The Underground Railroad - Hiding in Plain Sight

thank you for tuning in to another episode on inrange this is the third and final in a series on the Underground Railroad and this is the conclusion for good reason because I'm standing in front of the Levi and Katherine coffin house which was considered the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad it's reported by Levi that over 2,000 Refugee slaves passed through this house on their way to freedom and as far as he knows they all actually made it some of them to Canada some of them to free black communities in the area but this house is important so stay tuned for about an hour from a dosent about everything that happened here and why this is such a pertinent Place welcome you to the home of Levi and Katherine coffin this is a 1839 Federal style home that was built for the coffins and um I just want to give a little background um before we kind of get straight into the tour and kind of talk about expectations of what you're going to learn today um Levi and Katherine coffin were part of a group of anti-slavery Quakers here specifically in this but in Wing County that were involved in helping with what we call the Underground Railroad today um this home historically was known as the Grand Central Station of the underground bar road so had a pretty prominent place in this in this movement um Levi and Catherine came here in 1826 from Central North Carolina specifically Guilford County and they're part of what's known historically as the Quaker migration so we have um somewhere estimated between 10 to 12,000 Quakers that are going to be coming out the sou specifically here in to County and settle in Newport what Fountain City was historically known as was um a Quaker Village um primarily and so the coffins come here in 1826 um this was not the first house they lived in so this is going to be the last home that they have they will call Newport home until 1847 and uh in that year Levi and Catherine will make the decision to move to Cincinnati so towards the end of the tour I'll kind of go into that story what took them away um it's a pretty simple home and simple what I mean for a Quaker um though he is doing very well him for himself as a businessman um as a Quaker he doesn't believe in materialistic things so we have presented the house as we believe it would have looked when Levi and the family lived here very short period of just over eight years we're very lucky that the house has primarily almost all original detail throughout so as a historic house we even though there were parts that were restored um we didn't have to replace original detail for the most part but unfortunately we have nothing personal belonging to Levi and Katherine and their family um in those years that they were here or ever in their life we have a few objects related to his life as a businessman and to other family members that he he knew but nothing of them personally so my tour doesn't really focus on objects it focuses on stories and talking about the impacts that the coffins made in that 20-year period they were here so feel free to in time to ask questions um if you want to have discussion and such um we I've kind of catered my tour around some of those five or six questions everybody has in their head at the beginning of the tour so stick with me and I'll make sure most of those questions you may have have been answered okay but feel free to interject at any time so as we go room by room I will focus on what each room we believe served as for the family um I will point every so often to some objects but for the most part I'll be focusing on those stories which mainly come from Levi's autobiography that he published in 1876 so I'm giving you kind of the tip of the iceberg of his story if you were interested in more it's called reminiscences of Levi Coffin you can download it for free on Google Books it's not it's not a not a hard read but it is a long one I'll warn you it's over 700 pages so so the room we're standing in is a room we call the library kind of a parlor space um off the front door of the house um when Levi decided to have this house built um he's been in this community now for 13 years um as I mentioned he's a businessman when he first came here in 1826 he uh started a dry goods business and over that period that will expand to investments in other businesses including the port packing trade I think he had a Tannery which I was just ringing about linseed oil mill um and so uh he's now not just the dry good store owner but he's got his um his fingers in many projects here in town so um but he builds this house after a 13-year period so I'll talk a little more about the house a little later in the tour um but this space as we interpret it we actually talk a little bit about why we specifically put beds here um by this period too Levi's reputation as an abolitionist is starting to grow he talks in his book about abolitionist coming specifically to Indiana to make speeches and such with regards to the anti-slavery movement which is growing in the United States and because of his work um with anti-slavery movement here in Indiana that's attracting them to come and visit him here in Newport he specifically names Frederick Douglas as being one who came to Newport not just to speak but we believe visited him here while he was in the house we have a letter of Levis that he wrote uh when he living in the house I have a pretty bad copy of it over here I should say a bad copy but um but not the original the original is in Erland but it was discovered in the house when it was restored and it specifically mentions a man named Arnold buffam Arnold buffam will actually help to start an anti-slavery newspaper here called the protectionist and he and his wife are boarding according to the letter with Levi and his family so Levi and Catherine live here with four of their children and his mother as well is living and we don't believe they would allow anyone who was a guest of their home to be upstairs with the family they potentially would create a separate space for them so that's why we've staged the beds here because this is one of the few rooms uh with his own door and such where they could get that privacy so what year was that 1841 yeah this is actually a reply letter to his son Jesse who's in Ohio at school and Jesse wrot at home asking dad for some money basically it's one of those letters he never changes and um so what's great is there's some details here that he doesn't mentioned in the book so we we were able to glean some things this way the desk that's here actually was an object that Levi sold at his Cincinnati Dragon store that he'll open uh when he moves to Cincinnati and uh we're able to trace that because of the shipping label still exists on the back side which is the side we don't display so it was actually shipped to a man named Joseph Williams in Henry County and it says car of Levi Coffin so so just giving you a taste of some of the things that he was known to procure and sell through his drygood store so the store that he owned here in town originally stood where our pizza parlor is here on the main cross streets where our blinking light is and eventually we'll open a second location um one block north of here so or of the first location out of the house oops I must do the arm any questions I can help with all right we'll keep moving so come on this way so this is the front door of the house which is a door we right now don't take a lot of people through when they come to