The Underground Railroad and Sylvania's Historic Lathrop House
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Chapter One The Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a secret system of helping slaves from the South, escape to the The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided that all states as far as the Mississippi River would enter the Union as free states, and the Northern states along the Atlantic seaboard outlawed slavery by the early 1800’s. The system of assisting runaway slaves seems to have started at the end of the 18th century. George Washington in 1786 complained about how one of his runaway slaves was helped by a “society of Quakers, formed for such purposes.” In the The Underground Railroad is defined as every route the fugitive slave took, or attempted to take, to get to freedom. It was a large network of paths and roads, through swamps and over mountains, along rivers and across rivers, and even by sea, but many times the routes cannot be documented with absolute precision, because the records are not available. It is very hard to get black on white records because it was illegal, and was rarely documented. No one would put in the local newspaper or document to the public “We’re hiding illegal people in our house; come and see.” Because of the deep secrecy involved many basic facts are unknown, including exactly how many fugitives were assisted. Today so many of the small towns from Maine to Iowa have their little secrets about possible Underground Railroad activities written in their local history books and passed down through the generations since those years before the Civil War.
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About the Book
Many of the main routes on the Underground Railroad ran through the State of
The Ohio River forms the southern border of
This book takes you through Ohio, to one of its most northern borders, Lucas County, where several Underground Railroad lines once ran; and then to Sylvania, Ohio to meet several of the operators who were involved in this illegal venture of harboring these runaway fugitive slaves.
The book then takes a close look at the evidence available to indicate that
Other points of interest include letters written during the Civil War by a correspondent serving in Company B - 189th Ohio Volunteer Regiment; speeches given by Sylvania resident Lucian B. Lathrop, state representative, in front of the Ohio Legislatures about topics of current events in the 1850’s, prior to the Civil War; and in 1939, the discovery of a concealed room in the basement of the “Historic Lathrop House,” with beds still in it where the slaves once hid and rested until it was safe to move on.
About the Author
GAYE E. GINDY is a free-lance writer and author from
She also wrote a weekly history column for the local newspaper, the Sylvania Herald, for five years, and has had her history articles appear in:
The Bend of the River, Lee Raizk, Publisher, The magazine of the historic
Fort Industry Reflections published by the Lucas County Chapter OGS;
Sylvania AdVantage, publisher Sharon Lange;
Sylvania Herald published by Herald Newspapers.
Gaye and husband, Sam, have been married 30 years. They have a son, Allan, and a daughter, Samantha.
Gaye Gindy became interested in history during the United States Bi-Centennial celebration in 1976, when her interest was realized.
This is her fifth book. Other books include:
- Next Stop
- Bridging Time: A History Of
- Sylvania, Ohio – Images of America, Published by Arcadia Publishing, co-authored by Gaye E. Gindy and Trini L. Wenninger – 2006; and
- Murder In