Monument created by Cameron Armstrong on the campus of Oberlin College that symbolizes the emergence of the Underground Railroad in Ohio. No fugitive living in Oberlin was ever returned to bondage and has been referred to as "The Town that Started the Civil War."
“At least thirty well-defined free black communities were established between 1820
“The communities’ founders hailed from three sources.
“Some were men and women of mixed Native American, African and European ancestry who had been free for successive generations. Former landowners in North Carolina and Virginia, they migrated to the northern frontier in response to the Land Act of 1820. This Act made it possible for settlers to begin to populate the West and added to the confiscation of land from Native Americans.
“Others migrated after they were granted emancipation in the wills of former slave owners who purchased land in the area for the newly freed people to settle on. Free black settlements provided a haven for newly freed people as they learned to adapt to life and changing weather conditions in the North.
“Still other settlements were founded by liberty seekers in search of a safe haven”
(Jill E. Rowe. “In Strength & Struggle: Free Black Communities in the Old Northwest.” Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Paper presented at the Africa and the Atlantic World Conference, Kent State University. April 8, 2016.)
Antebellum Ohio has been portrayed as a center of sturdy abolitionists. However, it also harbored powerful anti-black sentiment. At their 1802 convention, Ohioans failed by only one vote to legalize slavery once they had rid themselves of the restraints of the Northwest Ordinance.
The Ohio River as it figures in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Toni Morrison's Beloved both feature key scenes of Kentucky slave mothers making dramatic escapes across the river with children in tow. In literary terms, the Ohio serves as the preeminent escape route for fugitive slaves and represents the most pronounced dividing line between North and South, and between freedom and slavery.
In Slavery's Borderland: Freedom and Bondage Along the Ohio River (2013) Matthew Salafia writes: “For most African Americans crossing it, it was not the River Jordan. Slaves who gained freedom by crossing the river soon discovered that there was “freedom” and there was “freedom.”
In his essay “Slavery and Freedom In The Early Republic,” Emil Pocock explains that “freedom” had shades of meaning in Nineteenth-Century America:
“White settlers held black adults and children, some of whom were former slaves, to involuntary labor north of the Ohio River as indentured servants. Other slaves brought across the river may have been coerced to remain under the control of their owners under threat of being sent back to a slave state. Some slaves may have voluntarily acquiesced in this arrangement by concluding that a life of labor in a free state was preferable to life as a slave south of the river, even though there may have been little actual difference in their condition. Nominally, free blacks may have found some benefit in living under the protection of a white family, even if this arrangement diminished their actual freedom.”
(Amil Pocock. “Slavery and Freedom in the Early Republic: Robert Patterson’s Slaves in Kentucky and Ohio, 1804–1819.” Ohio Valley History. The Filson Historical Society and Cincinnati Museum Center. Volume 6, Number 1. Spring 2006.)
From 1803 until after
the Civil War Ohio's Blacks had no more political or legal rights
than Native Americans or un-naturalized foreigners. This lowly and
impotent status resulted in Ohio’s Black Laws of 1804, 1807, 1831
and 1838. The Black Laws were a series of acts throughout the first
half of the eighteenth century designed to keep Blacks
in their
position of inferiority and subordination.
The official attitude of Ohio was:
Prohibit slavery in Ohio;
Keep Blacks out;
Degrade the condition of the Blacks in Ohio;
Permit slavery to continue in the South.
Blacks were required to carry proof of freedom at all times and to post a bond guaranteeing good behavior.
The Black Laws served as a constant threat. Although seldom enforced and repealed in 1849, they reflected white attitudes.
(Betty Culpepper. “The Negro and the Black Laws of Ohio, 1803-1860.” Master’s Thesis, Kent State University. June, 1965.)
Other restrictions applied limiting Blacks' basic rights. They were denied the right to vote, serve on juries and the militia, to hold public office, to testify against whites, and to be admitted to public schools, asylums and poor houses.
(Keith Griffler. Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. 2004.)
Whatever the individual states like Ohio decided, the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made it legally obvious that no slave became free simply by entering a free state. From almost the time Ohio was settled, the state became the hunting ground for slave catchers who earned rich rewards for returning runaway slaves to their Southern masters.
After 1805, Ohio became the great battleground for abolitionists and conservatives. By 1830 the struggle was in full swing. Still Ohio was dominated politically by people who did not want Blacks in the state. For three decades or more a highly organized secret Underground Railroad movement.