the house and often times when you visit a historic house you go through the front door but we actually don't use that front door for that purpose and we do so because if you can imagine someone such as a freedom Seeker or runaway slave which is how I'll refer to them in my in my tour would not come to the front door of the most prominent House of the most prominent man in town so we'll we'll get back to that so we we normally don't take folks through the front door this is a map of historic Newport we think from around 1850 and even though Levi moved away by this point he still owns the house so his name is still on the property Levi always intended to move back so he though living full-time in Cincinnati at this point expects soon he may come back that was his intention was not to stay gone for too too long what so what brought him to Indiana so um actually I'm going to talk about that next so see what I mean I've got my Tour all situated for those questions but um that's a really good question to ask like what would draw people to Indiana um Indiana became a state in 1816 and a big draw for Indiana um bringing people here was land we had a lot of it and it was cheap now Levi though is part of a growing number of Quakers who are leaving the South more because of their disagreement with the practice of slavery so Levi is born in Guilford County North Carolina where he's raised um and he is RA being raised in a church that does not support the membership participating in any way with the practice of slavery so if you were a member of the Quaker Church you were not allowed to own a Slave at this point you could not even profit so if you were willed slaves you know you weren't allowed to sell and profit from it um and so many Quakers in North Carolina are advocating for the state to make it easier to allow enslave people to become free to allow them to live a free life there um really Levi is of the idea of complete emancipation across the board um but the state of North Carolina won't really allow that to happen um they're they're not necessarily interested in that so many Quakers decide to leave and come West and Indiana was attractive for them one because of that opportunity of coming here and being able to settle and start a new life but Levi says in his book he never believed he would see another enslaved person ever again by coming to a free state so he thought he has come here and he will start a new life us27 which sits in front of the house historically was a road known as the Quaker Trace so as I mentioned we have a good fair amount of Quakers coming in and uh all these little Quaker communities are being established a time um along it and a Levi comes to newort his parents are already living here so that's what's bringing him specifically here um he starts his dry good store and almost immediately he starts to notice that this road is being traveled by many people but that includes the freedom Seekers themselves many of them crossing the Ohio River if you were to follow the South today it takes you into Cincinnati Ohio um and that's where it came from historically as well so many who are crossing the Ohio River um see a road as an opportunity to get them further north Levi feels very compelled to step in and help and to whether that's providing Ruben board new clothing food um as a Quaker he believes that that is his job that is what he's been taught to do as a Quaker but as a community he says there's not really a lot of support for this in these early years to get involved the idea of breaking the law to help a freedom seeker and a slave person in their escape just feels too dangerous at this point um but Levi feels that it's worth a danger to get involved now we also had a good number of free blacks living amongst the Quakers in this part of the stage and he does note that the free blacks were trying to do what they could but um as a businessman with his dry good store and such she felt he may be in a position that perhaps I can take things a little further so he and his wife Katherine are really credited with kind of kicking off what becomes a more organized effort it takes years to get that effort really working to where we have others in town so this was not the only home pretty soon we have others who are willing to open their doors and help um but for the for the most part Levi is really kind of credited with beginning that effort so in those first few years he says my home was the only one that had a door that someone can come through and find safety and shelter and I would help them and then a big part of that too was helping them get back on the road and get further north and to do that safely which I'll talk about here in a moment so this room we call the sitting room um we very much see Levi and his wife Catherine as a team in this endeavor Catherine was known for hosting other Quaker women here in town at the house um hosting what were known as The Sewing circles um so you can imagine if the coffins are supplying things Like New clothing and such that had to be made you're not just going to the store and buying what's there Levi could provide the clo the cloth but somebody had to create it and that's what the quicker women were doing and Catherine helped to coordinate that effort um so we can imagine the women sitting here and and and the type of conversations they could be having as well the portrait here is of a younger Levi on the back wall Levi was a young man when he came here he's just really started his family in this which means if he was to be ever caught involved in this he could potentially lose everything his business um the fines of those days could be up to $500 with inflation we're looking at $115,000 today so um there is history here in Wayne County of that happening and people literally being ruined because they're Pro personal property never uh equated to whatever the fines were so Levi though understood the danger he was getting into and the law that'd be breaking at this point in time would be the 1793 fugitive slave correct that is correct so all right so he started when did when did they actually start when did he makes it seem like not long after establishing his business and kind of getting his new life started here so that's just kind of a in the statement he made 1826 is when he moved here so really yeah sooner than that okay um and the first time we think they lived in possibly was an apartment attached to that drygood store um and so it's and he does mention at times his store was used if his house may not have been the safest the store was not too far away and could be used as hiding place as well do you know if there are uh is there books that talk about the journey journey itself from North Carolina to Indiana Levi goes a little bit into it himself in his experience he actually came to Indiana twice he came a few years before then he brought his family and then he came yeah cuz he actually goes all the way towards Illinois actually almost he gets lost in Illinois so he's pretty lucky he got back okay um but uh he talks a little bit about that Journey at least the directions and um typ going through Tennessee yeah he's coming by wagon yeah um and he so there were s Quakers that once they got to Tennessee they kind of stopped for a while and then lived there for a year or two and then came up into Indiana so I specifically remember that from the book of his journey itself quickers I told you about mine were in New Garden Meeting House new for County okay ended up in Henry so they