OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 99 : Issue 872 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio - ["Maggie Stewart" that contains in the body of the message the command unsubscribe and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use unsubscribe in the subject, too. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #1 Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 15:16:11 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" > To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0db001bf53cb$e2142220$0300a8c0@local.net > Subject: Fw: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio and the UndergroundRailroad. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley > To: > Sent: Friday, December 10, 1999 11:54 PM Subject: Bio History-- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio and the UndergroundRailroad. *********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley *********************************************** Ohio and the Underground Railway-pt 2 The Beginnings-- Manasseh Cutler was born in Killingly, Conn., May 3rd, 1742 and died in Hamilton, Mass., July 28,1823. He worked on his father's farm and studied for college under Rev. Aaron Brown, before entering Yale, from which he grduated with honors in 1765. The following year he married Mary Balch of Dedham, Mass. After studing law, he was admitted to practice in Massachusetts courts in 1767. The next year he was licensed to preach at Hamlet parish, ( then a part of Ipswich and afterwards part of Hamilton), During the American Revolutionary War, he served as chaplain in Col. Ebenezer Francis's 11th Massacusetts Regiment. At the close of the Revolutionary War, he returned to preaching at Hamlet parish and soon began to study medicine. He was then able to attend to both the spiritual and physical welfare of his congregation. Not withstanding the many duties of his active life, he continued his habits of study and found time for research of astronomy, meteorology, botany and kindred sciences. He was the first to scientifically examine the flora of New England and over 359 species were examined by him and classifid according to the Linnaean system. As a scientist, he was second only to Benjamin Frankin. When the association of Revoluntionary officers was organized for the purpose of locating and settling on bounty lands in the West (Northwest Territory ). Dr. Cutler took and active interest in the movement. He was one of five officers appointed to draft a plan for the planned Ohio Company. In 1787, he was appointed by the directors of the Ohio Company as its agent to make the purchase of lands upon the Muskingum ( river in Ohio ). During this period he met and became friends with Ben Franklin since their tastes and pursuits were very similar. While Dr. Cutler's mission to Congress was to purchase land for the Ohio Co., the purchase was very much dependant upon the form of government that the territory adopted. He therefore became engaged in the writing of certain provision for the Northwest Ordinance that was before the U.S. Congress, concerning the nature of the goverment of the Northwest Territory. He was successful in uniting the discordant political elements and made possible the enacting of ( article 6) in the Northwest Ordinance which forbade slavery in the Northwest Territory. In December,1787, the first company of men under General Rufus Putnam, left Ipswich, Conn. and set out for the Muskingum, arriving at Marietta, Washington County ( Ohio) on April 7, 1788. The following year, Dr. Cutler started a twenty-nine day, 750 mile journey in his sulky, to visit the new settlement. He arrived in Marietta on August 19th, 1789. Dr Cutler was present at the opening of the first court in the Northwest Territory and marveled at the ancient Indian earthworks in the vicinity of Marietta. After a short visit with his son, Jervis, he returned to New England. For a while he contemplated removing with his family to the new settlement, but finally judged that it would require too much sacifice, and he abandoned the project. Dr Cutler's eldest son, Ephriam Cutler, was born April 13, 1767. He was brought up in Killingly, Conn., by his grandfather Hezekiah Cutler. He left Killingly,Conn on June 15, 1795 with three shares of stock in the Ohio Company lands, and arrived in Marietta, Ohio on Sept 18,1795. Sadly, two of his young children died on the trip. In 1799, he moved from Marietta to Waterford in Washington County. In Waterford he engaged a short while in the Merchantile business, then in May of 1799 Ephriam moved to an 1800 acre farm on Federal Creek, where he erected a mill. Shortly thereafter, Ephriam Cutler was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and Justice of the Peace, by the Northwest Territorial Governor, Arthur St.Clair. He as also appointed a member of the Northwest Territorial Legislature and in 1802 he became Washington County's delegate to the Ohio Statehood Constitutional Convention. His anti-slavery contribution at the Ohio Statehood Convention was his introduction of the section to the Ohio Constitution that excluded slavery in the State of Ohio. From this you can see that the Cutler's, Mannaseh and his son Ephriam played a big role in Ohio becoming a free state, which laid the track for Ohio's Underground Railroad. When Ohio became a State in 1803, Washington County already had a small but vocal population of anti-slavery advocates. As evidenced by events which occurred in 1793, the invention of the cotton gin and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Upper Providence of Canada abolishing its slavery. anti-slavery advocates realized that slavery in the United States was never going to end by negotiated emancipation. During