The Downriver Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad Memorial,
Windsor, Ontario
By Kathy Warnes
Canada is a smudge on the horizon from the Downriver Detroit River shoreline. Islands punctuate the clear water with green exclamation points and Captain John Edwards chugs his steamer Arrow across the river carrying runaway slaves to freedom. A black man skillfully manipulates the oars of a skiff and a woman and a child huddle on the seat across from him. They stare at Canada, leaning eagerly toward the Canadian shore.
A man stands on the Ecorse shore of the Detroit River, cursing and firing his pistol. He shouts something about the damned ‘Old Man’ making off with his property. Dark hands ease a rowboat into the River while white hands push it. Behind them, lamplight glows in the windows of a log farmhouse. The Detroit and Downriver Underground railroad was one of the busiest sectors of the American Underground Railroad and an unrecognized, but tangible extension of the Railroad wound deeply into Canada after it had crossed the Detroit River. The travelers on the Underground Railroad also made more return journeys on the Downriver Underground Railroad than the history books record.
In operation roughly between 1840 an 1860, the Underground Railroad ran most effectively after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. This act empowered slave hunters to pursue fugitive slaves onto free soil and compelled law enforcement officials and bystanders to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves. It imposed fines and prison sentences on people helping fugitive slaves escape and resulted in countless efforts to kidnap fugitives who were living in the Northern United States or Canada and return them to the South
Slaves in Detroit and Downriver
In Detroit, slavery dates to the time of its 1701 founding, and generations before that, Native American peoples enslaved each other for various reasons. Burton’s list of the first settlers in Detroit’s First Directory includes several slaves, although the first mention of Negro slaves occurs when two of Louis Campau’s slaves are mentioned in 1736. Pierre Roy, possessed a Panis or Indian slave called Jacques who was 7 or 8 years old. Jean Richard, voyageur, owned Marie Jeanne, a Panis, slave who was about 15 years old. Mr. Moynier owned an Indian panis aged 12 to 14 years old who died on November 18, 1710. Joseph Paret owned an Indian Panis Joseph, called Escabia, who was about 22 years old. He died in January 1710.
Census documents of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries record varying numbers of slaves in Detroit and up and down the Detroit River, but firmly establish their existence. A 1762 census for Detroit reveals that 65 of the approximately 900 people living near the fort were African American slaves. Governor Henry Hamilton listed 78 female slaves and 79 male slaves in a later census.
By July 1832, approximately three hundred Negroes lived in and outside of Detroit, many of them runaway slaves. Most of them had found work, so they remained in Detroit instead of crossing into Canada and assured freedom. Many of them moved back and forth across the border as laws and slave catchers waxed and waned and opportunities for a better living and greater safety for themselves and their families fluctuated between Canada and the United States.
The Underground Railroad Travels Through Downriver
It is as difficult to document the journeys of the Underground Railroad in Downriver Detroit as it is its journeys across the country because of the necessary secrecy surrounding its operations, but since Detroit was a major Underground Railroad station, Downriver communities were involved because of proximity as well as Abolitionism.
The fact that the Detroit River flowing through the Downriver communities and the Detroit River is studded with islands like Bois Blanc, Grassy, and Fighting Island serving as rest stops for fugitive slaves and their pursuers made it a magnet for fugitive slaves. Before and during the Civil War, escaping slaves used Bois Blanc or Bo-Lo Island as station stop on the Underground Railroad route to Canada. They landed on the beach and rested for a few hours or a few days before continuing on to Amherstburg and new lives in Canada. Local tradition has it that fugitive slaves also used Fighting Island and Grassy Island as stepping stones to Canada.
Captains of Great Lakes vessels used a sextant, compass, The Big Dipper and the North Star as navigational guides and their moral compasses to determine whether or not to transport fugitive slaves. With the help of Great Lakes captains or in small skiffs, canoes, rowboats or anything that floated, fugitive slaves crossed the River to freedom. "Old Man" is a slang term for a captain and many of the"old men" of the Great Lakes vessels were Abolitionists and carried fugitive slaves to freedom. A smaller number worked to keep or return the fugitives to captivity.
Free African Canadians and fugitive slaves from America quarried stone near the town of Amherstburg, Ontario. Then black owned vessels shipped the stone blocks up the Detroit River to the Port of Detroit where they were put on another ship and carried to the site of the first Sault Ste. Marie Canal that opened in 1855. This canal allowed ships to move freely from one lake to another and began the transporting of Lake Superior iron ore to the Midwest.
Ships on the Underground Railroad
Black and white crewmen helped escaping slaves cross the lakes to freedom in Canada. George DeBaptiste of Detroit was one of the active conductors in the nautical Underground Railroad. Purchasing the steamboat T. Whitney in 1860, he ran between various Canadian ports and Detroit and later forged a direct link across Lake Erie between the ports of Sandusky, Ohio and Detroit. He made wood stops at the port of Amherstburg, Ontario. After the T. Whitney renewed its wood supply, it steamed out into the Detroit River and any fugitive slaves that happened to be on board were left at the dock to begin their lives in Canada.
The Pearl, a steamer plying between Amherstburg, Ontario and Detroit played an important part in the lives of many fugitive slaves, including John Freeman Walls and his white wife and her white children. Captain Christopher C. Allen, a native of Amherstburg sailed the Pearl as a wheelsman and a porter between 1859 and 1863 and piloted many runaway slaves on the Amherstburg docks to freedom.
"The Ward Line," a ballad from the traditional Great Lakes music collection at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan addresses the reality of black sailors. Copper and iron ore were shipped from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and other Lake Superior ports on wooden hulled ships that were loaded by wheelbarrow. This was a backbreaking job and freed slaves were used as laborers in Samuel Ward’s shipping company. They enjoyed a "free ride" while the ship sailed, but in port, they worked non-stop until the cargo was unloaded.
The Ward line of ships and their crews generally sympathized with fugitive slaves and carried them to Canada. Fittingly enough, Captain Eber B. Ward’s story begins in Canada where he was born in 1811. His parents had fled to Canada from Vermont in 1811 to avoid the consequences of the War of 1812, so Eber was born an American citizen. After moving around for several years, the Ward family finally settled in Marine City, Michigan.