Huston Hollow –
Scioto County
Among the eight free Black settlements founded by migrating people in Ohio was Huston (Houston) Hollow/Clay Township in Scioto County – with origins in 1830, after approximately 80 persons of color were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio.
Nelson Evans, the author of A History of Scioto County, Ohio, called this deportation “Black Friday” in an account under the heading of “Relics of Barbarism.”
Evans' account reads:
”A Black Friday. On January 21, 1830, all the colored people in Portsmouth were forcibly deported from the town. They were not only warned out, but they were driven out. They were forced to leave their homes and belongings … The town authorities had been worked up to the point of agreeing to enforce the savage and brutal 'Black Laws' of Ohio.”
(Nelson Evans. A History of Scioto County, Ohio. 1903.)
Historian Andrew Feight, Ph.D., confirms Black Friday was actually the second recorded expulsion of African-Americans from the area. He wrote …
“The earlier expulsion having been lost to time, overlooked by Evans, is to be found in the records of Wayne Township, where Portsmouth was located at the time. Here, one finds the story of the 'first negro exodus' in the minutes of the Township Trustees. At their meeting on the 2nd of March 1818, the Trustees authorized a special payment to Warren Johnson, the township's constable. The treasurer was ordered to pay him '$4.18 for the fees in warning out blacks and mulatto persons of the township….' At the time, enforcement of the 'Black Laws' fell to the local police force, the township constable.”
(Andrew Feight, Ph.D. “The Origins of the African-American Community of Huston Hollow.” sciotohistorical.org.)
Several of the displaced African Americans formed clusters of farms and the community of Huston Hollow. Among the community's more prominent residents were the Love and Lucas families. Members of both of these families actively assisted runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad.
Huston Hollow remained small in size during its existence, averaging less than one hundred residents. By the mid 1900s, Huston Hollow had lost its identity as a separate community. With whites increasingly showing African Americans tolerance, many African Americans began to find acceptance in traditionally white communities.
(Henry Howe. Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes. Vol. II. Cincinnati, OH: C.J. Krehbiel & Co., Printers and Binders. 1902.)
$50 Reward
Ranaway from subscriber, residing in Danville, a negroman slave named ABSLAOM. He left Danville on last Tuesday, and was last seen near Lexington on Wednesday morning. Absalom is about 18 or 19 years old. about 6 feet 2 inches high, remarkable slender, light complexion. I will give the above reward for apprehension of said slave, if taken out of the state, and $50 is secured in any jail in Kentucky so that I get him. JOHN ERWIN Sept. 20, 1823 32-St (From the Scioto Gazette Chillicothe, Ohio )
Nearby Stops On the Underground
The last group of settlers that came to Ohio were small groups of free and formerly enslaved people. They migrated in small family groups. These communities expanded rapidly as they were very welcoming to formerly enslaved people and those seeking liberty. As was commonly the case in free black communities during this time period, they were highly rumored to be stations on the Underground Railroad. They were often located in conjunction with Quaker settlements.
(Jill Rowe. “In Strength & Struggle: Free Black Communities in the Old Northwest.” Conference Paper. Rural HIV/AIDS Emic Perspectives View project. Western Michigan University. April 2016.)
Eight settlements made up this group. They included Berlin Crossroads in Jackson County, Cherry Fork in Adams County, Carr's Run in Pike County, and the Hicks Settlements in Pickaway and Ross Counties.
Berlin Crossroads
Both free and formerly enslaved people lived in Berlin Crossroads in Jackson County, located near Jackson (on Highway 32, 7 miles east of Jackson).
It appears that most of the runaways that passed through Berlin Crossroads entered Ohio in Gallia County. After arriving at Berlin Crossroads, conductors helped the runaways to either Chillicothe or Washington Court House.
(“Berlin Crossroads, Ohio.” Ohio History Central.)
Family surnames in this community include Woodson, Nookes, Cassels, Webb, Wilson, Dyer, Brown, Mundale, Yancy, Leach, Kassells, Quarles and Wylie.