had to take very very similar experience yeah arrived in 185 and there's only so many roads no through the National Road was just being formed a few routes available at that time so yeah so check out his book and kind of get you'll probably get something similar to what your ancestors went through okay good thanks all right come on back here so one of the mysteries about the coffin story CU even though he wrote this autobiography and he gave us a lot of detail there are certain things he chose not to tell us about um and he really never talks much about the house itself there's always been a belief that the house was built specifically with this intention of the service that they're involved in so I'm going to go through that but just remember that we're speaking purely through historical Theory because without written documentation nobody contemporary of the coffins that lived here have ever talked of this either it's kind of hard we may never be able to prove it honestly um and one of the fun things that people love about the Underground Railroad is that really cool house that they hear the oral history about of the hiding places and such so but one of the Mysteries of the house that we have is one why he chose to build the house right on this part of town um he says by the time he's here in the house the suspicions really grown around him he knows at times my actions are under surveillance so he's trying to obviously be more more careful probably what he's doing um but he decided to build his house literally smack dab in the middle of town on the busiest road so there's there's that but even how it is built there are some unique places to it that are very unusual for these type of period homes in this part of the country so the room we're standing in we generally call the dining room and it's fun when we have kids here because we like to explore the artifacts that we have displayed here we definitely have a stage sort of as if it's a cooking fireplace so there would be a kitchen here and that's not the unusual part generally um for these type of houses the kitchen would be in the back of the house and sometimes if you had a nice enough house you may have a second kitchen outside of what's called a summer kitchen we have no evidence of an outside summer kitchen but what we do have is a full basement downstairs that is basically the same size as this room here with its own fireplace and that's where that stairway leads right here um so we call this the dining room because we think most likely that's what took place here eating um and we think a lot of the cooking was done downstairs now we always explore that space last um but this is the door that we think most likely Freedom Seekers when coming to the home would have approached knocked or someone leading them here this is where they would have been brought to so that's why we bring you through this door and not through the front door of the house um with many of the stories we have of Levi's wife Catherine and what her role in this is a lot of what she witnessed happened Within These Walls she's already a mother she's taking care of her children so she already had a great responsibility but she also felt a great responsibility for anybody they were helping so in the few days they may spend here she's going to make sure that they're not just well fed and well clothed that they're healthy so often times that that playing doctor so we have stories of injuries frostbitten and Toes because they travel with no shoes on and such Catherine would make sure that they had enough time to Comales before they were going further north of here mostly most of them I should say going to Canada um but can you imagine how you can be prepared not knowing when they're going to arrive how many are going to be arriving are their children with them you know all of these things are kind of unknown to Levi and Catherine um but regardless with the stories Levi gives us and and others have told us of Catherine she was never phased by this so um but one of the things they remember the most is when someone or a group of people arrived she would start cooking for them right away so I'll come back to that here in a little bit when we go downstairs and explore the kitchen um in one particular story to kind of give you a sense of how many have been in this home at one time Levi notes that many of them arrived undercover of darkness when it was safer to travel they were coming here arriving often times by Dawn and in this story there's a at the door and that knock came from a man named William beard and he's one of the few people that Levi actually names first and last name with those he was associating with and helping with this but when he arrives he had two wagons outside the home and Catherine sees him not unusual that he shown up and she asked him what do you have there um William bir's response is I have all of Kentucky so Catherine says bring all of Kentucky in so she knows that he has potentially I think at this point brought a group with him that are looking for shelter but she cannot see them Mr beard uh Levi Coffin and several others who helped in the transportation from one place to another often use what was called a false bottom wagon so it's a wagon with a false floor in it that created a cavity underneath where someone or a group of people could hide without being seen while traveling so by the time the two wagons are unloaded everyone's inside Levi says I I did a head count and 17 have just entered into the house so talk about being ready right right so now she's caring for 17 additional people and the real big challenge is to making sure that nobody outside of this house knows that there's 17 more people here who should not be here so that's another uh something that the coffins have to be on their toes about to to make sure that nobody is suspicious enough that may cause a surch of this house and such so would they have been responsible for like having chickens and beef and sheep around so that they could have readymade meals basically well you know Levi is not a farmer he's in business and with being in the dry good store he's got a lot of those kind of like fresh produce and stuff at their disposal um Levi being in pork packing is Raising Hogs somewhere in town large amounts of hogs access so he's got access there he does mention that sometimes they have to ask for the charity of others in town every so often if for for some reason they just weren't in the right spot um either with his store or whatever and and whether it's asking for extra money or just donations of something that did happen as well so um that's about the easiest way I can answer based off what he tells us so um but anyway that's a good question to ask I mean it's a huge responsibility yeah to be able to make sure you can feed them all and he says many spent a couple days here but there are some that are going to spend weeks or months depending on the situation of what's happening so that's even longer care um there so that's a big responsibility at didn't given time how how many people because you mentioned 17 like is there was 17 the most or he believes it was and at the time when he writes his book which he's towards his end of years he's a little older this is about 50 years later he says that's the largest group I remembered us helping at one time but we have other stories of them helping not quite as many but close to um so it doesn't seem like something the coffins are are not used to if that makes sense yeah but