USA > Ohio > Champaign County > The history of Champaign county, Ohio, containing a history of the county; its cities, towns, etc.; general and local statistics; portraits of early settlers and prominent men; history of the Northwest territory etc > Part 70
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In 1877 was organized, and, in 1878 and 1879, effort was made to con- struct, a narrow-gauge railroad from Urbana through Mechanicsburg to West Jefferson, thence to Columbus, to be called the "Columbus & Northwestern Railway Company." The company was organized, route surveyed, and con- siderable stock subscribed. The amount subscribed in Goshen Township, including, of course, Mechanicsburg, was about $9,000. The work of build- ing the road was also let to an Eastern firm ; but the railroad company failed to comply with their part of the contract, and the other party very gladly retired from the work, as the material advanced so greatly that their contract would have been a bad one for themselves.
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.
We have come now to the consideration of a railroad of quite a different kind from that first above mentioned. On that those persons could boldly travel, whom a certain great section of the nation declared were made by God as a superior order of beings, and were endowed by Him with authority over their fellows, created as themselves were, and in their image, but with a skin differing from their own in color. On that road there was gayety and laughter. Happy parties of youth in the morning of life started out on their bridal tours, while their friends crowded around them at the station, and with a merry good- bye wished them a happy return. Boldly the trains on that road, filled with travelers, dashed through the country, with a great noise, anxious to announce their coming. Wives sat in safety with their husbands, and innocent little children were prattling on their mother's lap. What could be added !
But this road was a different affair. No noise announced the departure of its travelers. In all the long, dark years of its use, there was not a single merry good-bye between the ones going and staying ; there was never a wish for the return of one of its departing ones ; its stations were hiding-places ; the
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beginning of those journeys was in the secrecy of the night; there were no happy bridal parties on that road, and little children clung in terror to their mothers at the slightest noise. But who were the travelers on this road, and what was this road that its patrons were so often in such fear and terror? Hist ! Let it be whispered, lest we add disgrace to our already too-much disgraced coun- try. This was the Underground Railroad, and its travelers were those who the highest tribunal of the nation said "had no right which the white man was bound to respect." Writing with the light thrown upon those times, it is no wonder that God soon let loose His hand of vengeance upon a people whose cup of iniquity was so nearly full. The young man of to-day reads the accounts of those things as tales of fiction ; but they were true, every word ; and, though a thousand books were written, a small fraction would hardly be told.
Just think of it! the whole people, under heavy penalties, were by law ordered to become hounds upon the track of those who, as fellow-beings, were as much entitled to liberty as their pursuers. The travelers on this road were those whose backs had been cut by the lash at the whim of an owner. There were mothers on this road who cut their children's throats rather than that they should be taken back. On this road capture meant wives to be separated from husbands, little children from parents, while all were sold away from each other forever into the cotton-fields of the Gulf. Fathers and mothers, how would it be with you, as your little children play about your knee, were you at the mercy merely of a man, and, at his whim, your wife or children could be taken before your eyes and brutally beaten, or sold away from your sight forever ? Yet this was the law of the land enacted at the command of a Solid South. No wonder people began to refuse submission in horror to this sum of villainies. Goshen Township had much to do with these things, and now we will tell you a little merely :
At Ripley, Brown County, Ohio, near the Ohio River, opposite the Ken- tucky shore, lived many Quakers whose sympathies were with the slave. At this point, many persons escaping from slavery, crossed the river, and met friendly aid and direction at the hand of the Quakers there. Passing thence under guide or direction, they soon reached another station, where, like- wise, they received aid to another station, and so on. Many slaves came to South Charleston as a station ; thence, in the earlier years of the road, to Springfield, Urbana, Marysville, Delaware, Allen Creek, etc., to Canada. As early as 1840, if not before, slaves came through Mechanicsburg and adjacent country on their way to Canada, and there were then men who aided them.
East of Mechanicsburg three or four miles, were men who heard the story of the poor black with compassion. Among these were Orin Mann, a very zealous helper, Levi Patrick and "Dad " Collins, who are dead, and Newman Mitchell, who died many years ago, P. W. Alden and Coung Patrick, who are still living. At Mechanicsburg, there were Azro L. Mann and David Rutan, who are dead, and J. R. Ware, Charles Taylor and Levi Rathburn, who are. living. We do not pretend to give all who sympathized with the slave, or who occasionally befriended him ; we give only the most known and active of his friends. There was no regularly organized society; there was simply a com- mon sympathy and agreement upon what was duty before God touching the claims of individuals upon them under circumstances of distress. They acted, and slaves were helped to be free.
