Did you know quilts were used by abolitionists and fugitive enslaved people to signify escape routes to the North? Using music, song, images, storytelling and 18 hand-crafted replica quilts, historical researcher Connie Martin presents “Pre-Civil War Quilts: The Secret Codes to Freedom on the Underground Railroad.”

Martin mesmerizes audiences as she tells the history of the Underground Railroad, safe routes and the stories of the quilt codes that have been passed down to her, a sixth-generation descendant of captured African people forced into slavery in America.

Join the Bartlett History Museum, 228 S. Main Street, on Wednesday, 6/22, for this free program. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for refreshments and a pre-program presentation that will highlight Bartlett’s first doctor and abolitionist Elias C. Guild. Martin’s presentation begins at 7 p.m. Space is limited and registration is required. Please email the number attending and your phone number to prohleder@bartlettil.gov.