Whether there was any underground work done in the central and northern parts of Pennsylvania is not known; the indications are that there was not much; the stations said to have existed at Milroy, Altoona, Work's Place and Smicksburg probably connected with lines running in a northwesterly direction to Lake Erie. This is known to have been true of the stations at Greensburg, Indiana, Clearfield and intermediate points, which were linked in with stations leading to Meadville and Erie. The remoteness of New York and of the New England states from the slaveholding section explains the comparatively small number of stations found in those states. Iowa, which bordered on slave territory, had only a small number of stations, for it was a new region, not long open to occupation; and only the southern part of the state was in the direct line of travel, which here was mostly eastward. There were a few places of deportation in southeastern Wisconsin for fugitives that had avoided Chicago, and followed the lakeshore or the Illinois River farther northward. A rather narrow strip of Michigan, adjoining Indiana and Ohio, was dotted with stations. There were friends of the discontented slave in the South as well as in the North, although it cannot be said, upon the basis of the small amount of evidence at hand, that these were sufficient in number or so situated as to maintain regular lines of escape northward. Doubtless many acts of kindness to slaves were performed by individual Southerners, but those were not, in most of the cases, known as the acts of persons coöperating to help the slave from point to point until freedom and safety should be reached. That there were regular helpers in the South engaged in concerted action, Samuel J. May, a station-keeper of wide information concerning the Road, freely asserts. In 1869 he wrote, "There have always been scattered throughout the slaveholding states individuals who have abhorred slavery, and have pitied the victims of our American despotism. These persons have known, or have taken pains to find out, others at convenient distances northward from their abodes who sympathized with them in commiserating the slaves. These sympathizers have known or heard of others of like mind still farther north, who again have had acquaintances in the free states that they knew would help the fugitive on his way to liberty. Thus lines of friends at longer or shorter distances were formed from many parts of the South to the very borders of Canada...."[351] It is not easy to substantiate this statement; and all that will be attempted here is the presentation of such examples as have been found of underground work on the part of persons living south of Mason and Dixon's line. Mr. Stephen B. Weeks is authority for the statement that "Vestal Coffin organized the Underground Railroad near the present Guilford College in 1819," and that "Addison Coffin, his son, entered its service as a conductor in early