From the 1830s until the Civil War, many enslaved African descendants in the South escaped to Chicago on their way to freedom in Canada. Black and white abolitionists in the region formed networks of assistance known as the Underground Railroad. The old Detroit-Chicago Road was an important route for freedom seekers, some of whom crossed the Little Calumet River at the site of the current bridge at Indiana Avenue several blocks west of here. Their movement became far more dangerous after 1850, when the Fugitive Slave Act strengthened laws requiring the capture and return of enslaved persons to their "owners." After the removal of Indigenous people living along the Little Calumet, families from eastern states were settling here by 1835, and Dutch settlers arrived in 1847-49, acquiring land in areas that became Roseland and South Holland. These included Cornelius and Maartje Kuyper, and Jan and Aagje Ton. On the north side of the Little Calumet, the Ton Farm was established in 1853, with the home and farm buildings on this site. The Tons, often with the Kuypers, were directly involved in aiding freedom seekers, who went from here by wagon or on foot across the bridge at Indiana Avenue to Hammond, Indiana, and eventually crossed into Canada from Detroit.