Until 1851, help had been given slaves as they came along, but probably not until that year was this considered such a point as that they would be guided
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personally, or carried on to a further point. In that year, a unique character entered upon the scene here, in the business. That man, Udney H. Hyde, did much more of personal labor than any other one man at this point, to effectually further on their way more than half a thousand slaves. He could outswear any man in Champaign County, and, if any man in the world could beat him, his vocabulary would contain nothing else. He was fearless, shrewd and bold, a good horseman, and determined to help the slave along.
In 1851, Jacob Pearce, living near South Charleston, came to Mechanics- burg to see if four darkies could not be cared for and taken further on their way, as it was not safe to take them to Springfield. Hyde was sought out, and he agreed to take them. They were sent to him, and he kept them one night and early the next morning he started with them, and three others who came from Urbana, for Delaware. He took them lying down in the bottom of a wagon-bed, and covered up with hay. This, the first load taken by Mr. Hyde, was taken September 20, 1851, and was the beginning of a regular and more extensive work here. Among the four whom Pearce brought was a man by name of Penny. Penny related his story, which we give in short :
Penny was a free negro, living in Ripley. Falling in love with a slave woman belonging to a Baptist preacher in Kentucky, he sought the master and wished to buy the girl. No, the master wouldn't sell, but if he, Penny, would work a year for him, he would give the girl her freedom. The year was worked, but, when Penny asked to have the girl go free, the master, in anger, threw at him $40 for his work, and ordered him to clear out. Penny took the money, bought fire-arms, and on Saturday night he went to the master's place, and, taking his wife and her sister and husband, and another man, started for the Ohio River. Arriving at the river, two men, sent by the master, were at the river to arrest them. In order to get away, Penny was obliged to shoot one of the men in the arm, while one of the slave men was wounded. Leaving the wounded man in Ripley, the other four finally, passing through Mechanicsburg, landed in safety. This is only one story of thousands, many of them exceed- ingly tragic, and would have called forth the condemnation of an outraged people had the poor creatures so pursued been anything but black.
After that, during several years, Mr. Hyde took numerous other loads, and, all told, carried away 513 fleeing slaves. The largest lot taken by him at one time numbered twenty-four, of whom eleven were men, eleven women, and two children ; the women and children rode while the men walked.
ADDISON WHITE DIFFICULTY, 1857.
We now come to another event, which at the time created great excitement in this community. This event was the natural outgrowth of that state of things indicated by what has just been related. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which resulted in the admission of Missouri into the Union, in February, 1821, as a Slave State, but under the solemn agreement and enactment of law that slavery should not be introduced into the territory north of latitude 36° 30', had been broken and rescinded in 1854; all the territory acquired from Mexico, except California, had been opened to slavery as the price of a free constitution for California in 1850; also, the odious fugitive slave law had been enacted in obedience to the demand of the Solid South ; also, the Supreme Court, in answer to the same demand, ignoring justice, humanity, God, had made that barbarous Dred Scott decision, the promulgation of which was delayed more than a year, lest it might affect Buchanan's election. This decision was promulgated a short
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time after his inauguration, March 4, 1857, and a few weeks before the event we shall relate happened. The Kansas struggle had also commenced, and every- thing conspired to arouse up a people who were naturally opposed to the exten- sion of the slave power.
In 1856, Addison White came to Goshen Township. He was a large man of great strength, a slave, belonging to Daniel White, of Flemingburg, Fleming County, Ky. Loving freedom better than slavery, he escaped the latter and came direct to Mechanicsburg, arriving August 31, 1856. Instead of going on to Canada, he stayed at Udney Hyde's and worked.
The trouble commenced in next spring. Charles Taylor, living in Me- chanicsburg, wrote for Addison a letter to his wife, who was in Kentucky. They sent this letter to Springfield, Ohio, to be mailed, thinking thus to give no clew to his whereabouts. Not long after, a closed carriage drove into town one night and stopped in an alley near Mr. Taylor's house. A man got out, went to Mr. Taylor's house and knocked at the door ; after a little parley, Taylor opened the door, when the man inquired if he could see Addison White. Mr. Taylor replied he could not, and inquired what he wanted with him. The reply was that he had White's wife in a carriage in the alley up the street. Mr. Taylor's suspicions being aroused, he said that he could get word to White in two or three days, and requested them to bring his wife into the house, and he would keep her until Addison could be informed. No, nothing would do but to see Addison, and they would take his wife back unless they could see him. They drove down street, but Taylor followed, and at the square asked to be permitted to speak with Mrs. White. In answer to a ques- tion put, a man's voice in imitation of a woman's answered from the closed car- riage. The ruse failed, and they drove off without the slave.
