politicized white abolitionists: Larry Gene Willey, “The Reverend John Rankin: Early Ohio Anti-Slavery Leader” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Iowa, 1976), p. 173; Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin, pp. 42–46.
“the cause is going on delightfully”: Friend of Man, October 6, 1836.
“a man of good intellect”: Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad, pp. 123–25.
the Gist settlement: Hagedorn, Beyond the River, pp. 12–13.
“We feel no prejudice”: Samuel S. Cox, Eight Years in Congress from 1857–1865: Memoirs and Speeches (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1865), p. 248.
the recapture of a fugitive couple: David K. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 8–10.
the story of a slave named Ike: Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad, pp. 123–25.
In many of the river communities: Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, p. 44; Griffler, Front Line of Freedom, pp. 42–52; John M. Ashley, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, July 1894, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH; Jesse P. Elliott, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 10, 1895, Siebert Collection; J. J. Minor, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, September 1894, Siebert Collection.
One of the most effective networks: Interview with George DeBaptiste, “Underground Railroad,” Detroit Post, May 16, 1870; interview with George DeBaptiste, Detroit Tribune, February 23, 1875; Chapman Harris: An Apostle of Freedom, Indiana Journal, January 31, 1880; Drusilla Cravens, pp. 2–39; Coon, “Southeastern Indiana’s Underground Railroad Routes and Operations,” pp. 185–89; “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County, Ind.,” typescript compilation of articles and transcribed notes (Madison, Ind.: Jefferson County Historical Society, n. d.); Diane Perrine Coon, “Great Escapes: The Underground Railroad,” Northern Kentucky Heritage 9, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 2–13; Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, IN, October 17, 2002; Jae Breitweiser, interview with the author, Lancaster, IN, October 17, 2002; Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad, pp. 116–19; Phil Cole, Historic Madison Madison, IN: Three Star Investments, 1995).
“My curiosity, then”: Cravens, “African-Americans in and Around Jefferson County,” p. 9.
it stiffened resistance: Ibid., pp. 19, 24–29; Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, Ind., October 17, 2002; Jae Breitweiser, interview with the author, Lancaster, Ind., October 17, 2002.
like Thomas McCague: Richard Calvin Rankin, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, April 8, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hagedom, Beyond the River, pp. 201–2.
Rankin focused his efforts: Willey, “Reverend John Rankin,” p. 236.
At least one of the Rankin boys: Richard Calvin Rankin, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Byron Williams, History of Clermont and Brown Counties, Ohio, (Milford, Ohio: Hobart Publishing Company, 1913), pp. 399–401; “Emancipationists,” Ripley (Ohio) Bee and Times, April 2, 1884; Hagedom, Beyond the River, pp. 81–83.
“The mode of travel: Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad, pp. 123–25.
The Rankins’ operation was no secret: Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin,” pp. 90–91, 78 ff.; Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin; Richard Calvin Rankin, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert; John Rankin Jr., interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, Rankin Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
When Calvin Fairbank landed: Fairbank, Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times, pp. 47–48; Randolph Paul Runyon, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), p. 10.
Lewis Hayden, who worked at: Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded (Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 1998), pp. 154–55; Runyon, Delia Webster, pp. 13–14.
Fairbank’s collaborator was: Fairbank, Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times, pp. 48–49; Runyon, Delia Webster, pp. 14–21; J. Winston Coleman Jr., Slavery Times in Kentucky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940), p. 143.
Fairbank was tried and convicted: Fairbank, Rev. Calvin Fairbank during Slavery Times, pp. 49–56.
During her imprisonment: Runyon, Delia Webster, pp. 46, 64–66.
This close to the Ohio: Philanthropist, May 14, 1839, and June 18, 1839; Isaac Beck, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Hudson, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad, pp. 123–25; “Dyer Burgess of Warren, Washington County,” biography in The History of Washington County, Ohio, pp. 486–87, excerpt in Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
John B. Mahan, a Methodist Minister: Philanthropist, December 18, 1838; Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin,” pp. 81ff; Hagedorn, Beyond the River, pp. 155 ff.
