In 1842, a wealthy salt mine owner named John Hart Crenshaw, along with his brother Abraham, built this Greek revival style mansion from the vast amounts of wealth they had accumulated operating two lucrative salt mines in southern Illinois. The Crenshaws were influential and ridiculously wealthy. At one point John Crenshaw's income equaled one seventh of the revenue of the entire state of Illinois. 3 A young state representative named Abraham Lincoln actually attended a gala at the home, dancing a waltz in the second floor ballroom, likely with kidnapped slaves stuffed into concentration camp style bunks in the third floor above him. In a town called Equality. Now that is some fucking irony.
The house in the 1960's,
courtesy of
this
site
Part of the reason for the massive wealth was due to the fact the "Salt King of Southern Illinois" was allowed to use slave labor. Prior to emancipation, there was a law in place allowing businessmen to "import" slaves from slave states into free states like Illinois and use them for especially miserable tasks (like working in salt mines). Soon, this Illinois entrepreneur found that he could increase his profits by kidnapping free black men and women and selling them back into slavery in the south. The house is the last standing vestige of a once thriving "reverse underground railroad" system.
By many accounts Crenshaw also had a side hobby of siring the most virile and strong men with fertile women slaves to produce more slaves to sell. A man named "Uncle" Bob Wilson, who was known to have been one of the primary "breeders", was quoted by staff at Elgin State Hospital in 1941 (after he had been picked up in Chicago wandering 'ill and confused' ) as saying he had been forced to father over 200 children as a stud slave in the Hickory Hill house as well as others in the south. 2 He died at the Elgin facility in 1948 at age 112, and was Illinois' oldest living veteran at the time of his death.5, 6
Crenshaw kept his slaves in the third floor attic, shackled in tiny blood stained stalls ("The attic of this house has twelve small rooms, ranging in size from nine feet square to six feet by two and one-half feet. Some of the rooms contain shelves, which may have been used as bunks" 1). The open stalls were used for "breeding" as well as living quarters. The room itself was likely stifling, with only two windows and dozens of people crammed together. I don't know if you've ever been in an attic room in the summer in Illinois, but I can tell you from my parent's farmhouse and their third story attic, it gets miserably hot and chokingly muggy. The room was rumored to have secret passages that lead to the main house and the river, to expedite his illicit dealings at night. He took to beating the slaves, sometimes to death.
Brought to trial in 1842, he wasn't convicted on the first count of illegally trading slaves. However, within a short amount of time he was on trial again, and in a tiny nugget of instant karma, a slave whacked his leg off with an axe. The slaves rioted and burned down his mill. He died years later and was buried alongside his wife.
After the slave house was opened up for tours in 1926, it soon became the infamous home to sightings of apparitions and the sounds of moaning and chains rattling. One turn of the century paranormalist named Hickman Whittington spent the night there and died the next day from a sudden unexplained illness. Others, including some Vietnam vets who thought they had the gonads to stay all night, tried and failed in the quest to stay all night in the "haunted" attic. Finally, in the 1970's a local TV station put a TV personality up for the night in the slave quarters, part of a Halloween publicity stunt. He succeeded, a sort of prequel to the Geraldo Rivera's opening of the Capone Vaults (another Illinois media event) in that the spirits were apparently camera shy and they ended up with a pretty boring show. The longtime owners and caretakers closed off the house to overnight guests after a knocked over lantern nearly burned the old wooden building down. It was finally closed to the public in 1996 when the owners retired.
One-legged and sour, Kidnapper John Hart Crenshaw sits with his super-hot old lady and his crutch
A number of John Hart Crenshaw's descendents deny any wrongdoing on the part of their long-dead relative, accusing historians and folklorists alike of a "cruel conspiracy" to "besmirch" their "good" name, citing a paucity of hard proof pointing to Crenshaw's illicit activity. On one internet post regarding the house, former owner George Sisk was accused by an anonymous ranter of "making the whole thing up" and adding the whipping posts and shackles as props to try and add a horror element to attract tourists. This is an unlikely scenario.
Update: The State of Illinois has purchased the mansion with plans to open it as a state historic site, and appropriated $150,000 for it's renovation in 2006 4. However as of Feb 2010, spending cuts and ongoing state financial woes have kept it from opening as of yet.
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