From the time he could dog paddle, Eber Ward longed to sail on the lakes and luckily for him, his Uncle Samuel, the leading shipbuilder of Marine City, noticed and tapped his enthusiasm for Great Lakes shipping. Eber and Samuel Ward built and operated many vessels that traversed the Great Lakes and deposited fugitive slaves in Canada. Their vessels included the General Harrison, Huron, Detroit, Samuel Ward, Atlantic, Ocean, Arctic, Pearl, B.F. Wade, Planet and Montgomery.
Free black sailors and escaped slaves worked on Great Lakes ships and helped many fugitive slaves gain their freedom, and white vessel captains risked losing their ships to help runaway slaves, especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. General Reed’s boats stopping at Racine, Wisconsin, took fugitives without charging them a fare. The General owned five boats: the Sultana, the James Madison, the Missouri, the Niagara and the Keystone State. The Sultana was an 800-ton steamer built at Trenton, Michigan in 1847. Before it wrecked in 1858, the Sultana transported many fugitive slaves under the command of Captain Gil Appleby who died in Buffalo in 1867.
Fugitive slave James C. Brown and his family left Sandusky in 1829 aboard the Governor Cass and took her all of the way to Toronto. A shipping notice in the Detroit Gazette dated March 16, 1828, advertised the Governor Cass’s journey to Buffalo. The notice advised prospective passengers that the schooner Governor Cass- wind and weather permitting – would be at the wharf of Brooks & Hartshorn on the 23inst. And will sail for Buffalo in one or two days thereafter. For freight or passage apply to Brooks & Hartshorn.
The Forest Queen, the Morning Star and the May Queen running between Cleveland and Detroit carried many slaves to freedom. The Phoebus out of Toledo carried runaway slaves. These ships would stop at Malden on their way up the Detroit River and set the slaves free. William Wells Brown, a former fugitive, was employed on one of these ships. He would take the runaways aboard and deliver them from Cleveland to Canada without charging them a fare. His ship seldom sailed without first taking on a group of these fugitives who huddled together on a wharf on the Cuyahoga River. In 1842, he gave passage to 69 of them. Hubbard & Company, forwarding and commission merchants of Ashtabula, would hide runaways in their warehouses and send them across to Port Burwell at night.
Lake Erie and its many port cities provided one of the quickest and most friendly routes to Canada, particularly Buffalo and Detroit, because only the narrow Niagara and Detroit Rivers separated fugitives from freedom in Canada. Newspapers miles and states away often reported on fugitive slave traffic in Detroit. In 1859, a small town Wisconsin newspaper, the Oconomowoc Free Press, reported that the week of December 8, 1859, the Underground Railroad had brought 26 Negroes to Detroit.
A Riot in Detroit over Fugitive Slaves
Fugitive slaves departed from the Detroit waterfront to Canada every day, crossing the Detroit River on steamboats and small craft. There were many violent and heart rending scenes on the Detroit side of the River. One of them took place on June 14, 1833, when a riot erupted in Detroit. An escaped slave, Thornton Blackburn, and his wife had lived in Detroit for two years when in 1833, a slave catcher came to town and arrested them as fugitive slaves from Kentucky. They were brought before the justice of the peace in Detroit who ordered them jailed.
The next day, Sunday, June 15, 1833, the agent of the owner asked to have the slaves delivered. Fearing a riot, the sheriff refused. During the day many black people were permitted access to the prisoners, and one woman was allowed to remain in the cell with Mrs. Blackburn until after dark. Mrs. Blackburn exchanged clothing with the visitor and escaped.
In the meantime, a crowd of both black and white people armed with clubs, stones and pistols assembled around the jail and on the wharf where a southbound steamboat was anchored. A little before 4 p.m., the sheriff went to the jail where a carriage was waiting to convey Blackburn to the boat. He was hardly seated before the Negroes attacked. The sheriff tried to bring Blackburn back to the jail, but the Negroes rushed him, apprehended Blackburn, put him in a cart, and then on a boat to Windsor.
The Canadian authorities arrested Thornton Blackburn and put him in a Sandwich jail. The United States authorities requested that the Canadians return Mr. Blackburn to the United States, but they refused, eventually freeing him.
Reverend William Troy’s Memoirs
Windsor, Ontario across the Detroit River from Detroit and the town of Sandwich which adjoins Windsor, were the Promised Land for many fugitive slaves. In his memoirs Reverend William Troy estimated that about 800 fugitive slaves had settled in Windsor and about 500 had moved on to Sandwich.
One of Reverend Troy’s escaped slave stories narrates the journey of the Monroe family.The Monroe family, lived in Boone County in the state of Kentucky about forty miles from the Ohio River, and the family consisted of a mother, ten daughters and one grown son. The mother, an energetic and determined woman, discovered that she and her children were to be sold to the Deep South. She consulted her son about escaping to the state of Ohio and in October 1856, the family began the journey to the Ohio River. Reaching the River and crossing it safely in a small boat, they walked up the bank into the neighborhood of New Richmond, Ohio. While the son sought help to advance them in their journey, the master in Kentucky gathered a posse and posted a two thousand dollar reward.
The fugitive party traveled over the Underground Railroad to Ann Arbor, Michigan, but their master had arrived there before them. He had surmised that the slaves would try to reach Detroit. Discovering that they were being closely pursued, the fugitives immediately took the railway train directly to Detroit. In two and a half hours, conducted by their friends, they arrived on the bank of the Detroit River.
Discovering that his slaves had left Ann Arbor, the master followed the next train. At Detroit the slaves hurried to the ferry and stepped on board the steamer Argo, which transported them to the Canadian shore in fifteen minutes time. Reverend Troy described the master’s reaction: "The master was that very moment coming in full speed down Jefferson Avenue, Detroit, calling to the captain, "Stop! Stop! But the call only excited laughter among the few who knew the master’s errand."
Mrs. Monroe and her eleven children landed safely in Canada.
William Nowlin’s Fugitive Slave Story
Sometimes fugitive slaves used the Downriver Detroit route as an open ended highway to suit their social and economic needs. In an account of everyday life on the north branch of the River Ecorse near the Detroit River, Michigan pioneer William Nowlin discussed his source of farm hands. The oldest of five Nowlin children, William journeyed to Michigan with his parents, John and Melinda Nowlin, from what he considered civilized life in New York . William was born September 25, 1821, and family talk about migrating to Michigan began around 1832, with the family making the journey to Michigan in 1833-1843. They boarded the steam Michigan and arrived in Detroit in the spring of 1834.
