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    Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio
    Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio
    Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio
    Ebook147 pages2 hours

    Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio

    By Janice VanHorne-Lane

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    For slaves fleeing captivity, the Underground Railroad was the most viable means of escape, and with over three thousand miles of clandestine routes and secret trails, Ohio had the country's most extensive network of safe houses. A great number of these passageways were concentrated throughout the state's east central region, particularly the inland channels of Coshocton, Holmes and Guernsey Counties and the now-famous canal route, a major conduit winding through Tuscarawas and Stark Counties. Similarly, runaways sought refuge in the hills and valleys of Harrison County, as well as in the Quaker stronghold of Columbiana County. Using the letters of Wilbur H. Seibert, along with contemporary photographs of area safe houses, Janice VanHorne-Lane provides an intimate account of east central Ohio's profound contributions to the Underground Railroad and its mission, freedom for all.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateNov 29, 2010
    ISBN9781614232124
    Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio
    Author

    Janice VanHorne-Lane

    Janice VanHorne-Lane is a freelance writer and historian in Carroll County. She has previously written Carroll County: A Place to Call Home and Carrollton. Besides freelance writing, Janice volunteers with the Carroll County Genealogical Society and the Carroll County Historical Society. She is the mother of two girls and is happily married to Nathan S. Lane. When she's not writing, Janice is a Tastefully Simple consultant, a quilter and an avid scrapbooker. The Lanes have made Carrollton their home for nearly twenty years.

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      Book preview

      Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio - Janice VanHorne-Lane

      enjoy!

      INTRODUCTION

      Hide-and-seek is a game loved by nearly everyone and played by children of all ages, but when you are hiding for your life because those seeking you want to return you to a life of slavery, it is not fun and games. For many decades, namely the late 1700s and most of the 1800s, those who had been held as slaves sought their freedom. One way of doing so was to escape and make their way to Mexico, Cuba, Canada or elsewhere outside the United States. The route was so mysterious to the slave owners seeking to reclaim their property that it became known as the Underground Railroad.

      It is important to know that the Underground Railroad was neither underground nor an actual railroad. The terminology has several legends detailing how it came to be, but in the one told most often, a fugitive slave escaped from his master in Kentucky and made it to the Ohio River across from Ripley, Ohio. While the slave swam for his life, the owner searched for a boat in which to row after him. The slave vanished from view, and the owner searched to no avail. He eventually gave up and, in his frustration, concluded that it was as though the slave had gone off on an underground railroad. Whether this is true, the terminology stuck, and various railroad terms were soon associated with this system. The Underground Railroad was the route taken by fugitives.Conductors were the people who allowed fugitives to stay on their property. Stationmasters were those who simply aided a fugitive in his travels from one point to another.

      While the accepted term is Underground Railroad, magician seems to be a more accurate term. Magicians pride themselves in the art of misdirection. While the audience is looking one way, they are doing something else in the other direction. This seems to be what happened more often than not with fugitives. While slave hunters were searching one part of the house or property, fugitives were being escorted away in another direction. Upon seeing the homes from that time period and their massive amount of rooms, this would seem to have been quite easy. Typically, there were two or more staircases and often as many as five exterior doors in each home. Closets or secret areas may have simply been used as decoys to distract those doing the searching. No matter what it was called, we do know that slaves ran away, and there were many people who felt the moral obligation to help.

      It is important to remember that it was not just rich white men who were conductors. Often, women, children and freed slaves were just as involved. Many fugitives felt safer approaching someone of their own background, but it soon became common to seek out those of the Quaker faith. Their recognizable clothes not only let fugitives know who they were but also worked as a disguise in many instances.

      Many of the homes still standing were built by those of the Quaker faith who came to settle Ohio. The industrial age that followed the Civil War led to rapid urban development, and during this time many of the Underground Railroad sites were torn down.

      Since the time of the Underground Railroad’s operation, many stories have been perpetuated about the places and people who were involved. Nearly two hundred years later, it is almost impossible to know for certain whether a house, barn, cave or other building was truly a hiding place for those seeking their freedom. The first thing to take into consideration is the year the site was built. Anything built after 1865 would not have been used, as there was no need for hiding once the Thirteenth Amendment gave slaves their freedom. If a house was built after that time, it is more likely that it was involved in Prohibition.

      Another indication is proximity to known routes. Many communities have at least one place that has been historically identified for involvement. Using these sites and maps from the early 1800s as guides, it is possible to determine where the routes were located.

      The next indicator of legitimate involvement is the way a place was built; secret staircases, rooms accessible only by secret doors or tunnels dug to other locations are a few clues. Many houses known to have been involved have similarities in their architecture, mainly from being built in the same time period. Yet without the operators of that time here to tell us, it is all speculation.

      Because of the nature of the Underground Railroad, many operators kept no records and seldom involved even their own families. The less that was known, the safer it was. Once the Underground Railroad ceased, many were still afraid to share their involvement. In the 1890s, a history professor from Ohio State University named Wilbur H. Siebert took it upon himself to collect what he could to interest his students in history. Mr. Siebert sent a questionnaire to the families of his students. The responses from that questionnaire led to connections. This research helped verify and preserve the Underground Railroad for future generations, as well as determining the involvement, or lack thereof, of particular individuals. Today, those responses are being preserved by the Ohio Historical Society and are accessible for a fee.

      Armed with the knowledge from those letters, talking to local citizens and viewing many of the homes, it was possible for me to write this book. While it is not exhaustive, it will give the reader a good idea of where the Underground Railroad stations were in eastern Ohio. A few are on historical registries, and some are purely speculative. I will leave it to you, the reader, to determine whether these places were truly a part of such a bold enterprise. I present you with the facts as they were presented to me and hope that you enjoy discovering something about the places around us as much as I did.

      I leave you with the following thought from one of the conductors, Joseph H. Cope, in his letter to Professor Siebert: Could the history of the Road be written in full what a volume it would be. What a strange commingling of the tragic, pathetic and romantic, truth stranger than fiction, fact more marvelous than fancy.

      CROSSING THE RIVER TO FREEDOM

      It is easy to forget now, but before 1863 there was no West Virginia, only Virginia, and Virginia was a slave state. Virginia was also only two and a half miles across the river from Ohio, a free state declared so by the Land Ordinance of 1787, which forbid slavery northwest of the Ohio River. Because of the proximity, fugitive slaves often headed for the Ohio River and the free soil in Ohio. Just because a fugitive or freed slave made it to a free state did not mean he was completely free. He could still be forcibly returned to his owners.

      Some slaves managed to escape on their own, while others received assistance from sympathetic Northerners. When Ohio was formed in 1803, it was set in the state constitution that no man should own another. This was fine for those who lived in the state, but for the slave owners in Virginia and Kentucky, it was a problem. So in 1850, a law was passed called the Fugitive Slave Law, which stated that anyone who found a fugitive must return the fugitive to its owner. If a person were caught not doing so, he would face up to six months of imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. This only strengthened the resolve of the people who felt that slavery was wrong and made them work harder at keeping their secret.

      The Fugitive Slave Law created five sects of people: the slaves who were content or afraid to leave, the fugitives, the slave owners, the antislavery sympathizers and those who felt slavery was wrong but that they must uphold the law. To the sympathizers, the law of the federal government was not as strong as the law of God, and they would use Deuteronomy 23:15—"Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place in which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress

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