feeding 17 people that's a lot that's a lot of Ms to feed you know and sometimes we don't know yeah so sometimes we don't know if children are involved in that you know sometimes he's a specific about the group sometimes he's not so in in trying to understand you know the coffins it's important to remember are not doing this by themselves there are others within the community that would help um one of the aspects that we're currently researching is trying to have a better of the free blacks that are living amongst them who can we identify that we involved in this but Levi actually mentions and we have history of some runaway slaves who chose to stay here and live with the Quakers um under identities of free people instead of going north and one of those stories is a man named William Bush um and so when I was discussing before about descendants still living here his great great granddaughter still lives here in Wayne County and she is one of my volunteers now her perspective to this story is definitely a little different because she is speaking as a descendant of a runaway slave and so it's it's pretty special when you're able to get her tour but she grew up in this town so um but unfortunately a lot of those descendants have moved on to other places in the county and stuff but um anyway so to tell his story a lot of what we know is oral history she grew up listening to these stories that were handed down with objects that belonged to Mr Bush now his name William Bush was not his actual given name as as a slave it is the name that he either chose for himself while here but the family were she was told Levi Coffin gave him that name um and according to the family the way he arrived here is he actually shipped himself in a box crate very similar to Henry Box Brown if you know that story and it was addressed to Levi Coffin now Levi doesn't mention that story specifically I think he's not actually mentioned as a person but we know that they knew each other um so we're trying to research to see if we can confirm those details but Mr Bush made a life for himself here he became the town blacksmith he owns several different properties in town he will marry he will have children he lived out the rest of his life here and he's buried in our Cemetery behind the park and so if you go behind the you see the park there's a bridge that takes you back his is one of the first headstones that you'll see when you drive back there so so um we know that there are others who were here um that we're trying to learn a little more about too um there was a gentleman whose name I cannot remember he would always carry a rock in his right pocket for protection just in case he was ever questioned about who he was but Mr Bush was taking a big chance because if he was ever asked for free papers which in Indiana you had to as a free black have papers identifying you such and he couldn't produce that then that could potentially cause problems um now next next door in the interpretive Center if you get a chance go next door Mr Bush's wooden shoes are on display and those are one of the objects that were passed down through E's family and so um it is believed he was wearing those shoes at the time of his Escape um that he arrived in those shoes which gives an indication that he possibly may have been trained as a blacksmith from where he' escaped from and to protect his feet in the forges so cuz that was obviously a skill that he had um so there's a house two houses north of here which is where his blacksmith shop was located historically so yeah any questions with that the mortal and pestle here also was handed down um was Mr bushes he was also a veterinarian or kind of a you know had several skills and uh there were several um there was a chera epidemic that went through town he was noted of he was had no fear of helping with the with the sick and the dead bodies and so pretty interesting story so there are a lot of people in this County and the surrounding counties you probably don't realize how integrated these small communities were at one time because you don't see that evidence today so much um but Eileen had said that when she had graduated high school she was ready to get out of found City so but she lives in Richmond she's not too far away so all right well we'll go upstairs yeah and this is where the fun part really goes we're going to go upstairs in backstairs so this is our Garrett room or the servants girl room we know or have evidence that Catherine had hired one or two young girls to act as a living servant for the family the dress that's on the mannequin here was worn by one of those young ladies um there are definitely stories Levi gives in his book where he sort of gives us details of how he would react at times when he was fearful of his house being searched and uh in one particular Story another large group of Freedom Seekers have arrived here um a group of 14 um they were LED here by a freedom Seeker named Jim who was familiar with the Coffins on a previous escape and helped the 14 arrive here at the house but before they made it into town they were almost captured so we know that this road was frequented by Freedom Seekers well who's going to figure that out pretty quickly the Bounty Hunter um and uh in this particular story they were almost captured but they were able to escape Jim brings them here to the coffins once they arrive they are brought inside and Jim tells him what they have just experienced so Levi gives a quote in his book where he just says quote I concealed them in my Garrett end quote until he could make sure that whatever threat was out there was not going to harm the 14 so that's all he says in this particular story and we believe that story happened during the years he's here in this house so the room here as I mentioned you know we call it the Garrett room um in these type of houses sometimes this roof line is so severe it's not really big enough to sleep in or used as a bedroom um so even if you can imagine 14 people being here they would be comfortable but we're talking about a space in the house that's pretty accessible to find if the house was searched now we don't believe historically the house or any house he lived in was searched he never mentions in his book this ever happening he definitely says there are threats to do so people come to his front door and are threatening that they're going to do it but none of them ever have evidence really to use against him and legally in Indiana if you had evidence you had to procure a search warrant before you could even cross over the threshold so regardless of the of that fact we still have no evidence that tells us that the house was searched so we don't believe it happened and for this particular story we actually think he's speaking about the space behind what would be this small door here it is a closet that's 15 ft long it goes the entire length of the room it's only 3 ft wide inside and that ceiling goes and goes and goes until it meets that brick wall um with the evidence that we have for that I mean beyond the fact that that space is kind of confused that way um Levi had a nephew who confirmed that story um in particular when he came back as an older man and was walking through the house telling memories and stories so um he specifically points at the door and says that is where Levi hid the 14 he actually goes further to say that what Levi would do is once they were inside and the door was shut a piece of furniture would be moved in front of it to conceal the door so