Rochelle E. Danquah successfully nominated Nathan Power’s gravesite, along Gill Rd., for inclusion in the National Underground Railroad Network. (Photo by David Lewinski)

The first time that Farmington’s Laura Vestrand – a communications director for the Detroit Institute of Arts who recently began serving on Farmington’s promotions committee – heard about local ties to the Underground Railroad, she was in third grade.

“Everyone got assigned a local historical marker, and you had to write a report about it,” said Vestrand. “Mine was Utley Cemetery (on Twelve Mile Rd.), and I remember feeling kind of jealous because someone else in my class did their report on the Underground Railroad. When I was eight, I’d thought, ‘Wow, that’s so cool!’ But when you’re in your thirties, and you really start thinking more about what that means. It’s pretty amazing.”

When Vestrand started working with Downtown Farmington’s promotions committee, “it just happened to be the beginning of Black History Month, so when (the Underground Railroad) came up, I thought it would be a great thing to tell more people about.”

To that end, Vestrand reached out to Farmington Hills resident Rochelle E. Danquah, a PhD student at Wayne State University whose studies focus on abolition, anti-slavery, and Underground Railroad activism.

Danquah, in fact, was the person who invested the time and effort necessary to nominate the burial site of Nathan Power (in the Quaker Cemetery on Gill Rd.) – a son of Farmington’s first settler, Arthur Power – for inclusion in the National Underground Railroad Network. (Danquah’s application succeeded in 2012.) READ THE REST HERE