Among the more famous residents of this community was Thomas Woodson, a former slave of President Thomas Jefferson. While much evidence suggests that Jefferson fathered several children with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves, it does not appear that Thomas Woodson, although he was one of Hemings's sons, was a descendent of this liaison.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation commissioned a study into persistent rumors that Jefferson had multiple children with his slave Sally Hemmings. The foundation has found no documentation that Sally had a son named Thomas and 1998 Y DNA testing of samples collected from both Woodson's and Jefferson's male descendents determined that Woodson is not related to the Jefferson family.
(“Appendix K: Assessment of Thomas C. Woodson Connection to Sally Hemings.” Report of the Research Committee on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Thomas Jefferson Foundation. January 2000.)
Thomas and Jemima Woodson and their family left Greenbrier County, Virginia, for Chillicothe, Ohio, about 1821. There they participated in founding Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, the first independent African American church west of the Alleghenies.
In 1829 Woodson started a community of “very independent people” in rural Jackson County. By 1840 he owned 372 acres in a thriving settlement of nearly two hundred African Americans. One newspaper writer described the Woodsons as the most “intelligent, enterprising, farming family” in Ohio.
(John Q. T. King. “Thomas Woodson.” African-American Oral History Project. https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/thomas-woodson)
The Woodson brothers provided aid to anyone seeking a way out of slavery. Several people speculate that two of Thomas Woodson's sons were beaten to death for their activities on the Underground Railroad, but evidence is lacking to confirm this.
Of the Woodsons’ eleven children, three were ministers and five were teachers. Their descendants include many leaders in the fields of education, religion, law, and business.
Sarah Jane Woodson was the fifth daughter and youngest child of the eleven children of
Jemima (Riddle) and Thomas Woodson. Sarah was born free in Chillicothe, Ohio on November 15, 1825. She became an African American educator, author and feminist. For 30 years, Early was a teacher and school principal in Ohio, and in the South after the Civil War. In 1866 she became the first African American woman professor when she was hired by Wilberforce University to teach Latin and English.
The settlement prospered until the twentieth century. There was a hotel, post office, AME church and school there. A highway project demolished the farms and buildings. Only the Woodson Cemetery and a few houses remain.
By the mid 1900s, Berlin Crossroads had lost its identity as a separate community. With whites increasingly showing African Americans tolerance, many African Americans began to find acceptance in traditionally white communities. In 1970, construction of the Appalachian Highway resulted in the destruction of much of Berlin Crossroads, including the community's former school.
(Byron W. Woodson, Sr. A President in the Family: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and Thomas Woodson. Westport, CT: Praeger. 2001.)
Page from Thomas
Woodson family photo album open to picture of "James Cassell"
and "Frances Woodson, Daughter of Thomas Woodson"
Courtesy
Mary Cassells Kearney
Cherry Fork
Halfway between North Liberty and Youngsville on a fertile farm of nearly 300 acres was the home of Gen. William McIntire. The farm sat on Grace's Run east of North Liberty (Cherry Fork) & was known as "Station Number 3" on the route which began at Ripley.
William McIntire and his wife, Martha “Patsey” Sharp McIntire. were married April 2, 1828. They were parents of 11 children.
I'll tell more of Patsy in a while, but thanks to the Wilber H. Siebert Collection of the Ohio History Connection, I want to relate one incident at Cherry Fork from a clipping of the West Union Scion furnished by O.B. Kirkpatrick.
(“General William McIntire.” West Union Scion. Furnished by O.B. Kirkpatick. Cherry Fork, Ohio.)
Gen. Bill McIntire was from Virginia. He was described as a man of “Herculean strength” and a “famous hunter” It is recorded that the McIntires read Uncle Tom's Cabin and the book had a tremendous influence on them. Gen. McIntire considered slavery as the “greatest sin under the sun.”
“Being active, vigilant, and fearless as a lion,” Gen. Bill McIntire communicated his resolve to help runaways to his neighbor James Caskey, described as “a jovial Irishman” also from Virginia. Caskey became McIntire's assistant in the operation of the underground station.
At Cherry Fork, the McIntires would conduct slaves from Gen. Wm. McIntire's home to Joseph W. Rothrock at Mt. Leigh, north of Seaman, Ohio.
The fugitive slaves crossed at Ripley and were piloted to the farm of Daniel Copple in Liberty Township, where they were secreted and allowed to rest. Copple then helped them to Cherry Fork, where McIntire devoted so much time to helping the runaways that it was reported that he did little else but care for runaways for several years.” After all there were enough “stalwart boys” at hand to keep the farm operating and the crops “a-grow-ing.”
