The society held its meetings at such times and places as the officers deemed proper. Hence they were not limited, and in their minutes we find adjournments to the Christian Church, the Bradley or Crittenden schoolhouse, Putney school house, etc. At every annual meeting new officers were elected and lectures delivered. Among the speakers we find the names of Rev. J.S. Barras of Kelloggsville, Rev. Asa Jacobs, Benjamin Carpenter, Esq., Benson Owen, Esq., Rev. F.W. Straight, Rev. E.F. Dickinson, and Rev. Stephen Bathrick.
Among the fugitive slaves who eloquently pleaded their cause were Milton Clark, a few years from slavery in Kentucky; John Girley, who was a slave nineteen years, had been free nine, and had been sent to school by Garrett Smith of Peterborough, N.Y. and in seven years had lectured in nearly every free state in Union; Thomas Clarkson, a name which the Quakers gave the fugitive in fear the slaveholders would capture him if called by his right name. He was from Albamar County, VA. On his way he was captured by slaveholders, and papers read in the name of the great Commonwealth of Virginia, demanding his immediate rendition to slavery. But he had armed himself with a slingshot; i.e., a lead ball fastened to his right wrist, with which he could know a man down, and using this at just the right moment on his assailants he came on his way without further molestation. Mr. Clarkson was only three years from slavery. Henry P. Riley and wife were seven years out of slavery, during which time they attended school in Oberlin six months. They spoke with great credit to themselves and satisfaction of the people.
Such are a few specimens of the speakers of South Ridge, and the public attention was held steadily to the study of the nefarious system which was sapping the very foundation of our Republic. Like a cancer it was eating out our vitals and we, as a nation, were driven to the necessity of destroying that, or it would destroy us. The felling had become strong against the great evil, and under the growing light it was becoming stronger.
But this anti-slavery society had gone on with its work only about six years to 1845, before the cause became political in its movement. At its last regular meeting, April 21, 1845, the President Benjamin Carpenter, Esq., was called on to present a list of the names as delegates, to meet in the Ashtabula county Liberty Convention to be held in Jefferson, May 6, 1845, to take decided political action on the subject. Lawyer Carpenter, the President, named the following gentlemen: Edward P. Clark, Reuben Sanborn, M.W. Wright, S.A. Davis, A. Thompson, Rev. F.W. Straight, Hiram Lake, A. Moulton, Rev. E.P. Dickinson, and Loren Gould. From this time their work became absorbed in political action and the society�s specific labor was not further needed.
The FUGITIVE LAW was one of the most objectionable enactments to the people of South Ridge. They never could feel reconcile to have this disgraceful Bill blacked the pages of our statutes. In effect, it tore down the bright flag of our nation and drabbed it in the mud. Besides being unjust and wicked, it tarnished our fair name among the nations of the earth and made them laugh at our inconsistence. Nor was the nation enactment of such a Bill in Congress enough; slave holders would have one of similar character in Ohio. During the session of 1838-9, the Kentucky legislature sent a committee the Ohio assembly, requesting the passage of such a bill in our state. At that time there was a slaveholder in our legislature in the person of Hon. Alex Waddle from Franklin County. He owned slaves and hired them out to slave drivers in Kentucky. Mr. Waddle held this seat in our assembly till the winter of 1840-41. Of course he was ready to add his influence to such a bill as would make the whole state hunting ground for runaway slaves. Thus, Southerners were going to compel us to watch their slaves for them, a slaveholder was legislating in our assembly for this purpose, and they were pushing their measures to make free Ohio a slave-holding state. To such Southern dictation the people of South Ridge maintained their opposition. They rejected all the �Black Code,� which made distinction on the account of their color, with disdain. They regarded them as libel in the Declaration of American Independence and at war with God and Humanity. Such could be enactments, but not law, for according to the Blackstone nothing can be the law, but such legislative authority as accords with Divine Revelation and Law of Nature. No other human legislation can be of any force. Hence they were bound to violate these enactments and obey the Divine and Nature�s law. These two things they resolved to do and suffer the consequences.
