I have a great view from my office in the Hancock County Courthouse. Looking out my windows I can see the town of New Cumberland, the many mountains surrounding the valley and the mighty Ohio River. I have written a lot about the river in the past, from the early Native Americans who have lived here for thousands of years, to early settlers and industries that took advantage of the waterway for commerce. There is just so much history tied up in that waterway.

For most of the history of human habitation here, the river has served three main purposes: As a source of food and water, as a major means of transportation and as a natural boundary. This boundary has functioned as many things over the centuries. First, it was the natural line between settled land in the east and Native American land in the west. Second, it was the divide between Virginia and land owned by the federal government thanks to the 1783 Treaty of Paris in which the area known as the Northwest Territory was given to the U.S. after the American Revolution. Finally, it was the boundary between two states, first Virginia, then West Virginia, and Ohio.

During the early years of our country up until the Civil War, the river served as an important boundary between a free state and a slave state. That is the line in which slavery was allowed in Virginia and where it was outlawed in Ohio. Because of this boundary, it made our region an important route on the Underground Railroad. For an escaped enslaved person who left bondage in the southern states, the Ohio River was a perilous but important crossing on their journey north and to freedom. The crossing was hard and many relied on friendly folks on both sides of the river to help in this journey.

Crossing the river was often the first time an enslaved person ever touched free soil. Ohio had always been a free territory since the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in July of 1787, which prohibited slavery in this area. Later, Ohio outlawed slavery in its constitution. What’s important to remember though is just because an enslaved person was on free soil, it didn’t mean they were automatically free. The law of the land was the Fugitive Slave Act that was passed in 1793. That law gave the owner of the enslaved the right to pursue the person even into the free state. The laws were strengthened with the passage of the Compromise of 1850 with a bolstered Fugitive Slave Act. This change in the law gave slave owners a legal right to enslaved people who had escaped to free states and threatened fines and imprisonment to those who would help them.

The only truly free place for an enslaved person to go was Canada, and many made their way there through the Northern Panhandle, crossing the river at Martins Ferry or Steubenville and making their way north through the Underground Railroad.

There are local locations that have been claimed to have been stops on the Underground Railroad. One such place was the Crawford, or Furguson House that was located on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the old Bank of Weirton, now the Weirton Covenant Church. That house was said to have a tunnel that connected the house to the old stone barn. Although the tunnel, or something reminiscent to a tunnel, existed there to be sure, descendants of the Crawfords, who lived there during the Civil War, said the place was not on the Underground Railroad.

In Steubenville, there were known stops, and many enslaved people were helped on their journey to freedom. One such stop was the Quinn Memorial A.M.E. Church. The congregation, which just celebrated its 200th anniversary, was the very first African Methodist Episcopal church west of the mountains at its founding in 1823.

The abolition movement in Jefferson County was extremely strong, which came as no surprise to Joseph Doyle who wrote at length about that topic in his book, “The History of Steubenville and Jefferson County.” Doyle writes that most of the southern end of the county was settled by the Society of Friends or the Quakers. This group was extremely anti-slavery and would not allow their members to own slaves. The hub of all this activity was Mount Pleasant where, according to Doyle, the first Abolitionist newspaper was published by Benjamin Lundy. Also in Mount Pleasant, the state’s very first Abolition convention was held in 1837. Around 1848, Doyle states that the folks of Mount Pleasant opened a free labor store which sold no products of slave labor.

As one can imagine, there were many locations there that helped escaped enslaved people on their journey to freedom. The history of that community is rich.

All in all, Doyle recounts many homes and people in Jefferson County who were stations or conductors on the underground railroad from Belmont County in the south to Yellow Creek and west to Hopedale and Cadiz. Of a reported 2,800 to 3,000 miles of routes in Ohio, Jefferson County had about 117 miles, according to Doyle, and many are documented routes. Jefferson County was on the front lines of this national story. Certainly, the people of our area made their mark on the lives of thousands of enslaved men, women and children who yearned for freedom.

Crossing that river boundary between freedom and servitude was certainly a big step on their journey to being free.

(Zuros is the Hancock County administrator)