Addison was living then with Mr. Hyde, about two miles southeast of town on the West Jefferson road, on the farm now owned by John Howard ; the log house Hyde lived in being located where Howard's house now stands.
By means of a spy who came from Cincinnati, and other means, Addison's place and habits were discovered. John Churchill and - - Elliott, Deputy United States Marshals, and seven other men as a posse, went through Me- chanicsburg in the night of May 14, or early in the morning of the 15th, 1857, and stopped somewhere in the neighborhood of Hyde's house. Early on the morning of May 15, while he was drawing on his boots (Mr. Hyde being in bed not able to walk on account of a crushed heel), Addison saw through a window several men approaching. In a moment Addison sprang up a ladder into the low loft above, while soon the men, without knocking, broke the latch to the door, and rushed in. Elliott, as he entered, saw a board move overhead, and fired both barrels of his gun, heavily loaded with buckshot, making a large hole in the board above, but missed White. Immediately he started to go up the ladder, when bang went a pistol, fired by the colored man. Elliott fell back, crying that he was a dead man. His life was saved by the ball glancing from the gun barrel he had before him, and making a slight wound on his ear. When Elliott was shot, all the others rushed for the door to escape. Here was war. The men dared not go up, Addison dared not go down. Death awaited either party if he went too far.
Hyde knew he had plenty of friends in Mechanicsburg, "that black Abo- lition hole," as it was called. He must get word to them ; so he sent a young son, Rheuna, to tell his son Russell, who lived near by, to go to town, but the officers drove him back into the house. Soon he sent his daughter Amanda,
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
who, by a ruse of feeding her chickens, got beyond the men, and, when ordered to stop, commenced to run. They threatened to shoot her, but, possessing then enough of the dare-devil, she kept right on, pursued by one of the men, told Russell, who, going to a neighbor, Nelson Downing, borrowed his horse, hast- ened to town, informed the people, when soon a crowd was at Hyde's. Hyde stormed, swore and threatened; the officers swore and threatened, all without avail, for Addison was not surrendered. Finding themselves so greatly out- numbered, and knowing they never could capture the darky, the officers folded their tents and glided away, so to speak. Addison was run off into Canada, and the first scene was closed.
The next week, the Marshals came to Urbana again, for the purpose of going to Mechanicsburg to make arrests of citizens for resisting officers. In the night preceding the day they came, Joseph C. Brand came from Urbana, and warned Charles Taylor that the Marshals were coming. They failed to arrest Mr. Udney Hyde ; for, being afraid of surprise at night, he had not slept at home since the difficulty, and that night had stayed at Doty's, about two miles from town, on the Woodstock road.
For nearly nine months he was, as he expresses it, a fugitive, not from justice, but injustice. He remained away, a part of the time in the State, and a part out of the State, until the whole case was settled.
The officers and posse came next day, as was foretold. They arrested Charles Taylor, Russel Hyde, Edward Taylor and Hiram Guthridge. During this time the excitement ran high, and James Gill was chased into Williams & Bros.' store by William Culbertson, for having, as the people believed, acted as informer on the citizens.
When the Marshals had the prisoners in a wagon waiting to start away, William C. Pangborn stepped up to them, and said, " You needn't go unless you want to. Just say the word and we will let you go free." One of the Marshals, on hearing this, said, " By God, that's talk ! " However, the prisoners replied that the officers had agreed that if they would go peaceably they would take them to Urbana, where they could get a writ of habeas corpus. When the Marshals reached Clark's Hill, about half way to Urbana, with the prisoners, they turned off south, thus breaking their agreement. David Rutan and Oliver Colwell followed them up, and, when the officers turned off, they also turned. Then the officers threatened to shoot Rutan and Colwell, and, seizing their horse, turned it round, and drove them back. They also threatened to kill the pris- oners, and manacled Charles Taylor and Hyde together.
Citizens now became alarmed, and sent out parties to different points to keep track of the prisoners. Samuel V. Baldwin, Probate Judge of Champaign County, issued writs of habeas corpus, and gave them to John Clark, Sheriff of Champaign County, to the Sheriff of Clark County, and to the Sheriff of Greene County, for the purpose of recovering possession of the prisoners.