The Bible Fugitive Slave Law they sought to observe to the letter. It reads as follows, �Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee; he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in the place which he shall choose in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.� Deut. XXIII: 15, 16.
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD was a name given to an overland route from the slave states on which the fugitives would escape from southern bondage to the Canadas. It had stopping places at intervals of five, ten, or twenty miles apart, called depots, at which places the slave could find friends, who would shelter, feed, clothe, and contribute money to help him on his way to freedom. This boasted land of liberty in the United States, held four millions of human beings in the most abject slavery the world ever knew, and to gain their inalienable rights, they were compelled to flee into the British Dominion where a limited monarchy bore rule.
Tracks of the Underground Railroad became numerous in both east and west of South Ridge. Friends to the poor slave seem providently to have sprung up all through the Northern States, who dared, like Daniel and the three worthies, to violate a human and wicked law and suffer the penalty, provided unjust rulers should inflict it, rather than do violence to their conscience and disobey the divine. The depots along the route with which we became most familiar, centered at the old Quaker�s, Jacob Heaton and brothers, in Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio. Thence to Hon. Leicester King, Warren, Trumbull County; thence to the house of George Hazelop, a merchant in Gustavus; thence to Seth Hazes, a merchant, and Ralph Plumb, Esq., in Hartford and Vernon; thence to Deacon Carpenter, and Ansel K. Garlick, in Andover; thence to Albert Kellogg, Sidney S. Bushnell, and Samuel Hayward, now President of Conneaut Bank, at Kelloggsville; thence to M.W. Wright and Rev. Rufus C. Clark, of South Ridge. If the slave was hotly pursued and it was necessary to elude the grasp of his master by change from a direct line, and it was deemed to go best into Canada by way of Cleveland or Detroit, he was directed to the house of J.R. or Stephen Gage, in Sheffield, or Ira Taft, in Kingsville, or Jacob Austin, in Austinburg, or William Hubbard, in Ashtabula. But if the course by Buffalo was esteemed the safer, then to the house of William and David Gould, in Springfield, Pa. Sometimes it became necessary, not only change from a direct line, but to run backward and forward, to escape the fearful hand of the taskmaster. If a runaway was captured and taken back into slavery he was sometimes burned by cutting off his limbs and parts of his body and casting into the fire, or, at other times with pine knots. Sometimes he would be shot, at other times he would be hitched to a horse, and dragged at high speeds over the sharp stones and rough ground. In some horrible way they were to be out to death, and the friends along the underground railroad took every precaution to prevent such an awful fate. They would, out of mercy to the slave, and respect to the divine law, expose themselves to mobs and penalties of a cruel and slaveholding people. They rejoiced more to be right with few, that wrong with the many. They had learned not to care what public opinion was, for during the last hundred years it had fearfully wrong on the question of American Slavery. To give the reader some tangible idea of the Underground Railroad, we will mention a few instances.
Lewis Clark, a slave who had escaped from his master in Kentucky, came along one of these underground railroads, when he was pursued and captured in the western part of Ashtabula County. His master had taken him into a covered carriage and was on his return south, when Hon. J.R. Giddings, of Jefferson, gave directions for a warrant to be issued by the attorney of the county under the Habeus Corpus law, put it into the hands of Sheriff John Prentiss, with instructions to serve it and bring the body of Lewis Clark forthwith, if found within the limits of Ashtabula County. The sheriff overtook Lewis and his master on the county line road between Harpersfield in Ashtabula County, and Madison in Lake County. But that there should be no question about the legality of the arrest, the road was partially blockaded on the West side, so that the carriage containing the fugitive would be compelled to turn out on the Ashtabula County side, and he would be wholly within the county limits. At this point the team was stopped and the sheriff served his papers and took the body of Lewis Clark without leave of license of his master, and brought him to Jefferson, where he was set free. Being at liberty, he came with a direct line to the house of M.W. Wright at South Ridge, where he found shelter, food, and means to help him on his way. He soon began to tell the story of his enslavement, his capture, and his escape, and became one of the most eloquent speaker�s of nature�s son. Thus he was saved from the torture and death of the runaway.