if the house was searched the hope I'm sure being they would not realize that there is a a hidden door now Levi says they were only there long enough until he can confirm there was no threat so we don't have an actual idea of how long that is are we talking hours are we talking days is difficult to say um but uh and he says they were here in the spring months and in Indiana we the first week of April we were still having snow and by the end of May we had a really hot day like today so it's hard to say what kind of spring day did they experience but to give you an idea for some who had to spend longer here he does tell another story of two young girls two sisters who actually made it further north of here and had to turn around and backtrack um when they arrive Levi says Catherine hides them between the mattresses of one of the beds in the house whoever's looking for them is not too far behind so it's believed that he may try to search houses he says she gives him enough room to breathe between the mattresses and tells the girls to remain quiet and to stay there until um there is no thread anymore until it's safe but unfortunately Catherine is having issues with getting the girls to calm down or at least to be quiet so the word Levi uses in the book is overe excited which might mean are they tickling each other are they laughing what are they doing we don't know but they're making noise which can't happen so she ends up having to split them up and put them in two different beds until they could confirm that they were safe the man who was looking for them was actually the man who owned them as property which is really rare to see oftentimes they hired people to do the work for them um but the girls ended up having to stay in the house for a two we period because he would not give up he kept coming back to town every day trying to do searches so he must have known how close he was to finding them in that instance so um those are a few of the stories that we think took place in the years that he's here in this house in particular but there are more stories in his book obviously I'm just giving you kind of the tip of the iceberg of the other experiences they had um but he does mentioned that in the years he was in Indiana he says I never got word that anyone I helped was ever captured so in his mind whoever he helped was able to find Freedom now he really encouraged them to escape to Canada to to escape American laws um he will go to Canada to visit with them um to see how they were doing I was very happy to see that they were doing very well for themselves there um but there were others like Mr Bush who chose to stay a dangerous decision but but one that um that some did choose to do so any questions with this was is there a do I mean obviously in Mr Bush's case there wasn't documentation just Word of Mouth of of intentions of staying was his intentions to help with the Underground Railroad we do have evidence that he has been part of us yes um but again it's one of those things where it's part of the family history so um there are no specific stories of Mr Bush in in his book specifically with Levi um and not I don't want to say there isn't but there aren't too many others in this County that spoke of their experiences either so it's just kind of this is like the unspoken history if you're part of it you don't really talk about it even after the Civil War people didn't want to be seen as law Breakers and troublemakers they didn't want their reputations hurt the coffins are more along the line of they see themselves as servants it's not about celebrity and it's not really about us you know but he will eventually write his book in hopes of providing an income for his wife in case he passed away so um so there's a lot of it is oral and that's the challenge of this too because a lot of the documentation in the very early years it was studied is coming from like children whose parents were involved in this or people who just happen to live in the same Village and and you know so it's it's secondary evidence it's not that's what makes Levi's story so much more important as we are getting the first person perspective and unfortunately he's going to die the year after his book is published so if he has survived a few more years and someone chose to interview him and they might have asked some of these questions that we're still asking today it's possible we could have gotten an answer that we don't have so but I think Levi respected the fact that some people did not want to be identified that's why he doesn't really name people he gives like initials of names watch your Herod right here so this is our master bedroom for the house we think Lei in in Catherine's room when they were in the house and possibly sharing it with some of their children that's why we present it with a trundle bed we're sure at times literally the house is very crowded um Beyond The Constant front of bounty hunters um Levi does have another challenge and that is within the church that he belongs to even though the the Quaker church has an official stance against the practice of slavery there's a lot of disagreement over how to end slavery and what should happen and this is not just in the church this is just in America in general what are to happen to enslave people once they become free um and around 1842 1843 we're going to start seeing kind of a split or Schism really a disagreement amongst Quakers Levi calls himself an anti-slavery Quaker um he believes in the outright emancipation and allowing them to live as free people here in the United States but there's a growing consensus amongst other anti-slavery Quakers here in way County that believe the church as a whole believes in this um concept of what was called the colonization in those days and um there was the American Colonization Society our first governor in Indiana was a colonization Jonathan Jennings but this belief that um once enslave people become free there should be an effort to have them sent to Africa now an issue with that is the fact that by that point most enslaved people are natural born Americans by this point um they have no direct connection except through their ancestry with the cotton of Africa so there were issues there and there was disagreements about that um because the anti-slavery Quakers can't seem to come into agreeance with that that thought there is going to be this break in the church and so Levi and other anti-slavery Quakers will decide to leave the official church and help establish what becomes known as the anti-slavery meetings so here historically in Newport there were two Quaker CH churches on the south we have was New Garden where the coffins had membership and then we have the Newport meeting on the North side and which still stands and both buildings and um Levi and the anti-slavery Quakers will form their new church through the Newport meeting however since the Newport meeting is still officially part of the Quaker Church they're not allowed to be in the same room where those Quakers meet so they build an additional room to it and that's where they have their anti-slavery meetings um the Quaker church is upset with the anti-slavery Quakers as well because of their support of these anti-slavery societies which are not sanctioned by the Quaker church so there's a lot of disagreement like I I said I'm the best way to handle this situation the Schism is going to last till about 1856 so even after the coffins move away to Cincinnati um there's still this tension with with the