The Deadly Notions mysteries are set in the fictional nineteenth-century village of Millbury in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In LIE OF THE NEEDLE, my heroine, Daisy Buchanan, owner of the vintage sewing notions store, is conducting research for the Historical Society on the village’s connection with the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t a real railroad, of course, but a series of safe houses or “stations”. Pennsylvania was a destination for many fugitives because it had a reputation for being anti-slavery. They came from the nearby slave states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, and crossed the Mason-Dixon Line at the border of Maryland and Pennsylvania. A good number stayed in Chester and Lancaster counties, where there was a large free African-American population, but for some, the goal was always Canada, as it was simply safer. The underground line through Bucks County was less used than the main routes further west with more direct access to the north, but some slaves did come to the area by way of Norristown or Philadelphia. The towns of Solebury, Quakertown, Doylestown, Yardley, Newtown and Buckingham were all stops on the line, and they were hidden in churches, barns, spring houses, fields and caves. The last important stop…