The officers passed through Catawba Station to Catawba, thence to Summer- ford, where they told Clark, Sheriff of Champaign County, that they would not give up the prisoners ; thence to South Charleston, where they assaulted and severely beat the Sheriff of Clark County ; thence through Cedarville, in Greene County, to a point east of Xenia, where they inquired for the nearest road to the Ohio River. The prisoners and their friends now became alarmed for their safety. They feared the officers intended taking them to the Ohio River; thence across the river into Kentucky, and seek Cincinnati by coming down the Kentucky side. Once on the Kentucky side, the prisoners knew they would be
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
mobbed and killed. Rather than cross the Ohio River, Charles Taylor and his brother Ed had determined each to seize an officer and jump into the river.
A warrant was issued for the arrest of the Marshals for assault and battery upon the Clark County Sheriff, with intent to kill, and placed in the hands of a Constable at Charleston for service, who then pursued the Marshals. After leaving Summerford, Clark, Sheriff of Champaign County, went to Xenia, and, with the Sheriff of Greene County and a posse of men, also sought to find the Marshals. The Constable and posse and the Sheriffs and posse met at a small place called Lumberton, east of Xenia, where they overtook the Marshals. The Sheriffs served their writ of habeas corpus, and took the four prisoners, who were taken by Sheriff Clark before Judge Baldwin, at Urbana, and released. When the Sheriff's with the rescued prisoners reached Xenia, the city was alive with excitement. When the Sheriffs took the four men from the Marshals, the Constable arrested the Marshals on his warrant, took them to Charleston, where they were bound over to appear at court at Springfield, but, being unable to give bail, were lodged in jail at Springfield. Next day, the United States Court at Cincinnati served a writ of habeas corpus upon the Sheriff of Clark County, who produced the Marshals before that court, which set them at liberty.
Several times after, Marshals were at Mechanicsburg to arrest the four who were released and other citizens. The four finally surrendered, went to Cin- cinnati and gave bail. The whole case was finally dropped by our citizens raising $500 as part pay for Addison, Urbana and some other point raising some more. John Corwin, attorney at Urbana, acted as agent in the matter. In fact, all parties, the Government and citizens, were glad to have the case closed up. Afterward, Corwin sued a large number of our citizens for $3,000, for services as attorney in the matter, but he was justly beaten, as he could make out no contract of hire. The foregoing shows somewhat the state of the public mind in the Free States, in the conflict between the slave power and the more humane ideas of the majority of the free citizens of the North.
Thus ended an event which, being repeated in part of its features all over the North, was one of the causes which led on to a most stupendous tragedy, compared with which events like the foregoing, are not more thanthe light of the smallest star discovered by our greatest telescopes to the full blaze of the noonday sun. To the present day, a good portion of the history of our race, indirectly or directly, is a history of a strug- gle for freedom. For years the people of the North had bowed before the demands of the slave power ; for years, under threats of dissolving the Union, people had yielded, and the spirit of that power had grown haughty, insolent, defiant. For years, through compromises made and broken; through the struggle between freedom and slavery; through the barbarism of the fugi- tive slave law ; through the inhumanity of the Dred Scott decision ; through the blow of the bludgeon in the assassin's hand in the halls of Congress ; through Kansas struggles ; through threats and passions-the storm came, and broke in fury in 1861, and relentlessly rolled its waves of terror for four years over our country. The voice of Goshen Township was no uncertain sound in that conflict. The education and sentiment of her people left no doubt whether she would be found arrayed on the side of progress, liberty, the nation, or on the side of traitors in arms, seeking to found on the ruins of their nation a kingdom whose corner-stone was slavery. The vote of this township for years before the war had been on the side of humanity, and never since has she swerved. We insert the vote from 1851 to 1880, that our people may see at a
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glance where the township has stood during the past thirty years. The table is a gratifying one, we take it, to both Republicans and Democrats. To the former, that the township has unswervingly stood for the right ; to the latter, that they are now enabled to point to an undivided nation, which they could not do had their votes been successful on several occasions :
VOTE OF GOSHEN TOWNSHIP.
1851-Governor, Samuel F. Vinton, Whig, 143; Reuben Wood, Dem., 67. 1852-President, Winfield Scott, Whig, 203; Franklin Pierce, Dem., 60.
1853-Governor, Samuel Lewis, Free-Soil, 144; Nelson Barrere, Whig, 79; William Medill, Dem., 67.
1854-Supreme Judge, Joseph R. Swann, Know N., 295; Shepherd F. Mor- ris, Dem., 27.
1855-Governor, Salmon P. Chase, Rep., 175; William Medill, Dem., 35 ; Allen Trimble, 77.