From Detroit, William and his father John walked with guns on their shoulders to their new farm, one mile south of Dearborn. The next day his mother Melinda and the ret of the family reached the homestead and in one week, John Nowlin had built a "bark covered house" for his family.
One of William Nowlin’s most telling Ecorse River experiences happened when he married and was establishing his own claim along the Ecorse River. He hired three or four colored men from Canada to help him through his haying and harvesting and with other odd jobs around the Nowlin homestead. Two of the colored men kept their names to themselves and the names of the other two were Campbell and Obadiah. According to William Nowlin, Campbell was the older of the two men and trusty and dependable in all respects. Obadiah was a young man whose parents had died when he was a a child. He had a younger sister and brother and he wanted to keep them together and provide a home for them.
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law required northern men to help hunt down and capture runaway slaves, so William did not inquire too closely into the histories of the men who worked for him. Campbell later told William Nowlin the details of his escape from slavery, and William realized that the colored men were afraid that they would be arrested and taken back into slavery. They didn’t feel safe in working so far from Canada, but Nowlin’s attitude should have reassured them. He said, "I am sure if I had heard of his master’s approach or his agent’s, I should have conducted him, for the three, six miles through the woods to the Detroit River, procured a boat and sent them across to Canada, regretting the existence of the Fugitive Slave Law and obeying a higher law."
After William Nowlin had finished his haying and harvesting, the colored workers moved back to Canada, near Windsor.
Escaping to Canada
As Canadian citizens, former slaves forged new lives for themselves and often returned south to liberate relatives and friends. Militiamen returning from the Ontario raids of the War of 1812 advertised freedom in Canada. Dr. Alexander M. Ross of Canada toured the South, informing slaves about Canada and how to get there and encouraging them to escape. The slave grapevine in the South telegraphed the message "Escape to Canada."
Between 1793 and 1833, there was a considerable amount of Abolitionist sympathy in Upper Canada. On August 28, 1833, the British Parliament passed an act that absolutely abolished slavery in British North America. Once slavery had been abolished in Upper Canada and the United States had passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Canada became the Promised Land for countless slaves in the United States and the Underground Railroad flourished. Canada’s first major Abolitionist Society, the Upper Canada Anti-Slavery Society was created in 1837 and it drew members from Upper and Lower Canada. It also developed networks with other Abolitionists in the United States and Britain.
Henry Bibb, an ex-slave lectured on antislavery in Michigan and established a newspaper for fugitive slaves. He worked at menial jobs until 1844 and 1845 when he began lecturing in Michigan under the auspices of the Liberty Association, a political organization that promoted the election of anti-slavery candidates. A complete chain of persons who were organized for the relief and transportation of fugitive slaves stretched as far as the slave states and to America’s boundary oceans.
Henry Bibb began a newspaper for runaways that he called Voice of the Fugitive, first published at Sandwich and then at Windsor, Ontario. In the December 3, 1851, issue, Bibb wrote:
"In enumerating the arrivals of this week we can count only seventeen, ten of whom came together on the Express train of the Underground Railroad…a mother with six children and three men. The next day there came four men, the next day two men arrived, and then one came alone. The latter tells of having had a warm combat by the way with two slave catchers, in which he found it necessary to throw a handful of sand in the eyes of one of them; and while he was trying to wash it out he broke away from the other and effected his escape."
In order to aid the fugitives, the Liberty Association of Detroit organized a Refugee Home Society which bough a large tract of land near Sandwich, Ontario and helped settle nearly fifty families between 1854 and 1872. The passage of the American Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 inspired the Canadians to create their own legislation and in 1851 they established the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society. Its strength lay in the inter-racial collaboration between members of the Underground Railroad Refugee community, and establishment white supporters such as newspaper publisher George Brown, leaders of the Presbyterian Free Church and the Congregational Church and many members of Toronto’s growing business and professional community.
The first major wave of fugitive slaves to Canada crested in Essex County in 1817, because it was the easies and fastest location to reach from the United States. Underground Railroad terminals in Ontario included almost any ports on Lake Erie and the Niagara and Detroit Rivers as well as Amherstburg, Sandwich, Windsor, Owen Sound, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Toronto, Kingston, Brantford, Collingwood and Prescott. About twenty Underground Railroad terminals were located along the Lake Erie shore, the Niagara River and the Detroit frontier, particularly at Amherstburg, Sandwich and Windsor.
Fugitives also traveled by land and water to Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Brantford, Kingston and Prescott. Kingsville, Point Pelee, Port Stanley, Port Burwell and Long Point all received a goodly share of fugitive slaves. Many went up the Thames and filtered into the unsettled lands of Ontario West., but settlers in the 1830s tended to locate primarily along the Detroit River and Lake Erie shores. Hamilton and particularly Toronto drew fugitives looking for employment.
There were a score of refugee ports on the Ontario shore of Lake Erie from Windsor to Port Colbourne and Fort Erie. Sandwich and Amherstburg, being ports of call for all vessels going up the Detroit River became favored gateways to Canada. Anthony Bingley of Amherstburg said that when he went there to live in 1845, fugitives were arriving in companies of fifteen or more and that these numbers rose in the following years until it was not uncommon to see thirty of them getting off the lake vessels and ferries at this point.
An 1850 poem best captures the fugitive slave spirit of 1850:
I’m on my way to Canada that cold and distant land,
The dire effects of slavery I can no longer stand,
Farewell old master, don’t come after me,
I’m on my way to Canada where coloured men are free.
By the 1850s Ontario had six firmly rooted black communities: Central Ontario, (London, Queen’s Bush, Brantford, Wilberforce); Chatham (Dawn, Elgin); Detroit Frontier – (Amherstburg, Sandwich, Windsor); Niagara Peninsula (St. Catharine’s, Niagara Falls, Newark, Fort Erie); Northern Simcoe & Gray Counties (Oro, Collingwood, Owen Sound); and the urban centers on Lake Ontario (Hamilton and Toronto).
Building New Lives in Canada
The 1861 Upper Canada census recorded people of color in 312 townships and city wards, which made them one of the most widely dispersed groups in Ontario at the time. The largest number of black people concentrated in Kent and Essex counties and more than 1,000 were listed in the city of Toronto. Most of these people arrived in the mid Nineteenth Century waves of Underground Railroad immigration.
