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Freedom quilts were used as signals and maps along the Underground Railroad
It was difficult for a slave escaping from the slave states of the United States to the north and into Canada to freedom. The Underground Railroad was not actually a train running on a track. Instead,it was a system of houses and places where slaves could hide and be given food and a place to sleep during their journey.

If anyone found out that a slave had run away and was trying to escape to freedom,
they might tell the police. This was especially true after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law. The slave would then be caught and sent back to his owner.

Slaves had to travel in secrecy and could not speak to anyone as they moved from one house to another along the route of the Underground Railroad. They could not go up to another
slave or a free person on the street or in a field and ask him or her for directions. Slaves living in the areas between the Underground Railroad houses hung quilts out as a way to transmit messages to slaves who were traveling in secrecy.

The slave owners didn't realize that the quilt patterns meant anything.Seeing the quilts hanging out didn't seem unusual as the quilts had to washed and hung out to dry or aired out from time to time. The slaves knew the meaning of the symbols, though, and this enabled them to travel long distances to safety without having to speak to anyone directly.

Quilts with patterns named "Wagon Wheel,"Flying Geese " and "Bear's Paw" contained secret messages that helped direct slaves to freedom on their route along the Undergound Railroad.

Ozella McDaniel, a descendant of slaves, remembers stories passed through her family in South Carolina. She retells stories told to her about how the patterns in patchwork quilts served as a code for people making their way north on the Underground Railroad. She says that the seamstress on a plantation sewed a sampler quilt containing different quilt patterns. Slaves would memorize the code using the sampler.

Then the seamstress sewed ten quilts, each composed of one of the code's patterns. The seamstress would hang the quilts one at a time on a fence to help the slaves fully learn the code. Each pattern was associated with information to guide them to safety.

This story handled down through the family also included information about the meaning of each of the patterns. The first pattern to be displayed on a fence or some place that could be seen would be Monkey Wrench The Monkey Wrench pattern sent the coded

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