The recorded incident:
In the early fall of 1844, “three stalwart Negroes” came to the McIntires. The next morning, three aggressive slave hunters approached the farm and asked the the General if he had any negroes secreted in the house. When they wanted to search the house. McIntire told them no, unless they had the authority to do so, they could not enter.
The men then dismounted and signified that they intended to search the house. Their leader continued to move toward the door, and as the group covered the General with their revolvers, the intruder said did not care about any authority. “Damn the authority,” he reported replied.
Gen. McIntire then picked up his flintlock musket and ordered them to stop. By this time the whole household was up and Patsey was standing at her husband's back holding a bucket of boiling water.
Just as the leader started into the house, he was “met by a bucket of scalding water in face.” And, just in time, here came Caskey and two neighbors, the former armed with a four-pronged pitchfork. The hunters, seeing they were overpowered, “raised the flag of truce, mounted their horses, and took the back track for Kentucky.”
All three Negroes remained in hiding at the farm until fully rested, and then they were transported to the next station on the railroad.
After this, no other attempts were made. For ten years, the McIntire farm was a safe rendezvous for runaways. Just for safe measure, Patsey was said to keep a kettle of boiling water on the stove “as her only defense.”
In 1852 Gen. William McIntire died. Patsey continued to conduct the farm and raise the children with “the same vim and vigor her husband did.”
(“General William McIntire.” West Union Scion. Furnished by O.B. Kirkpatick. Cherry Fork, Ohio.)
Historical Note:
Nathaniel Kirkpatrick, who was born on a farm on Graces Run in Adams County, Ohio, became an active abolitionist, joined the efforts of the Abolitionist Party, and became a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Nathaniel helped conduct slaves from Gen. Wm. McIntire's home to Joseph W. Rothrock at Mt. Leigh, north of Seaman, Ohio.
Nathaniel Kirkpatrick's wife, Margaret Patton & Gen. Wm. McIntire's wife, Martha "Patsey" Sharp Patton were first cousins, their dad's being brothers. In later years, when Gen McIntire's home became too well known as a station by slave hunters; Nathaniel began using his home as a station.
About Martha Sharp McIntire
Martha “Patsey” was born April 5, 1810, at Tranquility in Adams County Ohio. She died February 2, 1890 at Cherry Fork in Adams County. Patsey was the daughter of Thomas Elder & Jane "Jenny" (Glasgow) Patton. Her anti-slavery views had deep roots.
Thomas Patton, Patsey's father, was a son of John Patton of Virginia. John Patton hated the institution of slavery, and had intended to remove from Virginia had he lived, but he charged his children to remove from a slave state, which they did. History records that “his descendants are very much the same type of man that he was himself; strong, prudent, economical, honest., careful, despising all sham and pretense, and hating oppression and injustice in every form.”
(Source 1: History of Adams County, Ohio - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers – West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900 - Page 806)
Patsey was described as a large strong-minded woman who detested the institution of slavery. Bill and Patsey allied themselves with those active in assisting fugitives on the Underground Railroad. Patsey's daughter, Jane (McIntire) wife of George A. Patton, of Harshaville told the writer of the book A History of Adams County, Ohio that many slaves had been sheltered in her father's home.
Links to Portsmouth:
Paul Howard Harsha (born August 19, 1859) was the son of Rachel McIntire and William Buchanon Harsha. Rachel was the daughter of General William and Patsey McIntire. Paul followed his father's occupation of milling at Harshaville, Adams County, where eventually he was in charge of the entire milling operations
Paul married Miss Ada Barnard of Cincinnati January 11, 1884. He resided at Harshaville from 1884 until 1892, when he removed to the city of Portsmouth, Ohio. In 1889, he formed a partnership with John P. Caskey, under the firm name of Harsha & Caskey, and built a mill in the east end of the city of Portsmouth. He was at Portsmouth from August, 1889, but did not remove his family there until April, 1892. He was the father of four children: Edith Armstrong, Elizabeth Lucille, William Howard, and Philip Barnard.
He and his wife are members of the Second Presbyterian Church in the city of Portsmouth. He had always been a Republican. He never held any pubic office except that of member of the City Council of Portsmouth, Ohio.
(History of Adams County, Ohio - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers – West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900 - Page 758.)