Historian Malcolm Wallace in his Pioneers of the Scotch Settlement stated that Negroes formed a substantial part of the early population of Essex. His figures are eye opening. He said that in 1846 there were about 174 blacks among the 985 inhabitants of Amherstburg and by 1860 the town contained 800 blacks and 1,200 whites according to the Report of the American Missionary Society.
Many of the refugees became farmers and small business owners. Wallace specifically mentioned the Walls family. He noted: "Perhaps the most picturesque Negro family on the Puce were the Walls. Mr. Walls had been a slave and when he fled to Canada he was accompanied by his master’s wife and three daughters. They had three sons, all of whom became successful farmers. Mrs. Wall’s white daughters grew up to marry Negro husbands."
Dr. Bryan E. Walls, an Ontario dentist, wrote a book about his family’s escape to Canada called The Road that Led to Somewhere. He was also instrumental in establishing the John Freeman Walls Historical Site and Underground Railroad Museum in Windsor, Ontario.
After the fugitive slaves settled in Canada they could not sink into comfortable obscurity and the anonymity of a pioneer society. Much the same as in United States history, some parts of the larger Canadian society regarded them with suspicion and hostility. Despite the freeing of the slaves in Canada and the efforts of Abolitionists, pro-slavery supporters and politicians anxious to avoid a backlash from fearful white voters gave the refugees a tenuous hold on freedom and prosperity.
Dr. Bryan Walls wrote that Canadians enthusiastically provided refugee for the black man but the black man still lived in a segregated society. He said that white prejudice prevented societal equality and concluded: "In the abounding democracy of the farm community the Negro hired help occasionally ate their meals with their white employers, though not always. Moreover, there was no objection to admitting an occasional Negro child into the white school. Beyond this the colour bar was fixed."
Many Canadians and Americans watched the former slaves closely to prove or disprove theories and prejudices about their ability to live and prosper outside of the bounds of slavery. The former slaves struggled to establish themselves, trying to quietly integrate into the growing urban centers of southwestern Ontario. By the 1860s attitudes of some Canadians toward blacks reverberated through Midwestern papers. The February 9, 1860 Chicago Times said:
"The Underground Railroad will soon have quite an acquisition to its business in return freight. The recent disturbances in Canada indicate pretty clearly that the Negro does not assimilate with John Bull. Won’t some of our representatives propose some feasible plan to dispose of the Negro? Canada is not a safe place any longer."
But despite the cultural, physical and spiritual obstacles, most of the former slaves successfully built new lives. Estimates of how many refugees took the Underground Railroad to Canada during the mid 19th century have varied considerably. Recent Canadian research says that of the more than 20,000 refugees that immigrated to Upper Canada, only about 20 percent returned to the United States during or after the Civil War.
In March 1860, enterprising Southerner C.L. Brown decided to encourage a reverse Underground Railroad from Detroit back to the South. According to the Detroit Free Press, Mr. Brown opened an office in Detroit offering assistance to Negroes who wished to return to their masters. The Free Press reported Mr. Brown as saying:"I have made such investigations in Canada especially at Chatham and other places where Africans most congregate, to satisfy me that large numbers of them are anxious and ready to return to their masters in the South if they only had the means. "
Mr. Brown proposed to furnish them with transportation tickets and to send an agent with them to approach slave owners for remuneration for his benevolence. He did not report any takers of his offer.
References
Books
Burton, Clarence M., Editor-in-Chief, The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922. Detroit-Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1922.
Clark, James I. Wisconsin Defies the Fugitive Slave Law. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1955.
Coffin, Levi. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad. Third Edition. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company, 1898.
Curtis, Anna L. Stories of the Underground Railroad. New York: The Island Workshop Press Co-op, Inc., 1941.
French, Gary E. Men of Colour: An Historical Account of the Black Settlement On Wilberforce Street and in Oro Township, Simcoe County Ontario, 1819-1849. Stroud, Ontario: Kaste Books, 1978.
Frohman, Charles E. Sandusky’s Yesterdays. Columbus , Ohio: The Ohio Historical Society, 1968.
Hill, Daniel G. The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada. Agincourt, Ontario: The Book Society of Canada, Ltd., 1981.
History of the Great Lakes Illustrated in Two Volumes, Volume II. Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1899. Reprinted by Freshwater Press, Inc. Cleveland, Ohio, 1972.
History of Waukesha County. Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1880.
Lyman, Frank H. The City of Kenosha and Kenosha County Wisconsin: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement. Vol. 1. Chicago: The S.J.C. Publishing Co., 1916.
Patridge, Charles A.., editor. History of Lake County. Chicago: Munsell Publishing Company, 1902.
Siebert, Wilbur H. The Underground Railroad From Slavery to Freedom. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1898.
Siebert, Wilbur. The Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroads. Columbus, Ohio: Long’s College Books Company, 1951.
Still, William. The Underground Railroad, Narrating the Hardships, Hair-breadth Escape and Death
Struggles of the Slaves in their efforts for Freedom. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1970.
Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2001.
Thornbrough, Emma Lou. The Negro in Indiana Before 1900. Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957.
Troy, Reverend William. Hair-breadth Escapes from Slavery to Freedom. Electronic Edition. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nen/troy/troy.html
Van Tassel. Charles Sumner. The Story of the Maumee Valley, Toledo and the Sandusky Region. Volume I Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1929.
Walls, Dr. Bryan E. The Road that Led to Somewhere. Olive Publishing, 1980.
Songs of the Great Lakes. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Memoirs of James M. Ashley. Second Chapter. James Ashley Papers. Canaday Center,Carlson Library, University of Toledo.
William L. Bancroft. Memoir of Captain Samuel Ward with a Sketch of the Early Commerce of the Upper Lakes. Michigan Pioneer Detroit and Historical Collections. Vol. 2, 1892.
Beeson’s Marine Directory of the Northwestern Lakes, 1911.
John Jackson Clarke, "Memories of the Anti-Slavery Movement and the Underground Railway." Typescript dated December 19, 1931. Clarke Papers, Oswego County
The Detroit, Michigan, Free Press, 1854
Detroit Free Press, 1860
Detroit Gazette, 1828, 1849
The Louisville Journal, 1854
Morning Journal, Loraine Ohio, 2001.
News-Dispatch, Michigan City, Indiana, 2004.
The Oberlin Evangelist, 1856
Oconomowoc Free Press, 1859.
Oswego Palladium, 1835, 1897,
Toledo Blade, 1845.
