Civil War Experience & the Underground Railroad

Tantalyzing mysteries surround the role of Bay City in the national struggle over slavery which led to the Civil War. The city was settled by one of the nation's leading abolitionists, James G. Birney. Reports of "safe houses" for escaped slaves and ships that may have spirited runaways to Canada abound.

A map in a new Michigan history book shows the Underground Railroad going straight through Bay City and out into Saginaw Bay, making it one of the northernmost outposts of the informal network of "conductors" who helped thousands of black slaves to freedom in pre Civil War days. Birney, scion of a wealth Kentucky family, became an abolitionist after being educated at Princeton and Philadelphia.

In 1834 he freed the slaves from his father's hemp plantation and evolved from a supporter of colonization to a full-fledged abolitionist. After his life was constantly threatened for publishing an abolitionist newspaper in Cincinnati, Birney moved his large family north to Bay City. He settled in a house that was in the heart of present-day downtown Bay City and farmed on both sides of the river, mainly an area which is now Veterans Memorial Park.

Twice candidate for President on the abolitionist Liberty Party ticket, Birney helped transform Bay City into a hotbed of Union sentiment that sent more than 500 men, a sixth of the entire population, to fight. About a third died in the monumental struggle. Four of Birney's sons and a grandson served the Union. All but one died of wounds or disease in the war or shortly thereafter. Historians puzzle over the connection of Bay City with Gerrit Smith, wealthy New York abolition financier, who narrowly escaped prosecution for funding John Brown's ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.

The wives of James G. Birney and Gerrit Smith were sisters. A Gerrit Smith Grove is mentioned in pre Civil War Bay City newspapers and a title search has determined that Smith originally financed a uniquely designed brick house at 10th and Adams near City Hall. The hulk of the schooner Gerrit Smith, that may have been used to aid escaping slaves, is still visible in the Saginaw River.

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Chillson House

300 West Midland Street
Bay City, MI 48706

Built before the Civil War by a justice of the peace and founder of a local Methodist Church, the Chillson House was reported in old county history books to have sheltered fugitive slaves.

Elm Lawn Cemetery

300 Ridge Road
Bay City, MI 48708
Phone: 989-892-0661

The final resting place of several important Civil War veterans, including Brig. Gen. Benjamin Partridge, a Bay County sheriff who enlisted as a private, became a colonel and hero of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Gen. Partridge received 28 of 71 Confederate battle flags surrendered at Appomattox. Another noteworthy burial is that of Major Lyman G. Willcox, lightning rod commander of the Third Michigan Cavalry, who stopped the war in 1862 in Lexington, Tennessee, called Confederates to a church and harangued the crowd for two-and-a-half hours on the madness of the rebellion.

Pine Ridge Cemetery

Tuscola and Ridge Roads
Bay City, MI 48708
Phone: n/a

More than 200 veterans of the Civil War are buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery. An 1863 Civil War siege cannon mutely stands guard over Soldier's and Sailor's Rest, rows of white headstones encircling a Grand Army of the Republic spire erected in 1885. Nearby lay the graves of Judge James Birney, Michigan lieutenant governor in 1861 and Minister to the Hague in Holland under President Grant; Andrew J. Walton, member of the elite Berdan's Sharpshooters; and two members of the 102nd U.S. Colored Troops, as well as several rare burials of U.S. Navy veterans of the Civil War.

The Birney Sword

321 Washington Avenue
Bay City, MI 48708
Phone: 989-893-5733

One of the most valuable local artifacts of the Civil War is the Birney Sword, housed in the Bay County Historical Museum. The ornate dress sword reputedly was presented by Col. George Armstrong Custer to Capt. James G. Birney IV, grandson of James Gillespie Birney. Young Birney, who enlisted from Bay City at age 19, was a hero at Gettysburg as Custer's Michigan Cavalry stopped Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart from turning the Union line. After fighting in many major engagements, Birney and other Michigan cavalrymen were shipped West to fight Indians. The location of young Birney's grave has not been found, although a memorial to him has been erected in the Birney family plot at Pine Ridge Cemetery.

The Sunken Schooner Gerrit Smith

Veteran's Memorial Park
Bay City, MI 48706
Phone: 989-893-5733

In the Saginaw River just off the west bank of Veterans Memorial Park,

the bones of the 70-foot ship Gerrit Smith, built in New York in 1855, peek through the waves among skeletons of large wooden barges and freighters of the Davidson Shipbuilding Company. It is rumored to have carried fugitive slaves to Canada.

Civil War Experience & the Underground Railroad