Saturday afternoon, April 25, 1857, there came to the house of Rev. Rufus Clark, a colored young man, a negro with American features very much frightened, as he said slave holders were in close pursuit, and the might drive up any moment. Quieting his fears somewhat, we learned that he was about 21 years old, and was the son of his master, Hon. John Perkins, of New Orleans, La., was his body servant, had been his master�s waiter in his travels to Kansas and other states in the Union. His name was George Perkins. His master took him to Washington, D.C., to wait on him during the sitting of congress. During his stay there Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe called him to her room to tell her of any captured slaves that he had seen burned for running away. At the time of his escape, his master, Hon. Mr. Perkins, had come to visit Senator Thompson in Kentucky, and George thought this a favorable opportunity to gain his freedom and he started for London, Canada West, guided by the North Star. On retiring to rest, George showed us a number of scars inflicted on himself by his master and mistress. One on his arm with a shovel, another on his breast with a butcher knife, another on his head with a sharp cornered stick, all plain to be seen. George stayed with us until Monday, when we took him in our carriage and conveyed him to David Gould�s in Springfield, Pa., and he went on his way to Canada, by way of Buffalo.
December 11th, 1854, a colored man, Stephen Pharis and his wife were notice on a cold snowy day, wading through deep drifts, along the road by Corwin Payne�s, Mr. Bailey�s, Mr. Ward�s, Howard�s Corners, Alonzo Ward�s, L.M. Horton�s, and Brooks�. As he traveled faster than she, when he had reached two or three rods in advance he would stop and wait for her to come up with him. They were thinly clad and foot-sore. They stopped for the night in an old forsaken house across from George Miles� barn, now owned by Wm. Thompson. I was the third house in which they stopped since they left Fredricksburg, Va., some three months before. Every other night, notwithstanding the severity of the weather, they had encamped in the woods, out-houses, or barns. Mr. Miles seeing a light in his old shell of a house, went to lean the cause, and found these half-starved, half-clad, pitiable objects, who for liberty were enduring all this suffering. As the fugitive slave law � in full force � forbid any Ohio person harboring, feeding, clothing, aiding or abetting under severe penalties, Mr. Miles hardly dared to feed or make them comfortable for the night. He did, however, proffer his aid. The negro had broken some bits of rails to kindle a fire in the old fire place, and Mr. M. returned to his house where his wife filled a tin pan with provisions, and brought it half � way for the sufferers who were to come for it. This they were supplied for the night.
The South Ridge Ladies� Aid Society, that day convened at Silas Wilder�s, who then liven in a house now owned by D.W. Hayward, learning of the fact that set themselves to render the despised pair comfortable. They collected materials for making articles of clothing, with second-hand dresses, coats, etc., and visited them in the old house. When told that they laid themselves liable to be arrested and confined in jail, for violating the Fugitive Slave Law, they responded simultaneously that they should all go together, and would be most cheerfully suffer for deeds of mercy. If the government was going to punish them for obeying the divine law and dictates of their own consciences, they would like to know it immediately and they would be ready purposely to violate such law and accept of fines and imprisonments.
The colored man, Stephen, was born in Maryland, and at that time was twenty-six years old, but never knew who his parents were. The woman, Mary was twenty-three years. He had been a body servant, and she had been a chamber maid. The reason assigned for not crossing Niagara River at Buffalo, into Canada was, too many slaveholder were at that time watching slaveholders that passage, to render an attempt. Safe, Hence they turned their course towards Detroit, and were traveling the whole length of Lake Erie in the cold, bleak winds and snows of Winter. What an undertaking this was for those poor ignorant suffers to leave the sunny south and attempt the passage from slavery to liberty!
Many more instances of similar character might be given, which occurred during the pastorate of Rev. Rufus Clark � from 1851 to 1861. At one time three Negroes came on Saturday until Sunday afternoon, when one of our citizens in an express took them to William Gould�s, Springfield, Pa. Hon. Samuel Hayward, president of Conneaut Bank, tells of live colored men from slavery that stayed at his house in Kelloggsville from Saturday till Monday. They were then directed Augustus Abbott�s, and thence to the Gould neighborhood, in Springfield, Pa.