Wisconsin Free Press, 1861
Canada is a smudge on the horizon from the Downriver Detroit River shoreline. Islands punctuate the clear water with green exclamation points and Captain John Edwards chugs his steamer Arrow across the river carrying runaway slaves to freedom. A black man skillfully manipulates the oars of a skiff and a woman and a child huddle on the seat across from him. They stare at Canada, leaning eagerly toward the Canadian shore.
A man stands on the Ecorse shore of the Detroit River, cursing and firing his pistol. He shouts something about the damned ‘Old Man’ making off with his property. Dark hands ease a rowboat into the River while white hands push it. Behind them, lamplight glows in the windows of a log farmhouse. The Detroit and Downriver Underground railroad was one of the busiest sectors of the American Underground Railroad and an unrecognized, but tangible extension of the Railroad wound deeply into Canada after it had crossed the Detroit River. The travelers on the Underground Railroad also made more return journeys on the Downriver Underground Railroad than the history books record.
In operation roughly between 1840 an 1860, the Underground Railroad ran most effectively after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. This act empowered slave hunters to pursue fugitive slaves onto free soil and compelled law enforcement officials and bystanders to aid in the capture of fugitive slaves. It imposed fines and prison sentences on people helping fugitive slaves escape and resulted in countless efforts to kidnap fugitives who were living in the Northern United States or Canada and return them to the South
Slaves in Detroit and Downriver
In Detroit, slavery dates to the time of its 1701 founding, and generations before that, Native American peoples enslaved each other for various reasons. Burton’s list of the first settlers in Detroit’s First Directory includes several slaves, although the first mention of Negro slaves occurs when two of Louis Campau’s slaves are mentioned in 1736. Pierre Roy, possessed a Panis or Indian slave called Jacques who was 7 or 8 years old. Jean Richard, voyageur, owned Marie Jeanne, a Panis, slave who was about 15 years old. Mr. Moynier owned an Indian panis aged 12 to 14 years old who died on November 18, 1710. Joseph Paret owned an Indian Panis Joseph, called Escabia, who was about 22 years old. He died in January 1710.
Census documents of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries record varying numbers of slaves in Detroit and up and down the Detroit River, but firmly establish their existence. A 1762 census for Detroit reveals that 65 of the approximately 900 people living near the fort were African American slaves. Governor Henry Hamilton listed 78 female slaves and 79 male slaves in a later census.
By July 1832, approximately three hundred Negroes lived in and outside of Detroit, many of them runaway slaves. Most of them had found work, so they remained in Detroit instead of crossing into Canada and assured freedom. Many of them moved back and forth across the border as laws and slave catchers waxed and waned and opportunities for a better living and greater safety for themselves and their families fluctuated between Canada and the United States.
The Underground Railroad Travels Through Downriver
It is as difficult to document the journeys of the Underground Railroad in Downriver Detroit as it is its journeys across the country because of the necessary secrecy surrounding its operations, but since Detroit was a major Underground Railroad station, Downriver communities were involved because of proximity as well as Abolitionism.
The fact that the Detroit River flowing through the Downriver communities and the Detroit River is studded with islands like Bois Blanc, Grassy, and Fighting Island serving as rest stops for fugitive slaves and their pursuers made it a magnet for fugitive slaves. Before and during the Civil War, escaping slaves used Bois Blanc or Bo-Lo Island as station stop on the Underground Railroad route to Canada. They landed on the beach and rested for a few hours or a few days before continuing on to Amherstburg and new lives in Canada. Local tradition has it that fugitive slaves also used Fighting Island and Grassy Island as stepping stones to Canada.
Captains of Great Lakes vessels used a sextant, compass, The Big Dipper and the North Star as navigational guides and their moral compasses to determine whether or not to transport fugitive slaves. With the help of Great Lakes captains or in small skiffs, canoes, rowboats or anything that floated, fugitive slaves crossed the River to freedom. "Old Man" is a slang term for a captain and many of the"old men" of the Great Lakes vessels were Abolitionists and carried fugitive slaves to freedom. A smaller number worked to keep or return the fugitives to captivity.
Free African Canadians and fugitive slaves from America quarried stone near the town of Amherstburg, Ontario. Then black owned vessels shipped the stone blocks up the Detroit River to the Port of Detroit where they were put on another ship and carried to the site of the first Sault Ste. Marie Canal that opened in 1855. This canal allowed ships to move freely from one lake to another and began the transporting of Lake Superior iron ore to the Midwest.
Ships on the Underground Railroad
Black and white crewmen helped escaping slaves cross the lakes to freedom in Canada. George DeBaptiste of Detroit was one of the active conductors in the nautical Underground Railroad. Purchasing the steamboat T. Whitney in 1860, he ran between various Canadian ports and Detroit and later forged a direct link across Lake Erie between the ports of Sandusky, Ohio and Detroit. He made wood stops at the port of Amherstburg, Ontario. After the T. Whitney renewed its wood supply, it steamed out into the Detroit River and any fugitive slaves that happened to be on board were left at the dock to begin their lives in Canada.
The Pearl, a steamer plying between Amherstburg, Ontario and Detroit played an important part in the lives of many fugitive slaves, including John Freeman Walls and his white wife and her white children. Captain Christopher C. Allen, a native of Amherstburg sailed the Pearl as a wheelsman and a porter between 1859 and 1863 and piloted many runaway slaves on the Amherstburg docks to freedom.
"The Ward Line," a ballad from the traditional Great Lakes music collection at the Bentley Historical Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan addresses the reality of black sailors. Copper and iron ore were shipped from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and other Lake Superior ports on wooden hulled ships that were loaded by wheelbarrow. This was a backbreaking job and freed slaves were used as laborers in Samuel Ward’s shipping company. They enjoyed a "free ride" while the ship sailed, but in port, they worked non-stop until the cargo was unloaded.
The Ward line of ships and their crews generally sympathized with fugitive slaves and carried them to Canada. Fittingly enough, Captain Eber B. Ward’s story begins in Canada where he was born in 1811. His parents had fled to Canada from Vermont in 1811 to avoid the consequences of the War of 1812, so Eber was born an American citizen. After moving around for several years, the Ward family finally settled in Marine City, Michigan.
From the time he could dog paddle, Eber Ward longed to sail on the lakes and luckily for him, his Uncle Samuel, the leading shipbuilder of Marine City, noticed and tapped his enthusiasm for Great Lakes shipping. Eber and Samuel Ward built and operated many vessels that traversed the Great Lakes and deposited fugitive slaves in Canada. Their vessels included the General Harrison, Huron, Detroit, Samuel Ward, Atlantic, Ocean, Arctic, Pearl, B.F. Wade, Planet and Montgomery.