One Sunday evening: Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin,” pp. 105–9; Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin, p. 49; Hagedorn, Beyond the River, pp. 219–22.
rarely more than tantalizing shadows: Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin, pp. 47–48.
The most famous single fugitive: Rankin, Life of Rev. John Rankin, pp. 48–49; John Rankin Jr., interviews with Frank Gregg and Wilbur H. Siebert, Rankin Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Rankin, “Autobiography of Adam Lowry Rankin”; interview with Reverend Samuel G. W. Rankin, “The Story of Eliza,” Hartford Daily Courant, November 23, 1895; Hagedorn, Beyond the River, pp. 155 ff.
CHAPTER 11: THE CAR OF FREEDOM
the home of Levi and Catherine Coffin: Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1879), pp. 111–13, 147–50.
a pillar of the local establishment: Ibid., pp. 106–7; Daniel N. Huff, “Reminiscence of Newport and Fountain City and its Environs from 1830 to 1896” (unpublished manuscript, 1896), Friends Collection, Earlham College, Richmond, Ind.; Huff, “Unnamed Anti-Slavery Heroes” (unpublished manuscript, 1905), Friends Collection, Earlham College, Richmond, Ind.; “How Fugitive Slaves Were Aided,” Richmond Palladium, January 1, 1931.
a fluid web: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 111, 143; Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, pp. 41–43; Hurley C. Goodall, Underground Railroad: The Invisible Road to Freedom through Indiana as Recorded by the Works Progress Administration Writers Project (Indianapolis: Indiana Department of Natural Resources, 2000), pp. 43–44.
a new, pivotal kind of figure: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 113–18.
Coffin’s personal feelings: Ibid., pp. 159–60, 175, 183.
Coffin’s power could be deployed: Ibid., pp. 195–201; Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, p. 196; Huff, “Reminiscence of Newport and Fountain City.”
On another occasion: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 193–94.
“Here is where we keep”: Huff, “Unnamed Anti-Slavery Heroes.”
As time went on: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 224–30; Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, p. 198.
Once Frederick and Anna Douglass: Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” pp. 359–63; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, pp. 81–85, 94; Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar, pp. 287, 143; Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, pp. 47–49.
how he had been taken from his mother in infancy: Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” pp. 15–18, 21, 43, 74, 89; Robert F. Mooney, The Advent of Douglass Nantucket: Wesco Publishing, 1991).
Garrison followed Douglass: McFeely, Frederick Douglass, p. 88.
benefactor David Ruggles: Ibid., p. 97.
Douglass was not alone: Ripley, ed., Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, pp. 21, 24; Speech by Peter Paul Simons, delivere
d before the African Clarkson Association, New York, April 23, 1839, ibid., pp. 289–90.
Douglass knew what: Douglass, “My Bondage and My Freedom,” pp. 364–68; May, Some Recollections of Our Anti-Slavery Conflict, pp. 293–94.
an emerging generation: Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, pp. 26–33.
“opportunity to be himself”: Quarles, Black Abolitionists, p. 69.
Between 1836 and 1846: John R. McKivigan, The War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830–1865 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 107–8; Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, pp. 36–39; and 447, n. 1; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, p. 84; Mabee, Black Freedom, pp. 133 ff.
black newspapers, self-improvement societies: Quarles, Black Abolitionists, pp. 101–4.
“more than a figure of speech”: Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, p. 24.
“All the other speakers seemed tame”: McFeely, Frederick Douglass, p. 100.
The Douglasses, who: Ibid., pp. 93–94.
In the Spring of 1843: Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 665–75; Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 168; Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, pp. 41, 62, 100–3.
“This town is one”: Richmond Jeffersonian, reprinted in Free Labor Advocate, January 8, 1842.
