October is Archives Month, a time when archives across the country celebrate the records in their holdings and recognize the archivists who assess, collect, organize, preserve, and provide access to information of lasting value. The North Dakota State Archives is part of the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
William F. Reden, born in 1885, moved to Sioux Falls in 1924 to live with his ailing sister. Reden was a Black man, who graduated from the University of Iowa Law School in 1909 and helped found the Delta Industrial Institute in Missouri. He became an officer of the NAACP chapter in Sioux Falls and maintained regular correspondence with W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist, historian, and editor of the national NAACP magazine The Crisis.
In 1941, Reden came across a newspaper article that presented information about a man named Rial Cheadle, who was a conductor of the Underground Railroad. Cheadle had connections to Ohio and visited various states, where he would change his behavior to fool those around him. It was mentioned that Cheadle was never suspected of assisting fugitive slaves.
The article also reported that Rial Cheadle was from North Dakota. Reden sent the article to Governor John Moses, asking for more information and indicating that he wished to write about the man.
In response, this request was forwarded to the State Historical Society of North Dakota, where intrepid librarian Florence Davis responded, “This matter of Rial Cheadle, alleged resident of North Dakota in Civil War days, is a challenging item for research. … With your letter to the Governor as a lead, I shall undertake a search for the Rial Cheadle legend, insofar as it concerns what is now North Dakota. … However, our great Missouri, and our Rivers running north have guarded their stories well. It will be a brisk game searching out your point, should your newspaper item prove authentic.”
This correspondence is held at the North Dakota State Archives, but it provides no additional information, and further searches yield no conclusive results. It seems unlikely that Rial Cheadle had any significant connection to North Dakota. Newspapers cannot always be taken at face value, and as Florence Davis noted, many legends about early figures and events were prevalent. Nevertheless, research requests like this one still connect ongoing events in the world to North Dakota.
Dakota Datebook by Sarah Walker