Elm Grove and Straight Creek
An Elm Grove abolitionist
maintained a lonely Underground Railroad station where he provided
safety for escaping enslaved persons. These fugitives were attempting
to travel the unfriendly route from Houston Hollow in Scioto County
to safe places in Ross where other conductors helped them on their
way to Canada.
At Straight Creek,
Christopher Brown, a former slave, conducted runaways to Chillicothe.
Brown opened his home to fugitive slaves. Slave catchers routinely
watched Brown and his family, hoping to prevent these African
Americans from assisting runaway slaves. Despite being watched, Brown
routinely succeeded in helping slaves escape.
(“Christopher Brown.” Ohio History Central.)
Brown was born in Maryland in 1806. His father was Elias Brown, a free African American. Brown's mother was Honor Mundel, a former slave, who was freed by her owner upon his death. Christopher Brown knew but very little of his father’s ancestors beyond the fact that his grandfather was a colored man, who was born somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., and his grandmother was a white woman. Hence, his father, Elias was born free, for the enactments of Maryland, as well as all the slave States, followed the Mosiac law, that is, “the child followed the mother.”
The Pike County Republican reported the following:
“In 1813, Elias Brown, Senior, left Maryland with his wife and five children, David then being a babe, with the intention of coming to the Scioto bottoms, where the Fosters, Lucases, Bowmans, Vanmeters, Dawsons, Moores, and other Maryland and Virginia families, their friends and acquaintances, had come on before.
“But when he arrived at Redstone Old Fort, (now known as Brownsville, in Fayette county, Pennsylvania) winter was coming on and he found himself not in a condition to proceed. So he crossed the Monongahela river, into Washington County, where he continued to reside eight years, and where Elizabeth, Elias and Charles were born. (Here, Christopher Brown found employment as a servant to relatives of South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. He also learned to read and write.)
“He (Elias, Senior) was an expert fiddler, and found ready employment and good pay at that art. When fiddling was not in demand he worked for the farmers. He was as good a harvester as he was a fiddler. At the end of eight years (February 1820) he left Washington county, and came to Pigeon Roost, in Jackson county, Ohio, accompanied by his son Christopher.”
("Life Among the Lowly: Christopher Brown.” Pike County Republican. November 20, 1873.)
In 1820, Christopher Brown and his father traveled to Pigeon Roost in Jackson County, Ohio, where Elias Brown purchased some Congress Lands from the federal government.
Point of trivia: Pigeon Roost took its name from the fact that immense numbers of pigeons used to flock there to roost.
Elias Brown returned to Pennsylvania to retrieve the remaining family members, leaving Christopher Brown with his maternal grandfather, Robert Mundel, along Big Run Creek, in Jackson Township, in Pike County, Ohio.
The family was reunited in 1821. Christopher Brown remained with his family until 1828, when he sought employment. Brown first worked for Joseph Foster, caring for livestock and a corn crop. For the next decade, he found employment as a farm laborer and as a worker on various boats on the Ohio and Scioto Rivers.
Historical Note:
There were five Foster brothers-Thomas, John, Joseph, Richard and Benjamin. The latter removed to Illinois. The others settled on the rich bottoms of the Scioto River in Ross and Pike counties. They were from Swan Pond bottom on the South branch of the Potomac river in Virginia. The Pike County Republican reports: John Foster was an exceptionally fine man, while all of them were of the first respectability. They lived many years where they first settled in these counties and died respected by their fellow citizens, leaving many children alike respectable and respected. They were true friends to the colored people.
Here is an account (complete with sentiment of the time -- sorry if the regrettable print offends) from the Pike County Republican article on the biography of Christopher Brown dated 1873:
“In 1828, Mr. Mundel got a situation for Christopher with Joseph Foster aforesaid, then an old man, where he remained several months at $6 per month feeding cattle and $7.50 during the crop raising season.
“After the corn crop was laid by Christopher was not particularly wanted any longer, so Mr. Foster paid him his wages and he returned to his mother’s. Up to this time he had only been to school three weeks, so when about 21 years of age, he went to school in that township in which he now lives to John Switzer about six weeks. His school-fellows were the Houks, Rhodeses, Lucases, Leeks, and other.