the time period 1806-1810, Judge Ephriam Cutler informally began to enlist support from abolitionists across Ohio. With extensive contacts among Quakers and other anti-slavery advocates throughout Ohio, they established assistance for fugitive slaves crossing the Ohio River to avoid being apprehended under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. In 1806, Judge Ephraim Cutler established his family at a new home on the North bank of the Ohio River, six miles below Marietta at a community that became Constitution. His home became a staging area for fugitive slaves from across the Ohio River in Virginia. Subsequently, Judge Cutler's Underground Railroad Station at Constitution became the model for all the other Underground Railroad Stations that quickly located on the North side of the Ohio River. In Ohio an informal system of referring fugitive slaves northward to friendly havens, called safe houses, extended north across Ohio at ten to fifteen mile intervals. By 1810 settlers in Ohio were becoming increasingly aware of the brutalities of slavery as told and demonstrated by fugitive slaves. In 1820, Judge Cutler became a trustee of Ohio University at Athens, and worked unceasingly to promote the prosperity of that Institution. He was known as an advocate for common schools, introducing the first bill in Ohio for the regulation and support of schools. He was the author of the ad valorem system of taxation, which was the foundation of the credit enabling the State to build and maintain canals. He also was involved with duties for the Presbyterian Church. Judge Cutler died peacefully at his home in Constitution at the age of eighty-six, in 1853. Judge Cutler is considered one of the best examples of his day in the Underground Railroad. Because of his understanding of his and his father's principals, many fugitive slaves found their freedom in Canada. Many unselfish desires were manifested by the opening of many safe houses in Ohio, creating the beginning of emancipation. ********************************************* To be continued in part 3-- ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1999 15:19:55 -0500 From: "Maggie Stewart" > To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <0db701bf53cc$67b7dd40$0300a8c0@local.net > Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio and The UndergroundRailroad. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- From: kathi kelley > To: > Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 5:03 PM Subject: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio and The UndergroundRailroad. ********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley. *********************************************** Ohio and the Underground Railroad Pt 3 Cleveland and surrounding counties-- Clevelanders made contribution to the cause of the emancipation because of 2 geographic factors; the location of the city in the puritan New England environment of the Western Reserve, and its position on Lake Erie opposite the shores of Canada, destination of many hundreds of fugitives from the slave South. The village, town, and city that Cleveland became during the antebellum years did not wholly reflect the hard piety and humanitarium zeal for which the surrounding counties of Yankee settlers were long renouned. Instead, Cleveland was like most other fast growing northern centers of trade: crass, money-conscious, pragmatic, and chauvinistic about flag, work,and progress. Clevelanders were generally skeptical of plans to rearrange society, but like most northerners they had little regard for slavery as a system. In time they came to hate the slaveholder's arrogance and help for the slaves plight in America matched, if not exceeded, that of any other metropolitan center in North America, with exception of Boston and Toronto. Beginning with the Western Reserve, Cleveland has had interest of the plight of slavery. Ben was a fugitive slave, who spent several months in Cleveland in 1806. In the spring of that year, a small boat transporting a man named Hunter, his family, and Ben, was upset and driven ashore just east of Rocky River. Hunter, from Michigan, hoped to resettle in the Western Reserve. Ben was the only survivor; the others drowned or died of exposure. After 3 or 4 days, French trappers enroute to Detroit rescued Ben, returning to Cleveland and leaving him in the care of Lorenzo Carter. That October 2 men from Kentucky, one claiming to be Ben's owner. demanded to see Ben. Carter purportedly stipulated that Ben must consent to the meeting, which he did. As a precaution, Carter had Ben on one side of the Cuyahoga River and the 2 men on the other. The owner reportedly reminded Ben of his former good treatment and Ben consented to return to him. After the men, with Ben, left they were confronted in Independance by 2 men carrying rifles who ordered Ben to flee into the woods, which he apparently did. These men, John Thompson and Jas. Geer, were considered employees of Carter's. or at least frequenters of his tavern, so Carter was credited with arranging the affair. Unable to find Ben, the slave owners returned to Kentucky. For a while it was believed that Ben lived in a hut, either in Independence or Brecksville. He eventually made his way to Canada, and nothing more is known of him thereafter. If abolition gained few converts, less radical approaches took route along the Cuyahoga. Most important was the operation of the Underground Railroad. The completion of the Ohio Canal in 1832 enhanced the strategic importance of the city in this regard, though the numbers assisted to freedom, especially by whites, were far lower than legend long claimed. The belfrey of St John's Episcopal church was suspected to serve as an occasional