It’s a common misconception that the majority of Underground Railroad conductors were white; while the names of these conductors tend to be the most well-known, the success of the Underground Railroad relied heavily on free African American conductors. Although Ohio was a free state, racist attitudes were prevalent in many areas and made the job far from easy.
From communities to single families, African Americans risked their lives to help slaves cross the Ohio River and make their way to freedom in Canada. Those who lived close to the border of Ohio were sometimes captured and taken into slavery by vengeful slave catchers, especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed. Others risked being attacked and beaten or even killed. Most of these individuals remain nameless, their stories lost or never recorded at all. Some rose to prominence, however, and their words have lasted through time.
Important Actors
One of these individuals was John Mercer Langston, born in 1834 as the youngest of four children and a free African American in Virginia. Langston was an abolitionist, attorney and politician. He was born to a slave owner father named Ralph Quarles and an emancipated slave who was a mix of Native American and African American heritage. Both parents died of unknown illnesses and John Langston and his other siblings were moved to Missouri and raised by William Gooch, a friend of their father’s.
At 14-years-old, Langston started school at Oberlin College, which was the first college in the U.S. to admit black and white students. He became the 5th black male to graduate from Oberlin. Langston went on to marry Caroline Matilda Wall, an emancipated slave from North Carolina. In 1855 Langston was elected town clerk of Brownhelm Township, which made him the first black elected official in all of Ohio. He assisted with the Underground Railroad alongside his brothers Charles and Gideon. He eventually moved to Washington, D.C. and helped establish the first black law school at Howard University and became the dean. John Mercer Langston died in Washington, D.C. on November 15, 1897.
Listen to a reenactment of an excerpt from John Mercer Langston’s speech “Equality Before Law.”
John Malvin
Malvin was born in Prince William County, Virginia in 1795 to a slave man and a free black woman. According to the Slave Code, a child born to a free mother was also free, so Malvin began his life free—but was later bound out to his father’s slave owner as an apprentice, which was not much better than slavery. He attempted to escape around 1812 but was not successful until the next year, when the slave owner died. Malvin began to learn carpentry from his father and, by low light, reading from an old slave down the road.
After learning to read, Malvin started preaching among the slaves. By 1827 he grew restless and decided to travel to Ohio with nothing but the clothes on his back and an extra shirt. Malvin was upset to find that, even though Ohio was a free state, the treatment of black people wasn’t much better. Part of this was due to the Black Laws, which did things like bar African Americans from serving as witnesses and on juries in court, deny attendance in schools and make intermarriage between races illegal. Infuriated by these laws, Malvin worked with other abolitionists to protest them.
Malvin planned to move to Canada and left his wife in Cleveland while preparing their new home, but when he returned to get her she was so attached to the city that they decided to stay. Early on he worked as a cook and a mill engineer but used his business skills to purchase a sailing vessel and became successful transferring limestone from Kelly’s Island. Malvin also helped form the First Baptist Church of Cleveland in 1833. He refused to allow segregated seating in the church, and he was successful in this endeavor. He also organized the first school for African Americans in Cleveland in 1832, developing a School Fund Society several years later to organize schools in other areas. He continued to vigorously fight against the Black Laws for the rest of his life, remaining in Cleveland until his death in 1880.
Listen to a reenactment of an excerpt from The Autobiography of John Malvin, which recounts the story of how he helped free slaves from a boat.
Charles Langston
Charles Langston, the brother of John Langston and grandfather to Langston Hughes, was born as a free man on a Virginia plantation in 1817. His father was the plantation owner and, when he died in 1834, Langston inherited a large part of his estate. He attended Oberlin College.
In 1858, a man named John Price was accused of being a fugitive slave and put in jail. Langston put together and led a group of white and black
abolitionists to rescue Price from authorities in what came to be called the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. Soon after the rescue, Langston was arrested for violating the
Fugitive Slave Act. He was convicted, but his conviction was so unpopular with the people in the area that he was freed before his sentence ended.
Langston was also active in anti-slavery groups and served as principal at the Columbus Colored School for two years before the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue took place. Later he moved to Kansas, where he campaigned for black suffrage before the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. He died in 1892.
The following audio is a reenactment of part of a speech Langston gave at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, where he was tried for violating the Fugitive Slave Act.
Elijah Anderson
Anderson was named the “General Superintendent” of the Underground Railroad by Rush R. Sloane. Sloane was an abolitionist in Ohio whose home is still a preserved station in Erie Country in Sandusky, OH. Anderson was a conductor who ended up helping hundreds of runaway slaves to freedom mainly from counties in Northern Kentucky.
Anderson was born a free person of color in Virginia and spent many of his years there. He was forced to leave because of restrictive laws that followed the Nat Turner Rebellion and he relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio. There, he married a woman named Mary and they had one child, Martha. He was a blacksmith by trade and owned his own shop.
