In a few centres where the amount of secret service to be done was large, a slight specialization of work is to be noticed. This division of labor consisted in the employment of a regular conductor or agent at these points to manage the work of transportation of passengers to points farther north; while the station-keepers attended more closely to the work of receiving and caring for the new arrivals. The special conductors chosen were men thoroughly acquainted with the different routes of their respective neighborhoods. At Mechanicsburg, Champaign County, Ohio, Udney Hyde, a fearless and well-known citizen, acted as agent between the local stations of J. R. Ware and Levi Rathbun, and stations to the northeast as far as the Alum Creek Quaker Settlement, a distance of forty miles.[175] The stations at Mechanicsburg were among the most widely known in central and southern Ohio. They received fugitives from at least three regular routes, and doubtless had "switch connections" with other lines. Passengers were taken northward over one of the three, perhaps four roads, and as one or two of these lay through pro-slavery neighborhoods a brave and experienced agent was almost indispensable. George W. S. Lucas, a colored man of Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio, made frequent trips with the closed carriage of Philip Evans, between Barnesville, New Philadelphia and Cadiz, and two stations, Ashtabula and Painesville, on the shore of Lake Erie. Occasionally Mr. Lucas conducted parties to Cleveland and Sandusky and Toledo, but in such cases he went on foot or by stage.[176] His trips were sometimes a hundred miles and more in length. George L. Burroughes, a colored man of Cairo, Illinois, became an agent for the Underground Road in 1857, while acting as porter of a sleeping-car running on the Illinois Central Railroad between Cairo and Chicago.[177] At Albany, New York, Stephen Meyers, a negro, was an agent of the Underground Road for a wide extent of territory.[178] At Detroit there were several colored agents; among them George De Baptiste and George Dolarson.[179] [175] Conversation with J. R. Ware, and with the daughter of Mr. Hyde, Mrs. Amanda Shepherd, Mechanicsburg, O., Sept. 7, 1895; conversation with Major Joseph C. Brand, Urbana, O., Aug. 13, 1894. [176] Conversation with George W. S. Lucas, Salem, Columbiana Co., Aug. 14, 1892, when he was fifty-nine years old. He was remarkably clear and convincing in his statements, many of which have since been corroborated. Citizens of Salem referred to him as a reliable source of information. [177] Letter from George L. Burroughes, Cairo, Ill., Jan. 6, 1896. Mr. Burroughes said that Mr. Robert Delany, a friend from Canada, proposed to him that they both take an agency for the Underground Railroad. Delany took the Rock Island route and Burroughes the Cairo route.