James Hunt home photograph   Save
Underground Railroad Collection
Description: Photograph showing a house that was once used as a "station" on the Underground Railroad. The description on the back of the photograph reads: "James Hunt home on East Sandusky Street." The Underground Railroad was a system of safe houses and hiding places that helped fugitive slaves escape to freedom in Canada, Mexico, and elsewhere outside of the United States. White and African American "conductors" served as guides from place to place for those seeking their freedom. It remains unclear when the Underground Railroad began, but members of the Society of Friends, who were also known as the Quakers, were actively assisting fugitive slaves as early as the 1780s. Once they arrived in Ohio, some former slaves decided to remain in the state. They usually settled in neighborhoods with other African Americans. Many runaway slaves continued on to Canada. At least eight cities, including Ashtabula, Painesville, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Huron, Lorain, and Conneaut, along Lake Erie served as starting points to transport the former slaves to freedom in Canada. Historian Wilbur Siebert believes approximately three thousand miles of Underground Railroad trails existed in Ohio. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SC1338_005_001
Subjects: Underground Railroad; Abolitionists; African Americans--History; Slavery; Houses; Antislavery movements--Ohio--History--19th century
Places: Mechanicsburg (Ohio); Champaign County (Ohio)