Thursday, December 09, 1999
Clermont discovers role on the Underground Railroad
County 'was a hole in middle of map'
BY WALT SCHAEFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Kathy Bare shows local historian Gary Knepp a portion of her basement wall that she thinks was a tunnel on the Underground Railroad.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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The Ohio River is deeper today. The damming of the river has changed it from the times when desperate men, women and children crouched in the willows along the Kentucky shore.
The broad floodplain and shallow summertime stream of the Ohio in the mid-1800s separated freedom from slavery.
In the Clermont County river hamlet of Moscow, a lantern sent a nightly beacon across the river from the second floor of a two-story brick house on Water Street at the foot of present-day Broadway. The light promised escape.
The glimmer of hope came from the home of Robert Fee, a vocal abolitionist who readily admitted his involvement in the Underground Railroad — at least until 1850, when the Fugitive Slave Act made it a federal crime to harbor or aid an escaping slave.
ROUTE TO FREEDOM
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This is newly found history, discovered as part of a Clermont County research project. For years, historians have wondered why the Underground Railroad — steeped in the histories of Hamilton and Brown, Warren and Clinton counties — was hardly a footnote in Clermont County. That is changing.
“Clermont was a hole in the middle of the map,” said Gary Knepp, Batavia attorney, county history buff, board member of the Ohio Civil War Museum at Camp Dennison in Symmes Township, and now the man charged with filling the hole.
The Underground Railroad was a network of of trails and safe houses operated by a clandestine group of abolitionists to help Southern slaves reach freedom in the North and Canada.
“We knew there had to be more. It just made sense,” Mr. Knepp said. “This county is surrounded by (Underground) Railroad history. Now it is our task to discover its roots here.”
Historians and researchers are finding a network of “conductors” on Clermont County's Underground Railroad who helped transport many escaping slaves to a new life, unshackled.
Two other safe havens on the Railroad have been discovered in Williamsburg, and more new Railroad history is being found in Bethel and Felicity — the latter settled by Robert Fee's grandfather, William.
Traces of the county's role in the Underground Railroad have always existed in New Richmond — home to the abolitionist newspaper The Philanthropist in the 1830s and still today a town where African-American residents can trace their family roots to slavery.
But in New Richmond, the county history of the Railroad generally ended. Now, however, as the county approaches its 200th year, and interest in the Underground Railroad is at a pinnacle, the county's commissioners and the Clermont County Convention Center and Visitors Bureau have made research of the county's role a bicentennial celebration project.
Mr. Knepp and Oloye Adeyemon, founder of the Cleveland-based African-American Heritage Project Inc., have become county co-chairs of a search for Underground Railroad history.
Mr. Adeyemon, 50, who also is working for the Cincinnati-based National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, has spent 30 years as a full-time family history and oral tradition specialist and has become expert in slave genealogy and tracing them along the path to freedom.
Mr. Knepp said part of the county's new interest in the project results from the Freedom Center's goal of creating an Underground Railroad museum on the downtown Cincinnati riverfront. And the National Park Service is developing a National Underground Railroad Freedom Trail.
“I'm certain the (county officials) feel there is an important story to tell, but also there is the potential for attracting tourism with the museum and park service trail” being planned, Mr. Knepp said.
The early records pointing to Clermont County's Underground Railroad roots begin across the Ohio in Bracken County, Ky., where slavery prevailed.
One document was recently found in personal papers donated to the Ohio Historical Society by Ohio State University history professor Wilber Siebert, who wrote two books in the 1890s — The Mysteries of the Underground Railroad and The Underground Railroad in Ohio.
Mr. Siebert kept his notes from an oral interview with Peter Stokes, an escaping slave. Mr. Knepp found them. The interview relates that Mr. Stokes was born in Bracken County to a slave-owning family in 1837. He escaped to Canada in 1852.
“The idea of bein' under bondage and misusage caused me to leave ...,” Mr. Stokes told Mr. Siebert. “We lived 35 miles above Cincinnati on the Ohio River on the Kentucky side. We got information from friends (of) a man, Will Sleets, (of Felicity, Clermont County). ... Ten of us — two sisters and six children, me and my brother — that makes ten ...
“On a Sunday night, we started across the river in two small boats and turned 'em both adrift and then set out for Felicity.”
Eventually, Mr. Stokes was conveyed via the Underground Railroad through Clermont County east to Cadiz, Ohio, northwest of Wheeling, W.Va., then on to Cleveland, where he was put on a boat, The Morning Star, to Detroit and crossed into Windsor, Ontario. He told Mr. Siebert: “We was three weeks and three days comin'.”
It is not unlikely that Mr. Stokes, as did many other fleeing slaves, crossed the Ohio at Moscow — guided by the lantern in the window of Robert Fee's safe house.