Quakers here in Indiana and so here in Newport and other Quaker communities and other counties they're going to see that as well um with some of the other Quakers that we have knowledge of here in town we know of a couple named Daniel and Emily Huff whose house still stands here um it is south of fur in US 27 the linen suit on in the closet hanging as Daniels and the dress on the mannequin was his wife Emily's they were friends of Levi and Catherine and like them anti-slavery Quakers their home um was first built by Emily's father and was a um boarding house here in town so in kind of understanding you know sometimes we get the questions of how did Levi get away with it well I mentioned that nobody ever really presented nobody spoke out against Levi there were no eyewitnesses that ever spoke out about what he did but sometimes I got tipped on people who may be hurtful to his cause and um The Nixons in the house when they ran that boarding house if a slave catcher checked in guess who came and told them hey somebody dangerous has arrived in town whoever you're helping it may be time to get him out pretty quickly and so they were instrumental in helping that and it's believed I think at times their home too was used um in that effort of helping to conceal ens Slave people as well so any questions with that yeah my goal is to develop a walking tour so that we can talk about some of these other stories outside the coffins as well and talk about a bigger history here in town this is our stairway here that leads to the upstairs attic of the home um although Levi doesn't say so specifically for this house he does mention using a similar space in his Cincinnati home he had two different houses um allowing Freedom Seekers to sleep upstairs during the day and then they could come down at night and have their meals and such um so we have a hunch that is possible he was doing that here too um if you can imagine when you do have a good number excuse me of Freedom Seekers coming into the home and they need some place to sleep there's really no other place in the home large enough to be able to do that so that covers the whole top or sorry above us um of these two bedrooms um unfortunately I can't take you up there for safety reasons um but it's a pretty good size and this is just the third bedroom of the home um Levi's mother will move in with the family and she'll live here until she passes in 1845 so Levi I think always considered Newport to be his home even though he only lived here for 20 years he did try to come back and live but um his parents are buried here three of his children are buried here although we're not quite sure where because their gravestones are not very evident we haven't found the records that that tell us um but one of the services we do here as a site too is we do a lot of genealogy so people who have um Quaker Heritage um that connects to this community or to the New Garden North Carolina Community where the coffins come from often times we can help so um we have people from all over the country who are descendants of the coffin family so one of the oldest um objects we have in the house is this peer Bowl um which came in 1642 with a man named Tristram coffin so anyone who's of coffin descendancy can all Trace their ancestry back to this one person trust um so his house stands on net Island that's where a lot of Quaker families got their start um so uh the coffin family being one of them so this bowl supposedly was brought to Indiana by B who was Levi's uncle and then the trunk here was a traveling trunk brought from North Carolina by a woman named phbe coffin who was married to Levi's first cousin so unfortunately just nothing personal Levi and Catherine's just stuff that belong to family and such two on that one set so we are in what we call the kitchen of the home um here's our cooking fire place here and just kind of investigating what we can see visually okay I'm going to go back into historical Theory mode at this point okay but when Levi chose to build this house he identified I'm going to have I'm going to build a basement we're put a kitchen down there he had a very deep basement dug for one thing there's a lot of clearance even the most tall guy that I have on a tour is still going to have room for his head um he had this original floor laid brick floor as well so he's gone to a lot of additional expense for this home did he do it for his wife you know um that's the question that's in the air it's very nice down here it would be very comfortable to cook down here and I very much believe that Levi loved Catherine but I also very much believe that Levi and Catherine like I said they are servants in their mind they are serving in a cause that they think God needs them to serve as and actors of So it is possible to assume that Levi premeditated this because of what he's been doing he came here in 1826 he started his store got his family established and almost immediately starts getting involved in in the Underground Railroad this is 13 years later isn't this a great opportunity to be able to build a home that helps to potentially allow the house to operate 24/7 for a lot of people and trying to dampen that suspicion so that's the theory but as I said we may never find evidence of this he's not hiding the fact that this space down here exists this stairway existed this isn't the original one but it's rebuilt in the image of the original stairs that window and this entrance for the seller here are original as well but we have no Reflections from Levi in the book anybody who knew of the coffins and may have been familiar with the house also never spoke of the space so like I said we may never find evidence now Levi says at some point I was keeping records of what I was doing but we're not sure what was in those records because those have also disappeared so it just may end up being the great mystery we can never solve but it just seems too coincidental that he would do this and spend that kind of money because again they're sacrificing a lot already as it is now there's something else here not particular in this space but in the root Celler that we think helps with this Theory as well so watch your step again right here so when that first mystery I mentioned upstairs about why did Levi choose to build his home here in such a public space with what he was involved in it is possible he chose because of what we have down here we have a inside freshwater well or spring well now I will walk down to it and if you can't tell it is still working today now on Levi's day he would call this Fountain well or fountain water um The Well itself is 4T deep it is lined on the outside with bricks that are not grouted together they're just stacked and that allows the groundwater to come through the bricks and fill up the well and it's actually escaping out the other side this is Overflow just in case the well water gets too high now this is just an awesome modern amenity to have in 1839 when the house is moved into um because now you never have to go outside for your water it never freezes so they had it year round um and I can guarantee you there's no other house contemporary that has something like this but again we don't think they're concerned with their own comfort and their own needs with trying to keep down suspicion of what they're doing and who they're helping and how many is here a big indication would be how many times you had to go outside for your water so if they had an outdoor well or if they use the creek that's behind