This year, the Dennis Farm became an official site on “Destination Freedom: The Underground Railroad (UGRR) Tour of Northeast Pennsylvania,” which is based in Waverly, PA. On May 15, 2026, The Dennis Farm Charitable Land Trust (DFCLT) hosted its first “Destination Freedom” event to launch the Farm as a site on the tour. The Farm welcomed guests, including children, who turned out on a sunny, Friday afternoon to hear the speakers and experience the grounds, including the historic Perkins-Dennis Family Cemetery, for themselves.
The tour has been operating for a few years and recently, “Destination Freedom’s” Program Coordinator, EJ Murphy, reached out to Cain Chamberlin, Executive Director, Endless Mountains Heritage Region, about including UGRR sites in the Endless Mountains on the tour. Cain Chamberlin recommended the Dennis Farm as one of the sites because the Farm served as an UGRR station on the clandestine route to freedom. Prince Perkins, Dennis Family ancestor and founder of the Farm, is cited in Charles Blockson’s 1981 book The Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. When she visited the Farm in 2013, Cheryl J. Roche, PhD, author of The Geography of Resistance: Free Blacks and the Underground Railroad, noted that the Dennis Farm has all the hallmarks of an UGRR site.
The launch program included remarks by Cain Chamberlin, Executive Director, Endless Mountains Heritage Region and EJ Murphy, Program Coordinator, “Destination Freedom.” Darryl Gore, VP of Development, DFCLT, gave a presentation about the Milford-Owego Turnpike, which is a quarter mile from the Dennis Farm and was a route UGRR conductors and freedom seekers followed into upstate New York. Lonnie Moore, DFCLT’s VP, Marketing, discussed William Still’s 1872 book, Underground Railroad, based on notes Still kept about freedom seekers he helped, when they passed through Philadelphia. Henry W. Dennis of the Dennis Farm purchased a first addition of William Still’s book, which remained in the family until DFCLT donated it to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in 2016. In her presentation, M. Denise Dennis, DFCLT CEO, described a 3x-great-grandfather who was a conductor on the UGRR and transported freedom-seekers from Wilkes-Barre to Waverly; and George Jackson, a disabled veteran of the Civil War whose parents came North on the UGRR. A neighbor of the Dennis family, Jackson is buried in the Perkins-Dennis Family Cemetery. Freedom seekers who died in the region, enroute to freedom, are reputed to be buried in the unmarked graves in the cemetery.
Following the program, EJ Murphy led visitors on a tour of the Perkins-Dennis Family Cemetery at the Farm’s hilltop.
