Cass County is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 51,589. Its county seat is Cassopolis.
Schoolcraft is a village in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, United States. The village is located in Schoolcraft Township approximately 13 miles (21 km) south of Kalamazoo on U.S. Route 131. The population was 1,525 at the 2010 census. The village is named in honor of geographer, geologist, and ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft.
Levi Coffin 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 now a museum, sometimes called the Underground Railroad's "Grand Central Station".
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.
Thomas Garrett was an American abolitionist and leader in the Underground Railroad movement before the American Civil War. He helped more than 2,500 African Americans escape slavery.
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 Sweet Gum Stable, also known as Farmer's Feed and Supply, was located at the southeast corner of Main and W. Seventh Street in New Albany, Indiana. The property was a stop of the Underground Railroad, ten blocks west of another stop, the Town Clock Church, and a mere block away from the River Jordan for fugitive slaves, the Ohio River. The stable was built in 1877, and consisted of a balloon frame stable with an attached small brick and frame dwelling constructed about 1836. A feed store was added to the building in 1886. The structured measured 60 feet by 120 feet and encompassed the entire lot.
Rokeby Museum is a historic farm property and museum at 4334 United States Route 7 in Ferrisburgh, Vermont. The 90-acre (36 ha) property includes a 1780s farmstead, and eight agricultural outbuildings with permanent exhibits. Hiking trails cover more than 50 acres (20 ha) of the grounds. Rokeby is open from mid-May to mid-October each year. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 for its association with Rowland T. Robinson, a Quaker and ardent abolitionist who openly sheltered escaped slaves at Rokeby as part of the Underground Railroad. Robinson's extensive correspondence is an essential archive giving insight into the practices of abolitionists and the operations of the railroad.
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.
Appoquinimink Friends Meetinghouse, also known as the Odessa Friends Meetinghouse, is a very small but historic Quaker meetinghouse on Main Street in Odessa, Delaware. It was built in 1785 by David Wilson and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Members of the meeting, including John Hunn and his cousin John Alston, were active in the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman may have hid in the meetinghouse. Measuring about 20 feet (6.1 m) by 22 feet (6.7 m), it may be the smallest brick house of worship in the United States.
George DeBaptiste was a prominent African-American conductor on the Underground Railroad in southern Indiana and Detroit, Michigan. Born free in Virginia, he moved as a young man to the free state of Indiana. In 1840, he served as valet and then White House steward for US President William Henry Harrison, who was from that state. In the 1830s and 1840s DeBaptiste was an active conductor in Madison, Indiana. Located along the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, this town was a destination for refugee slaves seeking escape from slavery.
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.
Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts, began with the opposition to slavery voiced by Quakers during the late 1820s, followed by African Americans forming the antislavery group New Bedford Union Society in 1833, and an integrated group of abolitionists forming the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society a year later. During the era New Bedford, Massachusetts, gained a reputation as a safe haven for fugitive slaves seeking freedom. Located on the East Coast of the United States, the town was becoming the "whaling capital of the world", where ships frequently returned to port, operated by crews of diverse backgrounds, languages, and ethnicity. This made it easy for fugitive slaves to "mix in" with crew members. The whaling and shipping industries were also uniquely open to people of color.
Kentucky raid in Cass County (1847) was conducted by slaveholders and slave catchers who raided Underground Railroad stations in Cass County, Michigan to capture black people and return them to slavery. After unsuccessful attempts, and a lost court case, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was enacted. Michigan's Personal Liberty Act of 1855 was passed in the state legislature to prevent the capture of formerly enslaved people that would return them to slavery.
Wright Modlin or Wright Maudlin (1797–1866) helped enslaved people escape slavery, whether transporting them between Underground Railroad stations or traveling south to find people that he could deliver directly to Michigan. Modlin and his Underground Railroad partner, William Holden Jones, traveled to the Ohio River and into Kentucky to assist enslave people on their journey north. Due to their success, angry slaveholders instigated the Kentucky raid on Cass County of 1847. Two years later, he helped free his neighbors, the David and Lucy Powell family, who had been captured by their former slaveholder. Tried in South Bend, Indiana, the case was called The South Bend Fugitive Slave Case.
Elijah F. Pennypacker (1804–1888) was a politician, abolitionist and station master in the Underground Railroad in the United States, leading up to the American Civil War. He operated in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Pennypacker's home, White Horse Farm, was a safe house during the time that he participated in the Underground Railroad.