Palladium sneeringly blamed: Richmond Palladium, January 1, 1931.
even racism among Quakers: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 230–33; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, p. 72; Hamm, Antislavery Movement in Henry County, pp. 8, 12, 22; McKivigan, War Against Proslavery Religion, pp. 44, 105–6; Barbour et al., eds., Quaker Crosscurrents, pp. 185–88; Child, Isaac T. Hopper, pp. 389–97.
when Frederick Douglass arrived: Douglass, “Life and Times,” pp. 675–76; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, pp. 109–12; Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, p. 129; Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 229; Charles Remond, letter to Isaac and Amy Post, September 27, 1843, in Ripley, The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 3, pp. 416–17.
routes were always in flux: Siebert, Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroad, pp. 47, 224, 180–81, 230; Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 119; R. S. Miller, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, April 4, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Joseph Patterson, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 19, 1895, Siebert Collection; Isaac Beck, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection; Hamm, Antislavery Movement in Henry County, pp. 25, 47–48; Charles M. Cummings, Yankee Quaker, Confedederate General: The Curious Career of Bushrod Rust Johnson (Rutherford, N. J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971), pp. 56–59.
At a reunion: Richmond Palladium, January 1, 1931; Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 113; Huff, “Reminiscence of Newport and Fountain City.” 231 By comparison: Diane Perrine Coon, interview with the author, Madison, Ind., October 17, 2002; Siebert, “Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroad,” pp. 226–27; Milton Kennedy, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, March 10, 1896, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
David Putnam, an underground man: Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, pp. 55–56.
Fugitives remained with station masters: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 113, 144, 153, 158, 168; Huff, “Reminiscence of Newport and Fountain City.”
For instance, John Todd: Coon, “Great Escapes,” p. 4; Siebert, Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroad, pp. 50–51, 63, 105, 141, 202.
Although railroads, steamships: Coon, “Great Escapes,” p. 5; “Token Used on the Underground Railroad in Indiana,” Toledo Blade, undated, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Joseph Patterson, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 19, 1895, Siebert Collection.
Coffin tried to keep a team harnessed: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 111–13; R. C. Hansell, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, undated, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; I. E. G. Naylor, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, March 27, 1896, Siebert Collection; Joseph Patterson, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 19, 1895, Siebert Collection.
a female fugitive was dressed: Siebert, Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroad, pp. 141, 158.
“They were very willing: Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 168.
“It often became necessary”: Eber Pettit, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad (Westfield, N. Y.: Chautauqua Regional Press, 1999), p. 41.
Isaac Beck of Sardinia: Isaac Beck, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, December 26, 1892, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
while Charles Huber: Siebert, Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroad, p. 63.
John H. Bond of Randolph: Thornbrough, Negro in Indiana, p. 197; James O. Bond, Chickamauga and the Underground Railroad: A Tale of Two Grandfathers (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1993), pp. 75–78, 83; Coffin, “Reminiscences”, pp. 178–86.
his new nickname: Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 190.
a brand-new language: Hagedorn, Beyond the River, p. 175; Coon, “Southeastern Indiana’s Underground Railroad Routes and Operations,” pp. 20, 196; Coon, “Great Escapes,” p. 5; “Old Uncle Joe Mayo,” Marysville (OH) Tribune, April 27, 1881.
The country’s first practical railroad: George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968), pp. 77 ff.; Buley, Old Northwest, vol. 1, pp. 510–12.
“I saw today”: Mark McCutcheon, Everyday Life in the 1800s (Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1993), pp. 70–71.
almost certainly apocryphal legend: Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, pp. 44–45.
Quite possibly: Elijah Pennypacker, Phoenixville Messenger, August 28, 1880; Village Record, Kimberton, Pa., February 2, 1831; Emmor Kimber and Elijah Pennypacker files, Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pa.; Smedley, “History of the Underground Railroad in Chester,” pp. 194, 210–11.
By 1840, about: Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, pp. 79, 346; Buley, Old Northwest, vol. 1, pp. 510, 513.
advised “to look around”: Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 175.
“Let the ministers and churches”: Sernett, North Star Country, p. 54.
“I have never approved”: Douglass, “Narrative of the Life,” p. 85.
Coffin made his first trip: Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 247–53.