He was very good at opening up secure routes for escaping slaves. He would even contact free African Americans and slaves on plantations to help him. He developed strong relationships with free blacks in various counties.
Thanks to Anderson’s connections with free blacks and white and black abolitionists, the system they had was going well. Soon after, a wealthy black abolitionist named John Simmons started working on the Underground Railroad and some of its major routes were compromised and captures started to increase. It is believed Simmons may have betrayed everyone in exchange for money. Anderson and other leaders reportedly beat Simmons and threatened to kill him. Simmons sued because of slander and this led to Anderson losing his property.
Anderson moved to different locations and established more routes to assist fugitive slaves. He was eventually charged and convicted of enticing slaves to escape. He died in prison of natural causes.
Listen to an excerpt about Elijah Anderson from The Ohio State University’s digital collection of Wilbur Siebert’s books The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom and The Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroads.
Other Important Actors
John Gee
Gee was born in Cincinnati in 1798 and spent his early years learning carpentry and horse handling skills. He moved to Gallipolis, a city by the Ohio River, around 1818. Gee became famous in Gallipolis for his building skills and, along with building sturdy and long-standing houses, also became the largest landowner in the town. Thanks to this, he was able to donate land for and help build the community’s first African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Gee, along with the church members, acted as conductors on the Underground Railroad. Their proximity to Virginia, a slave state, made the work especially dangerous. He died in 1865, although the church (today the John Gee Black Historical Center) and other buildings he built still stand.
Jame Poindexter
Born in Virginia in 1819, Poindexter moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1837 with his wife, Adelia. He attended the local black Second Baptist Church, but when a new black family joined that had previously been slaveholders, he and others withdrew and formed the Anti-Slavery Baptist Church. Poindexter led this church for ten years before rejoining the Second Baptist Church, which he was the minister of until 1898.
While in Ohio, Poindexter actively worked on the Underground Railroad and often supplied his own wagons and horses for those escaping to Canada. He also got involved in local politics, becoming the first black person to serve on the Columbus City Council, and was elected to the Columbus Board of Education later on. Poindexter died in February of 1907 after struggling with pneumonia.
Gammon Family
The Gammon family, consisting of George and Mary Gammon and their seven children, lived in Springfield, Ohio. They operated on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. Their oldest son, Charles, was also one of the first African Americans to fight in the Civil War. Part of the Massachusetts 54th regiment, he was killed during the war.
David Adams
Adams was born in Urbana, Ohio in 1827. As a child, he watched his father, a freed slave from Kentucky, and grandfather help escaping slaves—he recounts one story of his grandfather pretending to help slave catchers and, with the money they paid him, paying some fugitives’ way to Canada. When Adams grew up, he continued the tradition. He moved to Findlay in 1848 and reportedly helped more than 40 slaves on their way north, never transporting less than two at a time in his wagon.
James and Sophia Clemens
James Clemens founded Longtown, one of the first African American settlements, in Greenville, Ohio. He was a freed slave, married to Sophia Clemens, who is believed to be the daughter of Adam Sellers, James’s previous owner. James started a thriving farm business and grew the settlement by helping found a school, donating land for Wesleyan Church, and setting aside room for a cemetery. Longtown became a crucial stop on the Underground Railroad, and the Clemens became conductors.
Woodson Family
The Woodsons had been slaves of Thomas Jefferson, but were eventually able to buy their freedom. In the early 1800s, they moved to Jackson County in Ohio and established Berlin Crossroads. Thomas and his family were all conductors on the Underground Railroad, but three of his sons were more heavily involved. They would transport escaping slaves by hiding them under hay in wagons, acting as if they were going to the market.
According to family history, Woodson’s sons, Thomas Woodson Jr. and John, were killed at the hands of angry slaveholders. The brothers, refusing to give up information on slaves they had helped, both died from severe beatings six years apart from each other. Even after the brothers’ deaths, the Woodson family continued to help fugitives.
Sojourner Truth
Born a slave named Isabella Baumfree, Sojourner Truth was an African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist most famous for her speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” This speech was delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron in 1851.
Margaret Garner
Margaret Garner was a slave woman who gained national attention for killing her young daughter so she would not have to return to slavery. Garner and her family escaped from their owner in Kentucky, successfully crossed the frozen Ohio River and settled in the home of a black man in Cincinnati. Slaveholders caught the family and Garner killed one of her daughters with a butcher knife. She tried to kill the other children, but was unsuccessful. Her willingness to kill her children rather than letting them go back to slavery gained national attention and provided ammunition for many abolitionists.
Frederick Douglass
After receiving a suspicious email from Hudson, Ohio at his newspaper in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass was unsure of the intentions of the sender. He eventually accepted the invitation and gave the commencement speech at Hudson’s Western Reserve College, now home to Western Reserve Academy.