samuel, moved to Rising Sun in 1836 and bought a home near Barkshire. She manumitted four adults in 1838: Samuel’s wife, Harriet; a woman named Mariah; a man named Sandy Hawkins, who was later arrested for “stealing slaves” in New Orleans; Catherine, the first wife of Joseph Edrington. A remembrance published in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1887 revealed that Nancy herself assisted in hiding freedom seekers in her home. She manumitted Samuel and Harriet’s children when the eldest came of age, leaving them her home and personal items.
Other than Sandy Hawkins, no UGRR-related arrests or convictions of any of the Rising Sun network have been found. The Edrington’s children were living with Barkshire in 1853, but Joseph and Mary disappeared from the records after 1850; their fate remains unknown.