CHAPTER 12: OUR WATCHWORD IS ONWARD
The next morning: Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life, pp. 129–30.
Henson began meeting: Ibid., pp. 140, 171.
The colonial authorities: Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (Cincinnati: Western Tract Society, 1879), pp. 252–53; John McLeod, historian at Fort Malden National Historic Park, Amherstburg, Ontario, interview with the author, June 8, 2003; Doris Gaspar, “Fort Malden Historical Study” (unpublished report, Fort Malden National Historic Park, 2000), pp. 16–19, 45; Colored American, February 27, 1841.
Henson thrived at Colchester: Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story, pp. 165–67.
a grander dream was taking shape: Ibid., pp. 140–43, 167.
Alexander Hemsley, once a slave: Statement of Alexander Hemsley, in Benjamin Drew, The Refugee: A Northside View of Slavery (Reading, Pa.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), p. 25.
Nowhere in the Northern: William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963), pp. 7, 10–11; Jason H. Silverman, Unwelcome Guests: Canada West’s Response to American Fugitive Slaves (Millwood, N. Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1985), p. 53; Winks, Blacks in Canada, pp. 154–55; Drew, Refugee, pp. 242–43.
“Tell the Republicans”: Hill, Freedom-Seekers, p. 67.
“Is not Upper Canada”: Colored American, June 22, 1839.
The law was color-blind: Hill, Freedom Seekers, pp. 50–51, 98, 109; Donald George Simpson, Negroes in Ontario from Early Times to 1870 (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 1971), p. 396.
In the 1820s: Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, pp. 192, 299–300; Winks, Blacks in Canada, pp. 149, 170–73; Silverman, Unwelcome Guests, pp. 37–40; Michael
Power and Nancy Butler, Slavery and Freedom in Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario: Niagara Historical Society, 2000), p. 52.
They were staunch supporters: John Kevin Farrell, “The History of the Negro Community in Chatham, Ontario” (thesis, University of Ottawa, 1955), pp. 35–36, 40–41, 60–63; John McLeod, interview with the author, June 8, 2003; Winks, Blacks in Canada, pp. 151–52; Hill, Freedom Seekers, pp. 118–21; John A. Collins, Monthly Offering, Anti-Slavery Office, 1840 (otherwise undated), pp. 51–55.
For years afterward: Victor Lauriston, Romantic Chatham (Chatham, Ontario: Shepherd Printing Co., 1952), pp. 163–66.
While living as a farmer: Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story, pp. 145–63.
A certain free black man: Frank H. Severance, Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier (Buffalo, 1899), p. 243.
“a bright and determined fellow”: M. C. Buswell, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, January 6, 1896, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.
One day in June 1841: Eliza’s return is recounted in John Rankin Jr., in his interviews with both Wilbur H. Siebert and Frank Gregg, in the Rankin Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Hagedorn, Beyond the River, pp. 213–14.
“We have no means”: Free Labor Advocate and Anti-Slavery Standard, Newport, Ind., March 8, 1841.
Unknown numbers also crossed: Severance, Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier, p. 231; George C. Bragdon, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, August 15, 1896, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio; Hildegard Graf, “The Underground Railroad in Erie County,” Niagara Frontier (Autumn, 1954), pp. 69–71; Rush R. Sloane, “The Underground Railroad of the Firelands” (address delivered to the Firelands Historical Society, Milan, Ohio, February 22, 1888), Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.
a steamboat captain named Chapman: Pettit, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad, pp. 42–43.
relied on trusted captains and crews: Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 264; Buffalo Daily Republic, August 19, 1854; Christopher Densmore, curator of the Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, email to the author, June 7, 2004; G. T. Stewart, “The Ohio Fugitive Slave Law,” Firelands Pioneer, July, 1888; Professor Hull, letter to Wilbur H. Siebert, April 2, 1907, Siebert Collection, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Horace Ford, interview with Wilbur H. Siebert (undated), Siebert Collection; John McLeod, interview with the author, June 8, 2003; Severance, Old Trails on the Niagara Frontier, p. 246.
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