“It was a subscription school, and any one who paid his tuition fee was allowed to attend, whether white or black. The white people, in those simple times had not learned, as some of them have since, the deep disgrace they brought upon themselves by going to school with a “nigger”! (sic)
“In 1832 he went to school to Rev. Joseph Panly, who lived near where Samuel Brown now lived, on the Joseph Foster place, about one and a half miles from Sharonville. And this constitued the sum and substance of his schooling, with the exception, that when about ten years of age he was instructed on Sundays only by a woman with whom he was put to do chores. She was the wife of John C. Calhoun.”
“They lived in Washington county, ten miles from Elias Brown’s. He was a cousin to John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and a very clever, kind-hearted man, a merchant while, in some respects, his wife was a very virago. They were ex-slaveholders. She would ship Christopher half a dozen times a day, some days during the week, while on Sunday she was all kindness and instructed her young protégé out of the spelling and Sunday School books of her own children.”
("Life Among the Lowly: Christopher Brown.” Pike County Republican. November 20, 1873.)
In 1837, Brown purchased fifty acres of land along the Scioto River in Pike County. He married Nancy Jane Lucas in 1838, and the newlyweds farmed Brown's property for the next seventeen years. The Browns prospered, and in 1855, they sold their farm to John Pancake. That same year, Brown purchased more than one hundred acres along Straight Creek in Pike County.
Christopher and Nancy Jane Brown had born to them James Wesly, 1834; Rebecca Ann, 1840; Elias, 1841; Sarah Jane, 1844; Enoch and Charles Henry, twins, 1846; Hannah Frances, 1850’ Christopher, 1852; John C., 1855; Phillip, 1857; and infant son died without having been named, 1859; Ezra, 1862.
Besides farming, Brown became active in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1843, he was formally ordained as a minister and began to minister to a church in Pike County.
("Life Among the Lowly: Christopher Brown.” Pike County Republican. November 20, 1873.)
The Pike County paper relates another incident of interest involving Christopher Brown which occurred in 1841.
Seven slaves came to Jackson township on their way from Virginia and were hidden in the forests on the hills and in the caves of Jackson and Pike counties several days. But two of the slave masters were soon on their track accompanied “by a pack of two-legger Ohio hounds who gloried in the appellation of “nigger hunters.”
As they came through Jackson County, the slave hunters caught and whipped Rev. John Woodson, to compel him to tell where the fugitives were secreted. But he did not know, nor would he have told had he known.
Christopher Brown was informed of the fact. He was “closely watched by some of the hunters standing guard over his canoe one night, so that he might not help any one or more of the fugitives across the Scioto River.” But nonetheless, he did pilot one across the river that night, and passed him along the underground railroad toward Canada, “to which happy land he escaped.” Four of the seven were caught supposedly to have been betrayed by a man of their own color. The other two also escaped. This was only one of a great many similar scenes enacted on the soil of Ohio before and since that day.
("Life Among the Lowly: Christopher Brown.” Pike County Republican. November 20, 1873.)
Chillicothe
Four Underground Railroad routes went through Chillicothe. Two originated on the Ohio River at Portsmouth, Ohio, and followed the Scioto River on both sides of the river. These routes followed trails cut through the wilderness by Native Americans. The other two originated at Ripley and Gallipolis on the Ohio River.
The operators in Ross County included Presbyterians, Quakers, and free blacks. The free black community began assisting fugitive slaves as early as 1815. Churches that assisted in this endeavor were the First Baptist Church, an antislavery church, the Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the First Presbyterian Church.
Organized in 1798 by Reverend William Speer, the First Presbyterian Church is the oldest congregation in Chillicothe. Members of the church, led by Reverend Hugh S. Fullerton, hired a teacher to educate African American children in Chillicothe. Fullerton, an avowed abolitionist, encouraged his congregation to aid fugitive slaves as they made their way to Canada. The First Presbyterian Church was part of the Chillicothe Presbytery.
In 1836 the Chillicothe
Presbytery wrote to a sister church in Mississippi expressing
a
strong stand against slavery, thus making the Chillicothe
Presbytery a leader in the abolitionist cause in southern Ohio. Many
local Presbyterians were Underground Railroad operators.
Fugitive slaves were often sent in the wrong direction of the next destination to confuse slave catchers who sometimes did surveillance in Chillicothe.
Hicks (Stillguest) Settlement
Established in Ohio during the early nineteenth century, the Hicks Settlement, which eventually became known as the Stillguest Settlement, was a predominantly African American community.
