Abdul Alkalimat grew up with family stories of how his great, great grandfather Free Frank McWorter purchased himself out of slavery and risked his life to get others out of bondage in Kentucky.

The town Mr. McWorter settled, New Philadelphia, Ill., isn't on any maps today, but the story of its existence has been handed down from generation to generation and from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters.

In August, with the help of family members, a grant from the National Science Foundation, and work of archaeologists and students from the University of Maryland and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, what has been McWorter family lore is now a part of American history.

The site that was once New Philadelphia won a listing on the National Register of Historic Places as the first city in the country settled by an African-American. An effort is now under way to get the former town registered as a national landmark.

"My father was the fourth generation we all grew up with the stories of New Philadelphia," said Mr. Alkalimat, whose name was once Gerald McWorter. "When you hear the story about Free Frank McWorter, it is truly inspiring."

The story of New Philadelphia, Ill., starts in Kentucky in the late 1700s where Free Frank McWorter and his father, a white slave owner, moved there to start a business. Mr. Alkalimat, the director of Africana studies at the University of Toledo, said Mr. McWorter's father allowed him to keep part of the money he made from a saltpeter mining business.

Mr. McWorter hired himself out for jobs as well and eventually saved enough money to purchase his wife, and then himself, out of slavery. Mr. McWorter and his wife moved to the open, fertile frontier land in western Illinois in 1831, 30 years before the Civil War.

He gained approval from the Illinois legislature to develop a town on 42 acres of land and began the process of creating New Philadelphia in 1836. He sold plots to whites and blacks alike to help him finance efforts to buy the freedom of other family members.

New Philadelphia became a racially mixed commercial hub by 1865 where whites and blacks worked and attended school together. Chris Fennell of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said while New Philadelphia was not a utopia of race relations, the findings are helping archaeologists and historians rewrite the history of America's western push.

Mr. McWorter returned to Kentucky to buy freedom for 16 family members. Mr. Alkalimat said Mr. McWorter risked his life returning to slave territory to help other family members.

"Do you know anyone like that today who would do this over a 40-year period?" Mr. Alkalimat asked. "He would go to Kentucky to get somebody, see someone else, and tell them, 'I'll be back for you.' It would take some time, but true to his word, he would always return to free them. It's just incredible."

Even though Mr. McWorter was a free black man, there were still perils. Mr. Alkalimat said he could have been kidnapped and sold back with little, if any, support from local authorities. He said there was also a fear of bounty hunters coming from the neighboring slave state of Missouri, only 20 miles from New Philadelphia. Under the ruse of looking for runaway slaves, bounty hunters would kidnap free blacks and sell them into slavery.

What was once New Philadelphia is now open farm land in the plain between the Mississippi and Illinois River in Pike County, Mr. Fennell said.

A grant from the National Science Foundation helped Mr. Fennell, Paul Shackel of the University of Maryland, and students start to excavate the New Philadelphia area in 2004. The past two summers, they have dug up several thousand artifacts confirming the town's existence and showing how the townspeople lived.

"We were concerned because since this is farm land that nothing would be there because of the plowing," Mr. Fennell said. "It's nothing but prairie grass and agricultural fields now. But we have been able to find artifacts below the [plowing] surface."

Mr. Fennell said they have been able to identify house foundations and other structures from the 1800s. He said with the addition of census and deed records, they have been able to pinpoint where many residents lived.

He said some of the things they found surprised them, such as ceramics made from in countries instead of the crude ceramics one would expect to find on the Western frontier.

Terrance Martin, of the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, said the findings suggested that town folk had some sort of access to international markets.

"A lot of people on the frontier in the 1830s were pretty isolated," Mr. Martin said. "With what we're finding with the ceramics and other artifacts that they might not have been that isolated after all. They must have had some kind of access to these goods."

Mr. Alkalimat said Mr. McWorter's life shows how African-Americans were not just pedestrians in American history, but active participants and, when given an opportunity, carved out their own history.

"It shows that the lives of free black people were more complex than what we were led to believe," Mr. Alkalimat said. "They still didn't have all of the legal rights of whites, but they were contributing to society."

Shannique Gibson, 23, a junior computer science major at the University of Toledo, participated in the archaeological dig this past summer. She said the artifacts and the stories behind the pieces they found were inspiring.

"I really didn't know what to expect," Miss Gibson said. "At first, I didn't see the historical value of it. When we started to find things and people got into it, I thought it was exciting. It made you wonder about all the lost history and just how many more Frank McWorters are out there waiting to be discovered."

Officials said the town began to die in 1869 when it was bypassed by the railroad. Mr. Fennell said the railroad was being build on a westerly path toward New Philadelphia when it took a turn north around the town only to resume its westerly path once the town was bypassed.

Was racism the issue that drive the railroad to the north?

"Well, that is still an open question," Mr. Fennell said. "The northerly turn is still a mystery. There were no real topography issues in the area. I haven't found a persuasive argument yet that it was anything but [racism]."

Not all the family members are happy about the excavation. Juliet Walker, a fifth generation descendant and professor at the University of Texas, has been publicity critical of the dig. According to the Archaeology magazine, Ms. Walker did the work to get Mr. McWorter's grave site on the National Register and discovered much of the town's history through county and township records.

Her work also helped the state of Illinois to rename a portion of Interstate 72, which runs through Pike County, "Free Frank McWorter Memorial Highway" and she is the founder of the Free Frank McWorter New Philadelphia Preservation Foundation.

Ms. Walker could not be reached for comment this past week about New Philadelphia.

Mr. Alkalimat, while acknowledging there is a family rift about what has gone on in New Philadelphia, said he believes what has been done is positive and has brought new information and new details to light.

He and others involved in the process hope that Mr. McWorter and New Philadelphia will gain their rightful places in American history.

Contact Clyde Hughes at: chughes@theblade.com or 419-724-6095.

First Published October 30, 2005, 8:51 a.m.