The Underground Railroad was used by freedom seekers from slavery in the United States and was generally an organized network of secret routes and safe houses. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery as early as the 16th century and many of their escapes were unaided, but the network of safe houses operated by agents generally known as the Underground Railroad began to organize in the 1780s among Abolitionist Societies in the North. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The escapees sought primarily to escape into free states, and from there to Canada.
Salem is a city in northern Columbiana County, Ohio, United States. The population was 11,915 at the 2020 census. It extends into southern Mahoning County and is the principal city of the Salem micropolitan area. Salem was founded by Quakers in 1806 and played a key role in the abolitionist movement as a hub of the Underground Railroad. Once an industrial town, Salem is now a commuter town and regional economic center, home to Allegheny Wesleyan College and Kent State University at Salem.
Levi Coffin Jr. was an American Quaker, Republican, abolitionist, farmer, businessman and humanitarian. An active leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio, some unofficially called Coffin the "President of the Underground Railroad", estimating that three thousand fugitive slaves passed through his care. The Coffin home in Fountain City, Wayne County, Indiana, is a museum, sometimes called the Underground Railroad's "Grand Central Station".
Eleutherian College, founded as Eleutherian Institute in 1848, was a school founded by local anti-slavery Baptists at Lancaster in Jefferson County. The institute's name comes from the Greek word eleutheros, meaning "freedom and equality." The school admitted students without regard to ethnicity or gender, including freed and fugitive slaves. Its first classes began offering secondary school instruction on November 27, 1848. The school was renamed Eleutherian College in 1854, when it began offering college-level coursework. It closed in 1874 and its main building was used for a private normal school and then a public high school. It is now home to a non-profit group. The school was the second college in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains and the first in Indiana to provide education to students of different colors. The restored three-story stone chapel and classroom building was constructed between 1853 and 1856 and presently serves as a local history museum. The school was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997,
John Rankin was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and abolitionist. Upon moving to Ripley, Ohio, in 1822, he became known as one of Ohio's first and most active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. Prominent pre-Civil War abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were influenced by Rankin's writings and work in the anti-slavery movement.
The Coffin House is a National Historic Landmark located in the present-day town of Fountain City in Wayne County, Indiana. The two-story, eight room, brick home was constructed circa 1838–39 in the Federal style. The Coffin home became known as the "Grand Central Station" of the Underground Railroad because of its location where three of the escape routes to the North converged and the number of fleeing slaves who passed through it.
The Haines House is a historic house in Alliance, Ohio that was an Underground Railroad station.
The Benjamin Lundy House is a historic house at Union and Market Streets in Mount Pleasant, Ohio. It was home in 1820 to abolitionist Benjamin Lundy (1789–1839), where he established the influential anti-slavery newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation, one of the first anti-slavery publications in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in May 1974, and was included in the Mount Pleasant Historic District later the same year.
The John P. Parker House is a historic house museum at 300 North Front Street in Ripley, Ohio. It was home to former slave and inventor John P. Parker (1827–1900) from 1853 to his death in 1900. Parker was an abolitionist and a well-documented conductor on the Underground Railroad, helping hundreds of escaped slaves. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and it was further designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997. It is now owned and managed by a local nonprofit organization as a museum about Parker's life and the abolitionist movement.
The Mount Pleasant Historic District encompasses the historic center of the village of Mount Pleasant, Ohio. Founded in 1803 by anti-slavery Quakers, the village was an early center of abolitionist activity and a well-known haven for fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. The village center is relatively little altered since the antebellum period. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Districts in 1974, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005.
Ercildoun, population about 100, is an unincorporated community in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The hamlet was founded by Quakers and was an early center of the abolitionist movement. In 1985 the entire hamlet, including 31 properties, was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these properties two were vacant land, 14 were significant buildings, ten were contributing buildings, and five buildings, built in the 1950s, were non-contributing. The Lukens Pierce House, an octagon house listed separately on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, is located about half a mile northwest of the hamlet. Ercildoun is one of about ten hamlets in the township, which has no cities or towns, but has 31 sites listed on the National Register. It is one of the larger hamlets, located near the center of the township, and historically among the best known. The city of Coatesville is about 3 miles north.
The John Street House is a historic home in Salem, Ohio. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad in Indiana was part of a larger, unofficial, and loosely-connected network of groups and individuals who aided and facilitated the escape of runaway slaves from the southern United States. The network in Indiana gradually evolved in the 1830s and 1840s, reached its peak during the 1850s, and continued until slavery was abolished throughout the United States at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. It is not known how many fugitive slaves escaped through Indiana on their journey to Michigan and Canada. An unknown number of Indiana's abolitionists, anti-slavery advocates, and people of color, as well as Quakers and other religious groups illegally operated stations along the network. Some of the network's operatives have been identified, including Levi Coffin, the best-known of Indiana's Underground Railroad leaders. In addition to shelter, network agents provided food, guidance, and, in some cases, transportation to aid the runaways.
Jean Lowry Rankin (1795–1877) was an American abolitionist and pioneer in the anti-slavery movement. With her husband John Rankin she assisted 2000 slaves in their journey to freedom along the Underground Railroad. The Rankin family home on the Ohio River in Ripley, Ohio is now the John Rankin House State Memorial, owned by the Ohio Historical Society. Her son, Adam Lowry Rankin was a chaplain in the 113rd Illinois infantry Reverend Adam Lowry Rankin moved west after the civil war and founded the first church in Tulare California, the Church of the Redeemer in 1873.
Charles Turner Torrey was a leading American abolitionist. Although largely lost to historians until recently, Torrey pushed the abolitionist movement to more political and aggressive strategies, including setting up one of the first highly organized lines for the Underground Railroad and personally freeing approximately 400 slaves. Torrey also worked closely with free blacks, thus becoming one of the first to consider them partners. John Brown cited Torrey as one of the three abolitionists he looked to as models for his own efforts.
Lewis and Harriet Hayden House was the home of African-American abolitionists who had escaped from slavery in Kentucky; it is located in Beacon Hill, Boston. They maintained the home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and the Haydens were visited by Harriet Beecher Stowe as research for her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Lewis Hayden was an important leader in the African-American community of Boston; in addition, he lectured as an abolitionist and was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which resisted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
The Henderson Lewelling House, also known as the Lewelling Quaker Museum, is a historic building located in Salem, Iowa, United States. Henderson Luelling and his wife Elizabeth were among the first settlers in the Quaker community of Salem in 1837. They moved here from Henry County, Indiana, and Henderson moved his fruit tree nursery with him. This was Iowa's first commercial nursery. Henderson built this two-story stone house with Greek Revival details in 1843. The Lewellings were abolitionists associated with the Society of Anti-Slavery Friends, and his home is thought to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. The family left Salem for Oregon in 1847, taking the nursery with them.
Bartholomew Fussell (1794–1871) was an American abolitionist who participated in the Underground Railroad by providing refuge for fugitive slaves at his safe house in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and other locations in Pennsylvania and Ohio. He aided an estimated 2000 slaves in escaping from bondage. He was a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Fussell was an advocate for women serving as physicians, and he influenced the founding of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania. He worked as a practicing physician, including providing medical services for fugitive slaves.
The Rushville Historic District is a historic district in Richland Township, Fairfield County Ohio which bounds the original village of Rushville. The district is considered both historically and architecturally significant due to the preservation of many houses and commercial buildings representing a period from the 1820s to the early 1900s. It features examples of log construction, Gothic Revival, Federal, Italianate, and Queen Anne style architecture.
