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1847 – 1856 · South Bend's record; this township's thread is one defendant
The Powell case is documented — and it is South Bend's record. David and Lucy Powell and their four sons fled Kentucky in October 1847 and settled near Cassopolis, Michigan; at midnight on 27 September 1849 their claimant seized Lucy and three sons; a neighbour rode twenty miles to South Bend, a habeas writ issued, and Judge Elisha Egbert freed the captives for want of the certificate the Fugitive Slave Act required. The claimant's federal suit (21 December 1849) named nine defendants — among them Solomon W. Palmer — and won a judgment whose figure prints three ways in the carriers: $2,856 (the Bureau/Harvey class), "nearly $3,000" (a Tribune summary), and $3,856 (Windle's transcription of the pamphlet proceedings) — all three stand; the court's own record is the settler. Palmer's presence among the defendants is the documented thread that runs south into this township, and it is a court record, not a tradition. The routes at state strength print the same discipline: the Bureau's overview runs a western route through South Bend toward Niles or Chicago along the Michigan Road, and the preservation division corrects the picture to "more of a web of potential paths" — corridor movement through the county is documented at state and county strength, and no carrier names a station, a stop, or a passage in Union Township. The road through this township is the Michigan Road; that is a road fact, not a UGRR fact, and the two are not merged.
The Powell thread's later record stands in this build's Underground Railroad articles: the second discharge (lk-digi-ugrr-second-discharge), the defendants (lk-digi-ugrr-defendants), and the supreme-court course (lk-digi-ugrr-supreme-court) (assembly pointer, DELTA-I-1).