hiding place. Others claim to a tunnel under the church that housed slaves. However that has never been proved. There was a tunnel, but what it's use was for, was unknown. Not until passage of the rigerously enforced Fugitive Law in 1859 were Clevelanders aroused to concerted action. Antislavery meetings drew crowds, particularly when fugitives told their dramatic stories of punishment, escape, and freedom. A typical meeting was held at the Disciple Church in Solon on the 17 and 18 of June 1847, where William Ferns. a fugitive slave of Oberlin, addressed the afternoon meeting. Such incidents, as well as the denunciations such as Joshua Giddings at Cleveland rallies, encouraged other wise law abiding citizens to defy the hated Fugitive slave law. In 1855, for example, Jas Adams of Big Kanawha, Va., fled with a cousin through Ohio, along a route used the previous year by 5 other fugitives from his neighborhood heading for Cleveland. A Cleveland antislavery clergyman, and than a white shoemaker, whom the black travelers met on the outskirts of town, arranged their passage to Buffalo and from there to Canada, Such assistance kept the antislavery cause very much alive, but it rested largely on personal difficulties with which one could identify, not on larger matters of polity and justice for the race as a whole. Cleveland's most dramatic signal of white protest against southern high-handedness grew out of the famed Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. Oberlinites mobbed a jail in nearby Wellington to rescue a fugitve, a long resident in their community. His name was John Price, who had escaped from his owner, John G. Bacon. He fled to Oberlin, Ohio to an underground station. Price lived there peacefully for two years until he was recognized by a neighbor of his former master. Bacon sent a slave catcher named Anderson Jennings to Oberlin, who, with assistants, lured Price out of town and captured him. The party traveled to Wellington, 9 miles south, and took refuge in the Wadsworth House, a local hotel. After the abduction was discovered, the people of Oberlin marched in silent procession to Wellington to free Price. An estimated 600 citizens surrounded the hotel, removed Price through one of the windows, and returned him to Oberlin. They hid him in the house of the future college president, James H, Fairchild: he eventually escaped to Canada. On Dec 7,1858, 37 Oberlin and Wellington residents were indicted for their part in Price's escape, as violating the fugitive slave law of 1850. They were arraigned in Cleveland by the U.S. District Court. The prisoners pleaded not guilty, and the trial was set for March 1859. Public opinion was with the indicted. The trial began on April 5, 1859. The defense was represented by Rufus P. Spalding, Albert G. Riddle and Seneca O. Griswold and the prosecution by George W. Belden. The first to stand trial was Simeon Bushnell and Charles Langston, an African American. They were found guilty, fined, and jailed. The rest of the cases were continued to the July Court term. Trainloads of people paraded around Cleveland's Public Square and delivered dozens of speeches of encouragement to the prisoners from a platform erected for that purpose. The jailed men wrote antislavery tracts and printed a newspaper, the Rescuer, during their 3-month term. The indictments were finally dropped and the men releasd. As Cleveland whites grew incresingly distressed about slavery and slave catchers. blacks became more militant. For instance, in Nov.1859 Deputy Marshall William L. Manson took into custody Henry Seaton, a Kentucky slave. Although the prisoner was returned to his master without incident, George Hartmen, who had betrayed Seaton by luring him into a trap, had to seek refuge from an angry crowd, finding safety only in a city jail. John Brown, a native of Hudson in neighboring Summit County, was the most famous beneficiary of Clevelander's pride in protecting the hunted from their pursuers. At the time of the Oberlin rescurers' release and celebration assembly, Brown sojourned in Cleveland 10 days, planning his assault on Harper's Ferry. There was already a price on his head for his Kansas guerrila activities and killings at Pottawatomie, but although he passed the federal marshall's office daily, no one tuned him in. As the Ohio canal Boatman, John Malvin and some church people cooperated in aiding fugitives, some local blacks, influenced in part by the record of race relations across the Canadian border, adopted the idea of emigration. On 24th of August 1854, the Negro Emigration Convention assembled in Cleveland to discuss plans for colonizing abroad. It could be said that the meeting was the birthplace of Black Nationalism---that is, a new consciousness of Afro-American culture. Indeed any final assessment of Cleveland's antislavery position must acknowledge that its racial reform tradition more than matched that of most other cities. With their ethnic diversity, cities such as Boston, Cincinnati, New York, and Philadelphia, and smaller places such as Utica and Rochester were sporadically torn by riots against blacks and abolitionists, a lawlessness that Clevelander's happily did not share. Whatever the failings of Cleveland's civic leadership regarding formal abolition may have been, the commercial climate of the port and the local in the heart of the Western Reserve made possible a relatively smooth transition from the era of slavery to the epoch of free-labor capitalism, to which Cleveland Blacks and Whites made their significant contribution. *********************************************** to be continued in part 4-- -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V99 Issue #872 *******************************************