Owen Muelder's office, in Knox's Old Jail, is something of a museum. A side table is spread with construction paper thank you cards from ROWVA East's 5th grade, offering crayon drawings of black stick figures darting behind trees, and lamps lit in certain houses, but not others. Four trowels, spotless but for autographs in permanent markers, are displayed nearby: they dug up soil from the yard in front of the house where Susan Neal van Allen Richardson lived in Galesburg after her escape and emancipation. Two maps of different legs of the Underground Railroad hang both in his office and at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati: he made them himself.
In 2006, the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program designated Knox as an Underground Railroad Freedom Station, one of more than sixty sites across the country with Underground Railroad heritage. As the director of the Galesburg colony, it makes sense that Muelder should spend most of his time in a room full of the past.
[...] got pretty average grades I was surrounded by people who knew a great deal, and so I'm afraid that I took advantage of that and probably didn't work as hard as I could have growing he said. “Being crummy in high school gives room for improvement later in life. If you excel early in life, it's all downhill. Owen's blossoming said Jay Matson '65, who went to high school and college with Muelder and is now the leader of a project to restore Seminary Street. [...]
[...] His sister Marcia graduated from Knox in 1960, got a PhD at Stanford, and is now one of the premiere philosophers of aesthetics in the world. Still, Muelder blazed his own trail: he and his brother, who got a Master's in math at the University of Chicago, became the only two academic black sheep in the family by not going on to pursue doctorates. “There was certainly pressure in my family to have the utmost respect for higher education, academic pursuits, and recognize the importance of the life of the said Muelder. [...]
[...] He went home and told Muelder what the senator had said. Muelder had the time, the skill, and the inclination to put Knox even more securely on the antislavery map and make himself a bit of a celebrity at the same time. he's a regional expert,” said Seibert. “There's almost a Lincoln slavery industry in the US, and he's carving out an enviable and visible niche.” Though Knox had long seen the sense in publicizing its connection with Abraham Lincoln, who received an honorary degree from the school during his 5th debate with Steven Douglas held at Old Main on October Muelder is the driving force behind the “more developed historical theme” of Knox's participation in both the public and the underground aspects of the antislavery movement. [...]
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