Free black sailors and escaped slaves worked on Great Lakes ships and helped many fugitive slaves gain their freedom, and white vessel captains risked losing their ships to help runaway slaves, especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. General Reed’s boats stopping at Racine, Wisconsin, took fugitives without charging them a fare. The General owned five boats: the Sultana, the James Madison, the Missouri, the Niagara and the Keystone State. The Sultana was an 800-ton steamer built at Trenton, Michigan in 1847. Before it wrecked in 1858, the Sultana transported many fugitive slaves under the command of Captain Gil Appleby who died in Buffalo in 1867.
Fugitive slave James C. Brown and his family left Sandusky in 1829 aboard the Governor Cass and took her all of the way to Toronto. A shipping notice in the Detroit Gazette dated March 16, 1828, advertised the Governor Cass’s journey to Buffalo. The notice advised prospective passengers that the schooner Governor Cass- wind and weather permitting – would be at the wharf of Brooks & Hartshorn on the 23inst. And will sail for Buffalo in one or two days thereafter. For freight or passage apply to Brooks & Hartshorn.
The Forest Queen, the Morning Star and the May Queen running between Cleveland and Detroit carried many slaves to freedom. The Phoebus out of Toledo carried runaway slaves. These ships would stop at Malden on their way up the Detroit River and set the slaves free. William Wells Brown, a former fugitive, was employed on one of these ships. He would take the runaways aboard and deliver them from Cleveland to Canada without charging them a fare. His ship seldom sailed without first taking on a group of these fugitives who huddled together on a wharf on the Cuyahoga River. In 1842, he gave passage to 69 of them. Hubbard & Company, forwarding and commission merchants of Ashtabula, would hide runaways in their warehouses and send them across to Port Burwell at night.
Lake Erie and its many port cities provided one of the quickest and most friendly routes to Canada, particularly Buffalo and Detroit, because only the narrow Niagara and Detroit Rivers separated fugitives from freedom in Canada. Newspapers miles and states away often reported on fugitive slave traffic in Detroit. In 1859, a small town Wisconsin newspaper, the Oconomowoc Free Press, reported that the week of December 8, 1859, the Underground Railroad had brought 26 Negroes to Detroit.
A Riot in Detroit over Fugitive Slaves
Fugitive slaves departed from the Detroit waterfront to Canada every day, crossing the Detroit River on steamboats and small craft. There were many violent and heart rending scenes on the Detroit side of the River. One of them took place on June 14, 1833, when a riot erupted in Detroit. An escaped slave, Thornton Blackburn, and his wife had lived in Detroit for two years when in 1833, a slave catcher came to town and arrested them as fugitive slaves from Kentucky. They were brought before the justice of the peace in Detroit who ordered them jailed.
The next day, Sunday, June 15, 1833, the agent of the owner asked to have the slaves delivered. Fearing a riot, the sheriff refused. During the day many black people were permitted access to the prisoners, and one woman was allowed to remain in the cell with Mrs. Blackburn until after dark. Mrs. Blackburn exchanged clothing with the visitor and escaped.
In the meantime, a crowd of both black and white people armed with clubs, stones and pistols assembled around the jail and on the wharf where a southbound steamboat was anchored. A little before 4 p.m., the sheriff went to the jail where a carriage was waiting to convey Blackburn to the boat. He was hardly seated before the Negroes attacked. The sheriff tried to bring Blackburn back to the jail, but the Negroes rushed him, apprehended Blackburn, put him in a cart, and then on a boat to Windsor.
The Canadian authorities arrested Thornton Blackburn and put him in a Sandwich jail. The United States authorities requested that the Canadians return Mr. Blackburn to the United States, but they refused, eventually freeing him.
Reverend William Troy’s Memoirs
Windsor, Ontario across the Detroit River from Detroit and the town of Sandwich which adjoins Windsor, were the Promised Land for many fugitive slaves. In his memoirs Reverend William Troy estimated that about 800 fugitive slaves had settled in Windsor and about 500 had moved on to Sandwich.
One of Reverend Troy’s escaped slave stories narrates the journey of the Monroe family.The Monroe family, lived in Boone County in the state of Kentucky about forty miles from the Ohio River, and the family consisted of a mother, ten daughters and one grown son. The mother, an energetic and determined woman, discovered that she and her children were to be sold to the Deep South. She consulted her son about escaping to the state of Ohio and in October 1856, the family began the journey to the Ohio River. Reaching the River and crossing it safely in a small boat, they walked up the bank into the neighborhood of New Richmond, Ohio. While the son sought help to advance them in their journey, the master in Kentucky gathered a posse and posted a two thousand dollar reward.
The fugitive party traveled over the Underground Railroad to Ann Arbor, Michigan, but their master had arrived there before them. He had surmised that the slaves would try to reach Detroit. Discovering that they were being closely pursued, the fugitives immediately took the railway train directly to Detroit. In two and a half hours, conducted by their friends, they arrived on the bank of the Detroit River.
Discovering that his slaves had left Ann Arbor, the master followed the next train. At Detroit the slaves hurried to the ferry and stepped on board the steamer Argo, which transported them to the Canadian shore in fifteen minutes time. Reverend Troy described the master’s reaction: "The master was that very moment coming in full speed down Jefferson Avenue, Detroit, calling to the captain, "Stop! Stop! But the call only excited laughter among the few who knew the master’s errand."
Mrs. Monroe and her eleven children landed safely in Canada.
William Nowlin’s Fugitive Slave Story
Sometimes fugitive slaves used the Downriver Detroit route as an open ended highway to suit their social and economic needs. In an account of everyday life on the north branch of the River Ecorse near the Detroit River, Michigan pioneer William Nowlin discussed his source of farm hands. The oldest of five Nowlin children, William journeyed to Michigan with his parents, John and Melinda Nowlin, from what he considered civilized life in New York . William was born September 25, 1821, and family talk about migrating to Michigan began around 1832, with the family making the journey to Michigan in 1833-1843. They boarded the steam Michigan and arrived in Detroit in the spring of 1834.
From Detroit, William and his father John walked with guns on their shoulders to their new farm, one mile south of Dearborn. The next day his mother Melinda and the ret of the family reached the homestead and in one week, John Nowlin had built a "bark covered house" for his family.