1856-President, John C. Fremont, Rep., 276; James Buchanan, Dem., 65; Millard Fillmore, Amer., 13.
1857-Governor, Salmon P. Chase, Rep., 258; H. B. Payne, Dem., 74. 1858-Supreme Judge, William V. Peck, Rep., 230; Thomas W. Bartley, Dem., 72.
1859-Governor, William Dennison, Jr., Rep., 251; Rufus P. Ranney, Dem., 77.
1860-President, Abraham Lincoln, Rep., 330; Stephen A. Douglas, Dem., 81; John C. Breckenridge, Dem., 8 ; John Bell, 3.
1861-Governor, David Todd, Rep., 264; Hugh J. Jewett, Dem., 39.
1862-Supreme Judge, Franklin T. Backus, Rep., 268 ; Rufus P. Ranney, Dem. 80.
1863-Governor, John Brough, Rep, 335; Clement L. Vallandigham, Dem .. 52.
1864-President, Abraham Lincoln, Rep., 317; George B. McClellan, Dem., 49.
1865-Governor, Jacob D. Cox, Rep., 280; G. W. Morgan, Dem., 47.
1866-Secretary of State, William H. Smith, Rep., 340; Ben. Lefevre, Dem., 50.
1867-Governor, R. B. Hayes, Rep., 318; A. G. Thurman, Dem., 75.
1868 -President, U. S. Grant, Rep., 355; Horatio Seymour, Dem., 74.
1869-Governor, R. B. Hayes, Rep., 295; Geo. H. Pendleton. Dem .. 67.
1870-Secretary of State, Isaac R. Sherwood, Rep., 303; William Heis- ley, Dem., 81.
1871-Governor, E. F. Noyes, Rep., 340; G. W. McCook, Dem., 91.
1872-President, U. S. Grant, Rep., 374 ; Horace Greeley, 103.
1873-Governor, E. F. Noyes, Rep., 270; William Allen, Dem., 71; G. T. Stuart, Pro., 54.
1874-Secretary of State, A. T. Wikoff, Rep., 237; William Bell, Jr., Dem., 68; John R. Buchtel, Pro., 42.
1875-Governor, R. B. Hayes, Rep., 425; William Allen, Dem., 155 ; J. Odell, Pro., 8.
1876-Secretary of State, Milton Barnes, Rep., 458; William Bell, Jr., Dem., 163; E. S. Chapman, Pro., 3.
1876-President, R. B. Hayes, Rep., 468; Samuel J. Tilden, Dem., 172; G. Clay Smith, 4.
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HISTORY OF CHAMPAIGN COUNTY.
1877-Governor, William H. West, Rep., 441; Richard M. Bishop, Dem., 155.
1878-Secretary of State, Milton Barnes, Rep., 415; David R. Paige, Dem., 159; J. N. Robinson, Pro., 59.
1879-Governor, Charles Foster, Rep., 497 ; Thomas Ewing, Dem., 137; Gideon T. Stuart, Pro., 37.
1880-Supreme Judge, George W. McIlvaine, Rep., 536; Martin D. Fol- lett, Dem., 139 ; William F. Ross, Pro., 13; Charles A. Lloyd, Greenback, 1. 1880-President, James A. Garfield, Rep., 548 ; Winfield S. Hancock, Dem., 127 ; Neal Dow, Pro., 15; James B. Weaver, Greenback, 2.
IN THE WAR.
When Sumter was attacked, the spirit of the people here was fired, in common with all the loyal North, with the determination to protect the Govern- ment and suppress the rebellion. How much was done by the people of this township, can never be known. Almost like a dream seems the recollection of those years. At the first call of the President for 75,000 men, a number of our citizens offered their services, and the writer remembers well, though it seems a long age ago, the departure of the first volunteers under that call. John F. Horr was the first man to enlist, in this township, under the President's first call for 75,000; James Edward Taylor, the second ; Thomas M. Owen, the third ; then followed Carp Groves, Isaac Groves, Peter Hardman and Melvin Kenfield. Others enlisted at the same time, but these are the only ones that were accepted. These were in Company K, Second Ohio, three months' serv- ice. Sumter was evacuated Sunday, April 14 ; the President made his call on Monday, the 15th ; these men enlisted on Tuesday, the 16th, went to Urbana on Wednesday, the 17th, and thence, same day, to Columbus ; thence, at 3 o'clock, A. M., of the 18th, to Harrisburg, Penn., where the regiment was organized. Other men who enlisted under this call were organized into the three years' service.
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