The house stands today, saved by Bob and Kathy Bare after being condemned several years ago. Mrs. Bare is an antiques dealer.
“Our house was built in 1817 and was Robert Fee's home. There is a bricked-up tunnel in the basement,” most likely a place for slaves to hide from bounty hunters and slave owners, Mrs. Bare said.
The Bares think the house on Water Street across from theirs was home to a pro-slavery sympathizer and it's unlikely the tunnel connected there. “We hear that at our house Mr. Fee took them in and sent them on the Railroad north. Over there, they kept a candle in the window ... to deceive ... and they turned them back in for the bounty,” she said.
A previous homeowner of the Bares' house had displayed a collection of shackles and chains found in the basement, but it was stolen in a burglary, Mrs. Bare said.
Much of the newly discovered history involves the Fee family, Mr. Knepp said. Robert Fee's cousin, Oliver Perry Spencer Fee, lived in Felicity and is mentioned in The Felicity Times.
One account claims the village “was both famous and infamous as an abolition town. ... It is a fact that the slave felt in his innermost soul that if he could only reach Felicity he was safe,” wrote the paper's editor, Fletcher Day, in an 1896 issue. The item recently was found amid Mr. Siebert's papers.
Oliver Perry Spencer Fee appears to be the leader of the Underground Railroad in Felicity, if not all of Clermont County, Mr. Knepp said. Accounts discovered in Mr. Siebert's papers indicate Oliver Fee often posed as a pro-slavery sympathizer to searching owners and bounty hunters to steer them away from the safe havens of the Railroad.
“We have found records of the American Slavery Society with over 100 names from Clermont County and 60 are from Felicity,” Mr. Knepp said. Mr. Adeyemon and researchers from the Clermont County Library are following up on those names.
Mr. Knepp said he is investigating if Oliver Fee's home still stands and is researching more Railroad history in Felicity and north in Bethel, where known abolitionist Dr. William Thompson lived.
Escaping slaves coming across the Ohio took several routes north into Clermont County, Mr. Knepp said. It appears all of the trails converged at Williamsburg — except for the coach road to Cincinnati (Ohio 125 today).
On tree-lined Gay Street the homes remain of “Boss” Huber and Dr. Leavitt Thaxter Pease, whose wife, Nancy, was sister to Robert Fee of Moscow. Dr. Pease studied medicine from Dr. Thompson in Bethel, Mr. Knepp said.
Mr. Siebert's papers reveal “Boss” Huber was a tanner, who saw the plight of slaves on a trip into Mississippi. “He was not secretive and we have newspaper accounts of how he had a soap box and would go to social gatherings and rail against slavery,” Mr. Knepp said.
Not only did Mr. Huber conceal escaping slaves at his Gay Street home, now owned by Katherine Weeks, but also on a farm outside town that the researchers are trying to locate, Mr. Knepp said.
The Pease home is next door to the Huber house and a trap door concealed in a closet lends evidence of its use on the Railroad, Mr. Knepp said. He was an anti-slavery Whig who, along with his wife's family, aided the slaves, Mr. Knepp said. “When Huber died in 1854, Pease took over the Railroad in Williamsburg,” Mr. Knepp said.
Gretchen and Doug Lefferson , who grew up in Williamsburg, have lived in the Pease home since 1994. “There's a trap door and a crawl space under the house. We found some old shoes (Mr. Knepp) is planning to (carbon) date,” said Mr. Lefferson, 35, a Hamilton banker. “The house was built in 1845 and, growing up here, we heard stories about the Railroad and Pease is mentioned in old history books” as a “conductor”.
The search has just begun, Mr. Knepp said.
There is already a thick file ofinteresting stories, legends, rumors, snippets of the past to be checked, verified or discarded.
The task of uncovering the Underground Railroad in Clermont County will endure well past 2000 as more research is completed.
“We want people to share what they know. It may be just a story or a legend that needs further substantiation. Or, it may be something easily verified, documented or concrete,” Mr. Knepp said.
Eventually, today's blurry picture of the county's Underground Railroad history will clear, Mr. Knepp said. “I see this not only as a job I have agreed to do, but also it's an avocation of mine to see it through.”
SHARE INFORMATION
Contact: Gary Knepp, director, Historical Office, Clermont County Convention Center and Visitors Bureau. Phone: 732-3415.
Address: Clermont County Underground Railroad Research Project, 174 Main St., Batavia, 45103.
Provide: Your name, address, telephone and e-mail address
Include: Any or all of the following:
• Information concerning a suspected Underground Railroad site or a story about the railroad.
• Documentation related to either a site or story
• Contact person(s) or resource(s) to provide additional information.
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