Underground Railroad Again

“Toledo was an important “station” on this railroad, but more frequently the route led through back country roads and farming districts where secrecy was more easily attained. Recently the Editor was driven by Mrs. Ernest W. Shaw to a farm near Sylvania, west of Toledo which had for many years been owned and occupied by her ancestor, David Harroun. The old farm house built in 1858 on the site of the original log cabin has recently been torn down since its purchase by Mr. Rudolph Barnard who is preserving the ancient trees and shrubbery. This farm was one of the old “stations” of the underground railroad.”

“Mrs. Shaw has in her possession a photograph of the old barn, still standing, in which the slaves were formerly hidden and showing two of the wagons in which they (the slaves) were usually conveyed to the next “station”. Apparently they were innocent looking farm or lumber wagons but they had false bottoms in which the fugitives could be concealed in a small space covered by planks. Hay or other farm produce was then piled on top of the planks and they were driven by night over back roads to the next “station” from which they could be taken by boat to Canada and eventual freedom.”

“Within a few hundred yards of the Harroun house is another house formerly known as the old Colonial house. This has been recently purchased by Mr. Fallis and handsomely restored to its ancient condition. It too was in the old slave days a “station” of the railroad and when the house was remodeled a concealed room in its cellar (formerly reached by an outside stairway) was discovered with the beds still in it where the slaves were hidden until an opportune time came for sending them on to the next station.”

“These Sylvania “stations” lying some miles west of Toledo and on roads then rarely traveled were probably more frequently used then the Toledo “stations” because they were less likely to be visited by the pursuing slave owners especially after the fugitive agents acting under the “Fugitive slave laws” became so active.”

Quarterly Bulletin of the Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio,

The Underground Railroad Again, October, 1939, p 4-5