Among those invasions of the South that caused considerable excitement at the time of their occurrence, the cases of Calvin Fairbank, Seth Concklin and John Brown are notable; and accounts of them cannot well be omitted from these pages, even though they may be more or less familiar to the reader. Mr. Calvin Fairbank came of English stock, and was born in Wyoming County, New York, in 1816. His home training as well as his attendance at Oberlin College furnished him with anti-slavery views, but the circumstance to which he traced his hearty hatred of the Southern institution arose by chance, when as a boy he was attending quarterly meeting with his parents. "It happened that my family was assigned," he relates, "to the good, clean home of a pair of escaped slaves. One night after service I sat on the hearthstone before the fire, and listened to the woman's story of sorrow.... My heart wept, my anger was kindled, and antagonism to slavery was fixed upon me."[490] In the spring of 1837 young Fairbank was sent by his father down the Ohio River in charge of a raft of lumber. A little below Wheeling he saw a large, active-looking, black man on the Virginia shore, going to the woods with his axe. He found the woodsman to be a slave, soon gained his confidence, and set him across the river on the raft. A few days later Mr. Fairbank moored his rude craft, and landed on the Kentucky shore opposite the mouth of the Little Miami River. Here he was approached by an old slave-woman, who sought the liberation of her seven children. The matter was easily arranged, and after dark the seven were speedily conveyed across the river.[491] [490] _Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times, or How the Way was Prepared._ Edited from his manuscript. Pp. 1-7. [491] _Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times_, pp. 12-14.