Another class of colored persons that undertook the work of delivering some of their race from the cruel uncertainties of slavery may be found among the refugees of Canada. Describing the early development of the movement of slaves to Canada, Dr. Samuel G. Howe says of these persons, "Some, not content with personal freedom and happiness, went secretly back to their old homes and brought away their wives and children at much peril and cost."[476] It has been stated that the number of these persons visiting the South annually was about five hundred.[477] Mr. D. B. Hodge, of Lloydsville, Ohio, gives the case of a negro that went to Canada by way of New Athens, and in the course of a year returned over the same route, went to Kentucky, and brought away his wife and two children, making his pilgrimage northward again after the lapse of about two months.[478] Another case, reported by Mr. N. C. Buswell, of Neponset, Illinois, is as follows: A slave, Charlie, belonging to a Missouri planter living near Quincy, Illinois, escaped to Canada by way of one of the underground routes. Ere long he decided to return and get his wife, but found she had been sold South. When making his second journey eastward he brought with him a family of slaves, who preferred freedom to remaining as the chattels of his old master. This was the first of a number of such trips made by the fugitive Charlie.[479] Mr. Seth Linton,[480] who was familiar with the work on a line of this Road running through Clinton County, Ohio, reports that a fugitive that had passed along the route returned after some months, saying he had come back to rescue his wife. His absence in the slave state continued so long that it was feared he had been captured, but after some weeks he reappeared, bringing his wife and her father with him. He told of having seen many slaves in the country and said they would be along as soon as they could escape. The following year the Clinton County line was unusually busy. A brave woman named Armstrong escaped with her husband and one child to Canada in 1842. Two years later she determined to rescue the remainder of her family from the Kentucky plantation where she had left them, and, disguised as a man, she went back to the old place. Hiding near a spring, where her children were accustomed to get water, she was able to give instructions to five of them, and the following night she departed with her flock to an underground station at Ripley, Ohio.[481] [476] Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West_, p. 11. [477] Redpath, _The Public Life of Captain John Brown_, p. 229. [478] Letter from Mr. D. B. Hodge, Oct. 9, 1894. [479] Letter from Colonel N. C. Buswell, March 13, 1896. [480] Letter from Seth Linton. [481] The _Firelands Pioneer_, July, 1888, p. 39.