AUSTINTOWN — If you live anywhere in the Mahoning Valley, chances are great that you’re at or very near a route that was once part of the Underground Railroad.

“After 1850, Canada becomes the goal,” Traci Manning, the Mahoning Valley Historical Society’s curator of education, said.

During a 50-minute presentation she gave Monday evening at the Austintown branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County about abolitionist history, which was part of Black History Month, Manning noted that northeast Ohio became a major route to Canada for many people trying to escape the bondage of chattel slavery.

The Fugitive Slave Act, which passed Sept. 18, 1850, and was part of the Compromise of 1850, required that slaves be returned to their owners — even if they were in Ohio or any other free state. The law also entrusted the federal government with being responsible for finding and returning, then trying, escaped slaves.

Largely because of that move, northern states were no longer guaranteed safe havens for formerly enslaved people. Consequently, Canada became the desired destination for freedom because that country had abolished slavery in the 1840s, Manning noted.

Locally, Salem, which Manning called “super progressive” during that time, had a large Quaker population that believed in equality and was sympathetic to those in slavery

Beginning in 1845, the town published a newspaper called the “Anti-Slavery Bugle.” The paper also took the bold initiative of calling out area churches that refused to speak against the profitable trade, she explained.

Manning shared the stories of local abolitionists such as Jacob and Nancy Barnes, who also were feminists and used their Canfield home as a shelter for those seeking freedom. The couple lived in Loghurst, which today is a museum the Western Reserve Historical Society operates that is off U.S. Route 224 in Canfield.

In addition, Manning mentioned Daniel Howell Hise, a former steamboat engineer from Alabama who renovated his spacious farmhouse in Salem to include small hidden rooms for escaping slaves. Hise also provided food and shelter for fugitive slaves until they could more safely leave at night; in addition, he used the home to host anti-slavery meetings as well as a place for visiting abolitionists.

Also discussed was Charles A. Garlick, whose birth name was Abel Bogguess and whose parents and 11 siblings were enslaved on a West Virginia plantation. Garlick escaped north when he was 16 and ended up at the home of an abolitionist, likely in Ohio, where he stayed about three years while working and attending school, including Oberlin College in 1847.

Fearing the Fugitive Slave Act could result in his re-enslavement, Garlick moved to Canada for a brief time before returning to the U.S., Manning noted.

She shared other escaped slaves’ stories, though perhaps few were more dramatic than that of Henry Brown, who was born into slavery in Virginia in 1815 or 1816. Before becoming an abolitionist and performer, Brown enlisted the help of a free black man and a storekeeper, who conspired to ship him in a box from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia.

In March 1849, Brown was accepted by a leader of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society before he eventually made his way to Massachusetts, then England, where he lectured on the evils of slavery before returning to America in 1875 and performing as a magician.

The box in which Brown was shipped had three holes in it so he could breathe, and he rode upside-down for part of the journey, Manning said.

Those who escaped via the Underground Railroad, which she characterized as “not a place, but a movement of people,” faced tremendous risks if caught. Those included physical torture, being forever separated from family members and possible death, though for some, being sold back into slavery farther south was a fate worse than death, Manning continued.

At one time in the U.S., chattel slavery was legal throughout because it meant huge profits and free labor. Gradually, however, a few northern states such as Pennsylvania began the process of gradual emancipation, a legal mechanism in which such states slowly abolished slavery over a certain time, she noted.

Manning added that much of today’s knowledge about the abolitionist movement is an oral history, largely because those who escaped from slavery — and others who protected them — didn’t want to leave a written trail about committing acts that were deemed illegal at the time.

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