William Donnegan, believed to be one of Springfield, Illinois' conductors on the Underground Railroad, was lynched during the 1908 Race Riot. This photo was originally published in the Chicago Record Herald ------ Courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

William Donnegan, had been a prominent member of Springfield, Illinois' African American community since before the Civil War and was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He was lynched in the 1908 Springfield Race Riot.

According to an August 21, 1908, story in the weekly version of the Illinois State Register, Donnegan (spelled “Donnigan” by the newspaper) “was beaten almost to insensibility; his throat was slashed from ear with a razor and a small clothes line rope was tied about his neck, then he was hanged to the limb of a small tree” across from Donnegan’s home at Spring and Edwards streets.

The attack was broken up by police and state militia, but Donnegan died the next day at St. John’s Hospital.

The paper said the gang that attacked Donnegan’s home amounted to about a dozen men, apparently led by Abraham Raymer, a 20-year-old restaurant worker and peddler who had immigrated from Russia. Raymer was later found guilty only of stealing a sword.

Donnegan owned an estimated $15,000 worth of property at his death, a substantial amount for the time. Although he had been a cobbler and real estate investor, Donnegan also had made a pre-Civil War trade of importing slaves from the South and hiring them out as laborers in free-state Illinois. Whites resented his wealth and the fact that his third wife, Sarah Rudolph Donnegan, was white, the Register suggested.

Donnegan’s age at his death is open to question. Most accounts say he was either 76 or 84, but the Register’s reporter, who interviewed Donnegan’s family, gave an exact date for Donnegan’s birthday: March 16, 1828, making him 80 years old when he was killed. He is buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Mr. Donnegan is credited with writing a memoir of his role in helping an enslaved woman travel through Springfield to Canada in 1858.

The memoir, first published in 1898, was reprinted in the summer 2006 edition of “For the People,” the newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association. The original is available at the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library.

“I lived, in those days, on the north side of Jefferson, between Eighth and Ninth streets, in a story and a half house. It is still standing, and I could show you the garret yet in which many a runaway has been hidden while the town was being searched. I have secreted scores of them, …” Donnegan wrote.

Image: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
Info: Sagamon County History