Almost 200 years since Dr. Isaac Fiske used his Pine Street house as a station on the Underground Railroad, some of the very items belonging to Dr. Fiske and his family have traveled more than 3,000 miles to return to their former home in Fall River.

The Fiske House, located at 263 Pine Street, is one of only six known Underground Railroad Stations in Fall River, Massachusetts. Dr. Isaac Fiske, a Quaker and the city’s first homeopathic surgeon, was a staunch abolitionist and helped escaped enslaved people on their journeys north by using his Fall River home and office as one of these stations.

Dr. Fiske’s daughter, Anna Fiske Harding, eventually married and moved to Canada, but wrote of her father’s deeds and work with the Underground Railroad in a letter to her grandchildren years later.

Since the Preservation Society purchased the Dr. Isaac Fiske House in late 2018, the long-term goal has been to establish an Underground Railroad Museum open to the general public in Dr. Fiske’s former basement office space.

Bob Walde of Neilburg in Saskatchewan, Canada, is a distant relative of Anna Fiske Harding and, after hearing about the Fiske House in Fall River, reached out to the Preservation Society.

This started a chain of events that would see a member of the Preservation Society’s Board of Directors travel all the way to Saskatchewan to retrieve some of the Fiske family items and drive them back to Fall River for what will become an exhibit at the future Dr. Isaac Fiske Fall River Underground Railroad Museum.

Among the items donated by Walde and his family were Dr. Fiske’s very own mortar and pestle, medical scales, glass photographs, family books (some containing signatures of the family), a large painted portrait and more.

These items are now catalogued and stored until the space is ready where they will make up one of the foundational exhibits of the Dr. Isaac Fiske House Fall River Underground Railroad Museum. Some items, like the portrait, will need to undergo extensive restoration work first.

As a nonprofit organization, the Preservation Society has completed a number of preservation and property improvement projects at the Fiske House through a combination of grants, donations, and funds generated from the home’s existing seven apartment units. This includes restoration of original windows, new historically accurate storm windows and shutters, repair of the front portico, a roof replacement, and the recent HVAC project in the future museum space to make it climate controlled.

However, there are a number of projects and work still needed before the Dr. Isaac Fiske Fall River Underground Railroad Museum can open its doors to the public. To help kickstart the museum, the Preservation Society launched a capital campaign to raise $50,000 to help renovate the space.

The planned projects include accessibility improvements, selective interior demolition, as well as creation of exhibit space and infrastructure.

If you would like to support the Dr. Isaac Fiske House Fall River Underground Railroad Museum, you can donate to the capital campaign.

Donations by check can be made out to:

The Preservation Society of Fall River, Inc.,

and mailed to:

263 Pine Street Apt. B1, Fall River, MA 02720