The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive historySiebert, Wilbur Henry
History
The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom: A comprehensive history
Siebert, Wilbur Henry
Fugitive slaves -- United States; Underground Railroad
[137] Judge R. B. Harlan and others, _History of Clinton County,
Ohio_, pp. 380-383; letter of Seth Linton, Oakland, Clinton
County, O., Sept. 4, 1892; Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p.
187.
[138] The _Miami Union_, April 10, 1895, article entitled "A
Reminiscence of Slave Times."
[139] Letter of Mrs. C. Grant, Pomeroy, Meigs Co., O.
[140] The _Republican Leader_, March 16, 1894, article,
"Reminiscence of the Underground Railroad," by E. H. Trueblood.
[141] See _Underground Railroad Records_, pp. 46, 47.
[142] _Ibid._, pp. 81-84; see also _Narrative of Henry Box Brown,
who escaped from slavery enclosed in a box 3 feet long and 2
wide, written from a statement of facts made by himself_, 1849,
by Charles Stearns.
Abolitionists that drove wagons or carriages containing refugees,
"conductors" as they came to be called in the terminology of the
Railroad service, generally took the precaution to have ostensible
reasons for their journeys. They sought to divest their excursions
of the air of mystery by seeming to be about legitimate business.
Hannah Marsh, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, was in the habit
of taking garden produce to the Philadelphia markets to sell;
when, therefore, she sometimes used her covered market-wagon, even
in daytime, to convey fugitives, she attracted no attention, and
made her trips without molestation.[143] Calvin Fairbank abducted
the Stanton family, father, mother and six children, from the
neighborhood of Covington, Kentucky, by packing them in a load of
straw.[144] James W. Torrence, of Northwood, Ohio, together with
some of his neighbors exported grain, and sometimes feathers, to
Sandusky. These products were generally shipped when there were
fugitives to go with the load. As the distance to Sandusky was a
hundred and twenty miles, refugees who happened to profit by this
arrangement were saved much time and no small amount of risk in
getting to their destination.[145] Mr. William I. Bowditch, of
Boston, used a two-horse carryall on one occasion to take a single
fugitive to Concord.[146] Mr. John Weldon and other abolitionists,
of Dwight, Illinois, took negroes to Chicago concealed in wagons
loaded with sacks of bran.[147] Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, Ohio,
frequently received large companies for which safe transportation
had to be supplied. On one occasion a party of twenty-eight
negroes arrived, towards daylight, in the suburbs of Cincinnati,
from Boone County, Kentucky, and it was necessary to send them on
at once. Accordingly at Friend Coffin's suggestion a number of
carriages were procured, formed into a long funeral-like procession
and started solemnly on the road to Cumminsville.[148] An almost
endless array of incidents similar to these can be given, but enough
have been recited to illustrate the caution that prevailed in the
transportation of fugitive slaves toward Canada.
[143] Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, pp. 138, 139.
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