Plymouth Magazine-Fall26-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 7
The Abolitionist History
of Plymouth Church
By Lorna Truck (she/her)
From its earliest beginnings, the
congregation of Plymouth Church
has been concerned with justice,
brotherhood, and inclusion. One
cherished story in Plymouth history
is that the first location of Plymouth
Church in downtown Des Moines served
as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The first church building was a small
frame building on Court Avenue. In
1995 the Des Moines Register stated:
“While at this location, the church was
used by the underground railroad, hiding
slaves on their journey north.”
Certainly, the membership of early
Iowa Congregational groups held
abolitionist sentiments. In June 1851, six
years before Plymouth was formed, the
General Association of Congregational
Churches met in Denmark, Iowa, and
affirmed “Being Guided by Higher Law
Than Man-made Law Toward Slavery.”
Members declared that “a higher law
than man-made law should guide their
acts and that members do nothing to aid
in apprehending fugitive slaves.” (The
Fugitive Slave act of 1850 mandated that
citizens assist in the recapture of freedom
seekers who had made their way to the
free states.)
On Thanksgiving Day 1860, Plymouth’s
Pastor J.M. Chamberlain, newly arrived
from Andover Seminary in Massachusetts,
preached a strongly worded abolitionist
sermon for a joint worship service in
Des Moines. The sermon was highly
controversial in Des Moines, but was said
to have added many new members to the
Plymouth rolls in the following weeks.
Chamberlain’s successor, H.S. DeForrest
left Plymouth in 1870 to become
president of the Historically Black
Talladega College in Alabama.
It is unlikely that Plymouth Church
served as a physical Underground
Railroad stop because the Underground
Railroad conductors tried to avoid densely
populated areas such as downtown Des
Moines. There is no contemporaneous
documentation confirming that Plymouth
Church was a stop.
The Underground Railroad route through
Des Moines started at Jordan House in
West Des Moines. The wagons drove
along the south bank of the Raccoon
River toward the confluence of the
Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. They
passed near downtown Des Moines to
cross the Des Moines River by ferry or
bridge to reach the capitol grounds on the
east side of the river. The “railroad trail”
would have passed near the downtown
location of Plymouth Church in order to
cross the Des Moines River on the way to
the next overnight stopping point near
Yellow Banks Park. The trail through
Iowa continued east to Grinnell, Salem,
West Liberty, Davenport, and across the
river to Illinois. Eventually many freedom
seekers made their way to Canada to
avoid the fugitive slave act.
One prominent Plymouth founding
member who was voted in as a trustee
on January 18, 1858 (Minutes,
Plymouth Congregational Church,
1858), was John Teesdale, editor of
the Des Moines Newspaper The Des
Moines Citizen, renamed the Iowa
State Register in January 1860. John
Brown and John Teesdale attended the
same Congregational Church in Akron,
Ohio. Teesdale was an abolitionist and a
longtime friend of Brown.
On one of Brown’s trips through Iowa
in 1859, Teesdale met Brown at the Des
Moines River and paid the ferry fare
for his party to cross. In April 1882,
Teesdale provided a detailed account of
his last encounter with Brown in a letter
to the editor “Old John Brown: Mr.
Teesdale Supplements Our Last Sunday
Left: John Teesdale, Right: John Brown
Plymouth Magazine 7
