The Franklin County Bicentennial Bell next to the exhibit about our Underground Railroad heritage.

Board #1: The Quakers of Mount Pleasant

· Thousands of Quakers left farms, livelihoods, kin, and meeting houses in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in the early 1800s to undertake a difficult seven-month trek, often on foot, to settle in Belmont and Jefferson Counties in Ohio to escape the evil of slavery.

· John Gill of Mount Pleasant attempted to establish colonies of silk worms to produce silk as a substitute for slave-labor cotton

Board #2: Tale of Two Cities: Putnam vs. Zanesville 

· The antislavery folks in Putnam and proslavery people of Zanesville often clashed, sometimes violently over the abolition movement in Muskingum County.

· Some Putnamites had to sleep with pitchforks in their beds to protect their homes from being torched by proslavery forces in Zanesville

· In 1838 one such conflict later called "The Battle of the Bridge" saved Putnam from being "burned to the ground" by an angry mob of proslavery residents of Zanesville

Board #3 One Former Slave became a Millionaire; Another wrote from Canada asking to return 

· Nelson T Gant of Zanesville, Muskingum County was a former slave who became a millionaire and a pillar of the community by dint of hard work and intelligence.

· A former slave by the name of Isaac Fairfax who escaped from Henderson Plantation in Virginia to Marietta, Washington County and on to Canada wrote write to his former slaveholder a year later for permission to return home!

Board #4 Grandsons of a president murdered defending liberty for all 

· In Pike County, the lives of two brothers named Woodson, both AME ministers and grandsons of a president, were cut short when murdered for their involvement in Underground Railroad

· Documented Underground Railroad tunnel still exists under the Paint Hill Mansion in Chillicothe, Ross County

· Many members of black churches in Chillicothe, such as the Quinn A.M.E. Methodist Chapel and 1st Baptist Church, were active in the freedom movement.

· The charcoal furnaces of the Hanging Rock area in Lawrence County served as refuges and a source of income for runaways from Virginia.

Board #5 A village of tunnels, Southern ministers against slavery; slave-holders hold absolute power 

· Springboro a Quaker village in Warren County has 27 documented Underground Railroad sites-many of them at one time were linked by tunnels.

· Presbyterian ministers who moved from the South to Adams, Brown, Ross, Fayette, and Hamilton Counties carried their first-hand exposure and hatred of slavery with them into Ohio. Many members of the Chillicothe Presbytery preached antislavery and assisted as conductors on the Underground Railroad.

· One such minister living in Fayette County related a tale of two slaveholders that he knew in Kentucky, the Lewis brothers-nephews of a president-who committed a horrific crime-dismembering an enslaved man and throwing body parts into the fire-just because they could.

Board #6: Legendary figures of the Underground Railroad 

· The Quakers of the large Alum Creek Settlement in Morrow County were a tightly knit antislavery group who had a reputation of "never losing a man" on the Underground Railroad. Some of them had $2,000 prices put on their heads by slaveholders thwarted in their attempts to retrieve runaways. One Quaker woman blew a warning on a conch shell when slave-catchers were near.

· William Hanby had been an indentured servant to a cruel master when he was a boy. His parents also had been indentured servants, tricked into harsh servitude for an additional number of years. A deep hatred of slavery burned within his soul and he helped all who sought his assistance at his house in Westerville, Franklin County.

Board #7: Respectable citizens risk imprisonment and loss of employment to help the enslaved 

· Fernando Cortez Kelton was a highly esteemed merchant in pre-Civil War Columbus, Franklin County. He and his wife also harbored runaways at their home including two girls, Martha, 10 and Pearl, 13 who fled bondage from Powhatan County, Virginia.

· The town of Hudson in Summit County endured a passionate clash of ideas in the early 1830s. The antislavery movement was being torn apart by a conflict between those who favored "immediate abolition" and those who supported gradual emancipation and relocation to Africa. Western Reserve College in Hudson witnessed a series of wrenching sermons and debates over these issues finally causing the conservative college trustees to fire the professors professing immediatism.

Board #8: Residents of Western Reserve request secession from slave-holding states 

· Towns in Ohio's Western Reserve, including Hudson and Kent of Summit County, were staunchly antislavery. Many residents were of the same radical mind-set as their neighbors Owen Brown, his children including John Brown, and his grandchildren.

· Residents of Stark and Portage Counties were so outraged by the Federal Government's resistance to abolish slavery that they submitted a petition to the Ohio's Legislature in 1846 "praying that Ohio secede from the Union with Slaveholders."