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The
Friends of Freedom Society Ohio Underground Railroad Association
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EventsOhio Underground Railroad Summit Tour Download/View a PDF version with registration form to print-out and send in.
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Key Sites: River-to-Lake UGRR Freedom Trail Markers: In the year 2000, U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater bestowed a federal "Millennial Trails" designation on Ohio’s network of escape routes for runaway slaves. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) took the designation one step further, designating portions of U.S. Route 23 and State Route 4—one of the most frequently used corridors on the Underground Railroad—as a commemorative highway to be known as River-To-Lake Freedom Trail. The River-To-Lake Freedom Trail generally follows the present day alignment of U.S. 23 from the Ohio River at Portsmouth, north through central Ohio. North of Marion County, the trail follows S.R. 4 to Sandusky on the shore of Lake Erie. Delaware County: Anti-slavery Stronghold Runaway slaves that traveled through Worthington on the road to freedom often made Delaware their next stop. The county served as home to hundreds of Quakers (The Society of Friends). Stations like the Gooding Tavern and Seven Oaks, originally called Oak Grove, served as an active station and still stands on William Street just west of the Ohio Department of Transportation headquarters. Morrow County was the home to the oldest meeting house in the county, the Alum Creek Friends Meeting House. This "monthly meeting" was founded in 1817. According to William Wade Hinshaw’s Encyclopedia of Quaker Genealogy, the monthly meeting, which helped establish the congregation in Marengo, was the Short Creek Monthly Meeting of Mount Pleasant in Jefferson County. There is a cemetery adjacent to the church where many of the prominent Underground Railroad conductors are buried. The members of this congregation, as is typical of Quakers possessed strong anti-slavery beliefs, and this meeting house was often the focal point for their activities. There are several UGRR stations still standing in the area. Lorain County is home to Oberlin College, the first interracial and the first coeducational college in the United States. On both the campus and in the town, strong anti-slavery activism prevailed and led to the "Oberlin-Wellington Rescue" in 1858, one of the events that helped crystallize public opinion about slavery and which built the national tension that resulted in the Civil War. The trial which ensued was held in Cleveland. Erie County and Ottawa County are the "rendezvous" counties where all the other trails from points south meet before conductors had to decide how and when the final leg of the journey to Canada would be made. The largest city in the North Central Region is Sandusky in Erie County. Many of the prominent citizens of that town were actively involved in sheltering, feeding, and clothing the fugitives that made it to Sandusky’s lakeshore. More importantly, the escaped slaves were given jobs and job-training in skilled trades in order to earn their passage to Canada and there was a large community of free blacks who lived in Sandusky to give them support. The UGRR at Omar Inn & Omar Chapel of Seneca County The Columbus-Sandusky Turnpike, now State Route 4, was a principal route on the Underground Railroad through Seneca County. In the county, runaways were hidden in the cellar of the Omar Tavern also known as Reed’s Tavern which was a brick, two-story stagecoach inn on a knoll south of Omar Chapel on the east side of the road. The UGRR in Crawford County According to Crawford County historians, nearly a third of the runaway slaves escaping into Ohio either came unassisted or were "conducted" through the county on their way to freedom in Canada. The county had numerous routes and conductors. Slaves could walk the "Kilbourne Road," (State Route 23), to State Route 98 and then on to State Route 4. |
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