Located in Ross County, the Hicks Settlement was located six miles to the northwest of Chillicothe. The community was named for Tobias Hicks, a former slave from Maryland, who settled in the area circa 1800. Hicks arrived from Maryland, possibly with his former slave owner, White Brown.
Eventually, a large number of African Americans, including many former slaves, arrived in the community, finding employment principally as farmers.
(“Hicks Settlement.” Ohio History Central.)
Upon Tobias Hicks's death, the community was renamed the Stillguest Settlement, in honor of Joseph Stillguest. Stillguest was a runaway slave. Tobias Hicks adopted Stillguest, raising him as his own son. Stillguest served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad and also opened his home to runaway slaves. He eventually moved to Urbana, Ohio, where he continued his Underground Railroad activities.
The Stillguest Settlement remained a vibrant community until the early 1900s. By this time, the settlement lost its identity as a separate community for African Americans. With whites increasingly showing African Americans tolerance, many African Americans began to find acceptance in traditionally white communities.
Despite the growing opposition to slavery by some whites during the early 1800s, communities such as the Stillguest Settlement illustrate the prejudice that existed in Ohio during the years before the American Civil War. Ohio was a state that did not allow slavery. Nevertheless, that did not mean that whites were open to granting African Americans equal rights. Free African Americans found that it was difficult to get fair treatment, and they often formed their own communities away from whites for protection.
Historical Note:
Charles Henry Langston (1817–1892) was an American abolitionist and political activist who was active in Ohio and later in Kansas, during and after the American Civil War, where he worked for black suffrage and other civil rights. He was a spokesman for blacks of Kansas and "the West.” Langston helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society and, with his younger brother John as president, led it as executive secretary. After the American Civil War, he was appointed as general superintendent of refugees and freedmen for the Freedmen's Bureau in Kansas. In 1872 he was appointed as principal of the Quindaro Freedman's School (later Western University), the first black college west of the Mississippi River. Charles was the grandfather of renowned poet Langston Hughes.
Langston gained his freedom in 1834 and in 1835 he and his brother Gideon were the first Blacks to attend Oberlin College in Ohio. Two years later established a school in Chillicothe, Ohio for Black children.
Oberlin College authorities encouraged the students to teach in public or private schools in Ohio during the threemonths vacation in the winter season. This policy enabled the students to earn some money and make the most of themselves as scholars and useful members of society.
(John Mercer Langston. From the Virginia Plantation to the National Capitol: Or The First And Only Negro Representative In Congress From The Old Dominion. 1894.)
During one of the winter breaks, Charles was called upon by a committee of blacks from a settlement near Chillicothe to advise with him as to the employment of a schoolteacher for the settlement during the winter. They offered to pay him ten dollars a month in cash and furnish board and room by living a week with each family patronizing the school. Charles, who had not reached his sixteenth birthday, agreed to teach the children of the all-black school, and it is recorded that everything in the school moved on to the entire satisfaction of all interested.
(“Charles Henry Langston and the African American Struggle in Kansas . Kansas History. https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1999winter_sheridan.pdf.)
Paint Hill Farm
Paint Hill Farm was another stop for fugitive slaves near Chillicothe. It was built in 1804 by George Renick, who had moved from Hardy County, Virginia in 1797 to a location in the Scioto River valley near Chillicothe. He first ran a general dry goods store in 18
By 1804 he began devoting all of his time to raising and breeding shorthorn cattle at Paint Hill while aiding fugitive slaves. Today, a flag at Paint Hill Farm commemorates his Underground Railroad participation.
Besides the Renick family at Paint Hill, others in the area who risked their lives harboring fugitive slaves were John R. Alston of the Carriage House; Albert Douglas of Tanglewood; Rev. William H. Beecher; the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe; the Steel family; and Thomas Silvey.
Another nearby settlement that aided fugitive slaves was the Grassy Prairies, located five miles northeast of Chillicothe. It consisted of Quakers who had originally moved from Virginia and then to Redstone, Pennsylvania before settling in Ross County in 1799.
(Tom Calarco, with Cynthia Vogel, Kathryn Grover, Rae Hallstrom, Sharron L Pope, and Melissa Waddy-Thibodeaux. Places Of the Underground Railroad: A Geographical Guide. 2011.)
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