One of William Nowlin’s most telling Ecorse River experiences happened when he married and was establishing his own claim along the Ecorse River. He hired three or four colored men from Canada to help him through his haying and harvesting and with other odd jobs around the Nowlin homestead. Two of the colored men kept their names to themselves and the names of the other two were Campbell and Obadiah. According to William Nowlin, Campbell was the older of the two men and trusty and dependable in all respects. Obadiah was a young man whose parents had died when he was a a child. He had a younger sister and brother and he wanted to keep them together and provide a home for them.
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law required northern men to help hunt down and capture runaway slaves, so William did not inquire too closely into the histories of the men who worked for him. Campbell later told William Nowlin the details of his escape from slavery, and William realized that the colored men were afraid that they would be arrested and taken back into slavery. They didn’t feel safe in working so far from Canada, but Nowlin’s attitude should have reassured them. He said, "I am sure if I had heard of his master’s approach or his agent’s, I should have conducted him, for the three, six miles through the woods to the Detroit River, procured a boat and sent them across to Canada, regretting the existence of the Fugitive Slave Law and obeying a higher law."
After William Nowlin had finished his haying and harvesting, the colored workers moved back to Canada, near Windsor.
Escaping to Canada
As Canadian citizens, former slaves forged new lives for themselves and often returned south to liberate relatives and friends. Militiamen returning from the Ontario raids of the War of 1812 advertised freedom in Canada. Dr. Alexander M. Ross of Canada toured the South, informing slaves about Canada and how to get there and encouraging them to escape. The slave grapevine in the South telegraphed the message "Escape to Canada."
Between 1793 and 1833, there was a considerable amount of Abolitionist sympathy in Upper Canada. On August 28, 1833, the British Parliament passed an act that absolutely abolished slavery in British North America. Once slavery had been abolished in Upper Canada and the United States had passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Canada became the Promised Land for countless slaves in the United States and the Underground Railroad flourished. Canada’s first major Abolitionist Society, the Upper Canada Anti-Slavery Society was created in 1837 and it drew members from Upper and Lower Canada. It also developed networks with other Abolitionists in the United States and Britain.
Henry Bibb, an ex-slave lectured on antislavery in Michigan and established a newspaper for fugitive slaves. He worked at menial jobs until 1844 and 1845 when he began lecturing in Michigan under the auspices of the Liberty Association, a political organization that promoted the election of anti-slavery candidates. A complete chain of persons who were organized for the relief and transportation of fugitive slaves stretched as far as the slave states and to America’s boundary oceans.
Henry Bibb began a newspaper for runaways that he called Voice of the Fugitive, first published at Sandwich and then at Windsor, Ontario. In the December 3, 1851, issue, Bibb wrote:
"In enumerating the arrivals of this week we can count only seventeen, ten of whom came together on the Express train of the Underground Railroad…a mother with six children and three men. The next day there came four men, the next day two men arrived, and then one came alone. The latter tells of having had a warm combat by the way with two slave catchers, in which he found it necessary to throw a handful of sand in the eyes of one of them; and while he was trying to wash it out he broke away from the other and effected his escape."
In order to aid the fugitives, the Liberty Association of Detroit organized a Refugee Home Society which bough a large tract of land near Sandwich, Ontario and helped settle nearly fifty families between 1854 and 1872. The passage of the American Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 inspired the Canadians to create their own legislation and in 1851 they established the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society. Its strength lay in the inter-racial collaboration between members of the Underground Railroad Refugee community, and establishment white supporters such as newspaper publisher George Brown, leaders of the Presbyterian Free Church and the Congregational Church and many members of Toronto’s growing business and professional community.
The first major wave of fugitive slaves to Canada crested in Essex County in 1817, because it was the easies and fastest location to reach from the United States. Underground Railroad terminals in Ontario included almost any ports on Lake Erie and the Niagara and Detroit Rivers as well as Amherstburg, Sandwich, Windsor, Owen Sound, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Toronto, Kingston, Brantford, Collingwood and Prescott. About twenty Underground Railroad terminals were located along the Lake Erie shore, the Niagara River and the Detroit frontier, particularly at Amherstburg, Sandwich and Windsor.
Fugitives also traveled by land and water to Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Brantford, Kingston and Prescott. Kingsville, Point Pelee, Port Stanley, Port Burwell and Long Point all received a goodly share of fugitive slaves. Many went up the Thames and filtered into the unsettled lands of Ontario West., but settlers in the 1830s tended to locate primarily along the Detroit River and Lake Erie shores. Hamilton and particularly Toronto drew fugitives looking for employment.
There were a score of refugee ports on the Ontario shore of Lake Erie from Windsor to Port Colbourne and Fort Erie. Sandwich and Amherstburg, being ports of call for all vessels going up the Detroit River became favored gateways to Canada. Anthony Bingley of Amherstburg said that when he went there to live in 1845, fugitives were arriving in companies of fifteen or more and that these numbers rose in the following years until it was not uncommon to see thirty of them getting off the lake vessels and ferries at this point.
An 1850 poem best captures the fugitive slave spirit of 1850:
I’m on my way to Canada that cold and distant land,
The dire effects of slavery I can no longer stand,
Farewell old master, don’t come after me,
I’m on my way to Canada where coloured men are free.
By the 1850s Ontario had six firmly rooted black communities: Central Ontario, (London, Queen’s Bush, Brantford, Wilberforce); Chatham (Dawn, Elgin); Detroit Frontier – (Amherstburg, Sandwich, Windsor); Niagara Peninsula (St. Catharine’s, Niagara Falls, Newark, Fort Erie); Northern Simcoe & Gray Counties (Oro, Collingwood, Owen Sound); and the urban centers on Lake Ontario (Hamilton and Toronto).
Building New Lives in Canada
The 1861 Upper Canada census recorded people of color in 312 townships and city wards, which made them one of the most widely dispersed groups in Ontario at the time. The largest number of black people concentrated in Kent and Essex counties and more than 1,000 were listed in the city of Toronto. Most of these people arrived in the mid Nineteenth Century waves of Underground Railroad immigration.
Historian Malcolm Wallace in his Pioneers of the Scotch Settlement stated that Negroes formed a substantial part of the early population of Essex. His figures are eye opening. He said that in 1846 there were about 174 blacks among the 985 inhabitants of Amherstburg and by 1860 the town contained 800 blacks and 1,200 whites according to the Report of the American Missionary Society.