the house um that's a lot of extra coming and going of water which may cause questions here you can do this 24/7 you're round and nobody would know what you're doing so we feel this just piles on this is like the icing of the cake of this mystery in our minds of what is what is happening now another question we get from people is why are you no longer called Newport Indiana we don't even know where the name Newport came from because it's not like we're a port of anything here uh so we can't explain that but we know where Fountain City came from as I said Levi would call this a fountain well this town with the water table being so high has a history of fountains just kind of springing up and of course we call them Springs today um in 1878 the town decided to change its name because there were two Newport indianas we have that problem in Indiana they'll be a town established South and then as the population moved north and west somebody else wanted to have the same name well in this Newport and a Newport straight west of here towards Illinois the male keeps getting screwed up and so this Newport thought okay well we'll change her name and that's why they chose Fountain City is because of our very high water table so basically the entire town is built on a big bowl of water this house sits on a big bowl of water um the fun things um that were discovered in this house being the well itself um there used to be a concrete floor here and this concrete floor at one time covered all of the historic brick all the way into the kitchen and as a result people living here in the 60s when the house was being restored had no knowledge that any of this existed so this was the big reveal when that was removed because the goal was to bring the house back to 1839 condition and concrete wasn't available here as a building material and so that had to come up not so we have these Ledges here on the wagon that would allow to set boards and the boards would come about 3/4 of the way and then on top of the boards and on the very back you would stack what you want people to think your wagon is full of so what is the perfect cover right to be involved with this somebody who uses a wagon all the time in Dry Goods Levi is constantly seen with wagons potentially making deliveries picking up product to to a store to sell and such or had um a wagon for that use um maybe not by him all the time specifically but for his business so we know that Levi had a wagon he says his horses and wagon were at the ready 24/7 cuz sometimes someone may have just arrived I've got to keep them moving so a big part of what Levi did was helping to coordinate the physical transportation and being involved in that as well when he talks about where he takes them he's normally taking them up to Randol County using them Main Road out of town and uh generally leaving them in communities that are identified as free black Villages so unfortunately a lot of those homes um in that history you can't go up into Randolph County and see anymore um but one area that you can visit um historically Levi calls it the Greenville settlement sat right on the Indiana Ohio line today it's known as long town because it's land that gets bought by a m name long and then they name the town after him um but uh Randol County had the largest free black population in the state of Indiana so there are numbers um living up there who are willing to help the Quakers out of Wing County helping them North into Randol County and then helping to take them further north um so the other communities he talks about are Snow Hill and C Creek but at Longtown there stands um partial one building of a school known as the union literary Institute that Levi talks about in his book um there's a historical marker there now um but it's literally in the MD middle of a field um the union literary Institute was a school that was created to help educate um blacks and whites so like etherian okay only they are coci um and of some of the freedom Seekers Levi helps he decides they're of a good Constitution kind of some of the words he uses um but of a good mind very smart that he takes them to Uli where they can get a free education you could get college level classes there as long as you were willing to work like I think it was a minimum of like 4 hours a day they were working the land you got free board and free educ free room and board and education so there the school building for the Uli still stands there's a group trying to preserve that building this historical marker there but that's not more than a 20 minute drive from here so um so there are a few places that are still connected to those free black communities that existed but that's primarily where the next stop went to for for those who Levi was helping and excuse me if it was too dangerous to go north he says Ohio wasn't too far away he could send him East into Ohio as well so so just to kind of wrap up the tour um with my stories when Levi chose to move to Cincinnati in 1847 it wasn't a very easy decision for him um he built this beautiful home he was going to spend his life in that home he was very happy with his life here but something he gets involved in it's something known as the Free Labor movement um very similar to our fair trade today but there's this growing support within the Quaker communities in the midwest not to economically support slavery so Levi as a merchant here in town decides I no longer want to sell any product that has been touched by slave labor so in 1844 he converts the store and starts advertising that it's a free labor store which means if you buy cotton for him from him excuse me then that is cotton that has been raised and processed by paid labor which is very hard to Source in the country at that time but he he gets it going it doesn't really make a profit for him but he doesn't mind that he feels like he's making a statement this is more important in 1846 in Union County Indiana there's a free labor convention Levi attends it of course um because of his store and at that convention one of the Hot Topics they're discussing is the fact that there's very low supply for this it's really hard to Source things like free labor cotton and such but there's such a big demand for it so there's definitely a market to do this but how do we get this Supply up and it was decided um in that convention that a warehouse should be opened in Cincinnati and the warehouse will work to bring up that Supply to be able to source to the small dry goods stores and such like Levis and but somebody's got to do this and there was a vote and it was voted that Levi Coffin would be the perfect person to do do this which of course he says no not me I'm not really interested in leaving they work on him for a year they promise him uh an investment of $3,000 and they say you know what just do it for a short period or something like that which is actually what eventually gets Levi to decide to go because he says okay well I'll do it for 5 years or up to five years and then I'll pass it on to somebody and I'll come back so when he moves in April of 1847 with Katherine to Cincinnati they still own the house cuz they think they're coming back he gets the warehouse going things are going okay for the first few years but again he's having the same issues even for the warehouse it's really hard to get a supply going and to make a profit but regardless of the fact that he could never make that work successfully and after 10 years he sells that business he still never moves back ever and that's because in those years he'll get involved in the Underground Railroad in Cincinnati so Levi and Katherine decide to stay there and assist with those efforts so one of the bigger Mysteries too that we're studying is what is happening in the house while the coffins are gone because is it still being used as a safe house we know that Levi's alerz did not end because he left somebody is keeping things going because he mentions that many of the people he's helped out to Cincinnati this is where he's sending them to is through routes that take them through Newport so we know he's renting the house out we just we're not quite sure to who so we're trying to find out those details and can we confirm if the house is still considered a safe place being used for the Underground Railroad in those years while the coffins are away so um so unfortunately when you go to Cincinnati all you can see of their lives are their gravestones CU they didn't preserve the warehouse or the houses he lived in there so is that because because of their religious beliefs or why it didn't get preserved yeah I can't speak to why yeah um but kind of in a period when cities were really starting to to grow after the postor war that really wasn't preservation wasn't on people's minds yeah so um his warehouse and first house that he lived in in downtown Cincinnati there's a parking garage there now I mean so um and with that house that was outside of town I'm not quite sure what happened but to my knowledge it's not standing anymore so so in regards to the Free Labor movement M I would think that not only sourcing Free Labor produce cotton or products to make products would be more expensive yes meaning that the resulting product be more expensive to sell correct are people willing to pay a premium for that when they could buy the cheaper slave labor content you know he when he transitioned his store and he starts to advertise he says I definitely got rebuked from people who said I'm not paying those prices and I'm never shopping there anymore they also felt he was making a political statement and they didn't feel that that was the right thing to do so they left as customers but he says I got those customers replaced with the people who were willing to pay those prices because conscious ly they felt better knowing of what they were purchasing so he curated his own customers and there were customers willing he just had to get the right ones correct one other question which is a little bit more difficult one um the the coffins are very well profiled historically I mean these are considered in Indiana you look at the website it's all over the place right U 2,000 something plus people potentially rescued ored because of them corre that's his estimation I spoke about this earlier like Elijah Anderson 1800 right doesn't seem to get as much of an attention do you think there's a reason for that or why well again this comes down to how the history is being recorded and who feels empowered to give that history okay so a lot of Underground Railroad history right now a lot of the research is going towards giving light to the stories of those who didn't feel they had the right or the power to be able to do that so that includes women okay women are a huge part of this too um and but that also goes for for blacks whether free or slave um when you think of society even post Civil War despite things changing with the ending of slavery in the 13th Amendment and then you have the 14th and 15th giving the rights to vote and being American citizens there are still places in this country where you know you don't feel safe talking about those things and even in the north so um when the history is starting to be collected um there's one gentleman at Ohio State University who I look at his research a lot because it's one of the first here in the Midwest kind of collecting stories again it's it's oral stuff but I don't know how much he's actually reaching out to the black communities of the Midwest as well as the white communities and such so it's it's but as I mentioned too at the beginning of my tour a lot of people didn't feel it was safe to even talk about after the Civil War so if you can imagine being a black person too for them that that was much and obviously the reaction often times to to people involved black violence was more um usual and then you see Levi's story and somebody who practically had a community around him protecting now I I hardly believe that if William Bush was under a threat Levi is going to do his best to protect him but he's never going to use violence to do that so um his his take is much different it makes sense so there were people that were in a situation in which they could speak to their history right more safely right and people like Elijah or others really couldn't correct so as a result the oral history may have been lost or not totally but more neglected correct okay yeah hopefully you enjoyed this nearly long if not hourong episode as a conclusion about the Underground Railroad on inrange TV if you haven't watched episodes one and two I'm going to urge you again to do so because what I'm going to talk about now is relevant to both of those we asked the dosen at the end of this tour today why is it that Elijah Anderson a free black man that helped rescue over 1,800 Refugee slaves on the Underground Railroad really doesn't have a lot of information about him Museum but behind us we see Levi and Katherine coffin's house as a full-on dosent Le Museum and they rescued or helped rescue approximately 2,000 the number is about the same however the equivalency in terms of historical data that we have now is not and it's actually a very interesting uh answer that came to us Levi and Katherine coffin had an entire Quaker family and friendship around them that protected them and insulated them from what came after the Civil War and so this was not necessarily an oral history behind us in fact Levi was willing to write a book reminiscing about his days on on the Underground Railroad the free blacks such as Elijah Anderson while he did not survive but others did couldn't it became an oral history throughout their family because they would still have been treated as criminals for their act on the Underground Railroad even past the end of the Civil War and theoretically the end of slavery so as a result the history of the free blacks that helped on the Underground Railroad is diminished while the history of Levi and Katherine coffin and others of their type is a bit escalated because we have the data and we can actually have information from them because they were not afraid to speak about their experiences during the Civil War before the Civil War but most importantly afterwards guys if you haven't watched episodes 1 and two again please do so this is the kind of stuff that will not be funded by monetization on YouTube it just isn't we are supported entirely by patreon from viewers like you if you can consider supporting us on patreon please think about it if you can't please subscribe to our Channel find us on all of our distribution networks on in range. TV but most importantly thank you for watching and share with your friends

Channel: InRangeTV

Views: 76,999

Keywords: underground railroad, slaves, refugees, coffin, levi coffin, catherine coffin, depot, indiana, civil war, civil rights, freedom, rebellion, kasarda, mccollum, inrangetv, forgotten weapons

Id: EQB219EMoHE

Length: 60min 48sec (3648 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 08 2018