Many of the refugees became farmers and small business owners. Wallace specifically mentioned the Walls family. He noted: "Perhaps the most picturesque Negro family on the Puce were the Walls. Mr. Walls had been a slave and when he fled to Canada he was accompanied by his master’s wife and three daughters. They had three sons, all of whom became successful farmers. Mrs. Wall’s white daughters grew up to marry Negro husbands."
Dr. Bryan E. Walls, an Ontario dentist, wrote a book about his family’s escape to Canada called The Road that Led to Somewhere. He was also instrumental in establishing the John Freeman Walls Historical Site and Underground Railroad Museum in Windsor, Ontario.
After the fugitive slaves settled in Canada they could not sink into comfortable obscurity and the anonymity of a pioneer society. Much the same as in United States history, some parts of the larger Canadian society regarded them with suspicion and hostility. Despite the freeing of the slaves in Canada and the efforts of Abolitionists, pro-slavery supporters and politicians anxious to avoid a backlash from fearful white voters gave the refugees a tenuous hold on freedom and prosperity.
Dr. Bryan Walls wrote that Canadians enthusiastically provided refugee for the black man but the black man still lived in a segregated society. He said that white prejudice prevented societal equality and concluded: "In the abounding democracy of the farm community the Negro hired help occasionally ate their meals with their white employers, though not always. Moreover, there was no objection to admitting an occasional Negro child into the white school. Beyond this the colour bar was fixed."
Many Canadians and Americans watched the former slaves closely to prove or disprove theories and prejudices about their ability to live and prosper outside of the bounds of slavery. The former slaves struggled to establish themselves, trying to quietly integrate into the growing urban centers of southwestern Ontario. By the 1860s attitudes of some Canadians toward blacks reverberated through Midwestern papers. The February 9, 1860 Chicago Times said:
"The Underground Railroad will soon have quite an acquisition to its business in return freight. The recent disturbances in Canada indicate pretty clearly that the Negro does not assimilate with John Bull. Won’t some of our representatives propose some feasible plan to dispose of the Negro? Canada is not a safe place any longer."
But despite the cultural, physical and spiritual obstacles, most of the former slaves successfully built new lives. Estimates of how many refugees took the Underground Railroad to Canada during the mid 19th century have varied considerably. Recent Canadian research says that of the more than 20,000 refugees that immigrated to Upper Canada, only about 20 percent returned to the United States during or after the Civil War.
In March 1860, enterprising Southerner C.L. Brown decided to encourage a reverse Underground Railroad from Detroit back to the South. According to the Detroit Free Press, Mr. Brown opened an office in Detroit offering assistance to Negroes who wished to return to their masters. The Free Press reported Mr. Brown as saying:"I have made such investigations in Canada especially at Chatham and other places where Africans most congregate, to satisfy me that large numbers of them are anxious and ready to return to their masters in the South if they only had the means. "
Mr. Brown proposed to furnish them with transportation tickets and to send an agent with them to approach slave owners for remuneration for his benevolence. He did not report any takers of his offer.
References
Books
Burton, Clarence M., Editor-in-Chief, The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922. Detroit-Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1922.
Clark, James I. Wisconsin Defies the Fugitive Slave Law. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1955.
Coffin, Levi. Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, The Reputed President of the Underground Railroad. Third Edition. Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company, 1898.
Curtis, Anna L. Stories of the Underground Railroad. New York: The Island Workshop Press Co-op, Inc., 1941.
French, Gary E. Men of Colour: An Historical Account of the Black Settlement On Wilberforce Street and in Oro Township, Simcoe County Ontario, 1819-1849. Stroud, Ontario: Kaste Books, 1978.
Frohman, Charles E. Sandusky’s Yesterdays. Columbus , Ohio: The Ohio Historical Society, 1968.
Hill, Daniel G. The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada. Agincourt, Ontario: The Book Society of Canada, Ltd., 1981.
History of the Great Lakes Illustrated in Two Volumes, Volume II. Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1899. Reprinted by Freshwater Press, Inc. Cleveland, Ohio, 1972.
History of Waukesha County. Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1880.
Lyman, Frank H. The City of Kenosha and Kenosha County Wisconsin: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement. Vol. 1. Chicago: The S.J.C. Publishing Co., 1916.
Patridge, Charles A.., editor. History of Lake County. Chicago: Munsell Publishing Company, 1902.
Siebert, Wilbur H. The Underground Railroad From Slavery to Freedom. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1898.
Siebert, Wilbur. The Mysteries of Ohio’s Underground Railroads. Columbus, Ohio: Long’s College Books Company, 1951.
Still, William. The Underground Railroad, Narrating the Hardships, Hair-breadth Escape and Death
Struggles of the Slaves in their efforts for Freedom. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1970.
Switala, William J. Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania. Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 2001.
Thornbrough, Emma Lou. The Negro in Indiana Before 1900. Indiana Historical Bureau, 1957.
Troy, Reverend William. Hair-breadth Escapes from Slavery to Freedom. Electronic Edition. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nen/troy/troy.html
Van Tassel. Charles Sumner. The Story of the Maumee Valley, Toledo and the Sandusky Region. Volume I Chicago: The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1929.
Walls, Dr. Bryan E. The Road that Led to Somewhere. Olive Publishing, 1980.
Songs of the Great Lakes. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Memoirs of James M. Ashley. Second Chapter. James Ashley Papers. Canaday Center,Carlson Library, University of Toledo.
William L. Bancroft. Memoir of Captain Samuel Ward with a Sketch of the Early Commerce of the Upper Lakes. Michigan Pioneer Detroit and Historical Collections. Vol. 2, 1892.
Beeson’s Marine Directory of the Northwestern Lakes, 1911.
John Jackson Clarke, "Memories of the Anti-Slavery Movement and the Underground Railway." Typescript dated December 19, 1931. Clarke Papers, Oswego County
The Detroit, Michigan, Free Press, 1854
Detroit Free Press, 1860
Detroit Gazette, 1828, 1849
The Louisville Journal, 1854
Morning Journal, Loraine Ohio, 2001.
News-Dispatch, Michigan City, Indiana, 2004.
The Oberlin Evangelist, 1856
Oconomowoc Free Press, 1859.
Oswego Palladium, 1835, 1897,
Toledo Blade, 1845.
Wisconsin Free Press, 1861