[137] Judge R. B. Harlan and others, _History of Clinton County, Ohio_, pp. 380-383; letter of Seth Linton, Oakland, Clinton County, O., Sept. 4, 1892; Smedley, _Underground Railroad_, p. 187.
[138] The _Miami Union_, April 10, 1895, article entitled "A Reminiscence of Slave Times."
[139] Letter of Mrs. C. Grant, Pomeroy, Meigs Co., O.
[140] The _Republican Leader_, March 16, 1894, article, "Reminiscence of the Underground Railroad," by E. H. Trueblood.
[141] See _Underground Railroad Records_, pp. 46, 47.
[142] _Ibid._, pp. 81-84; see also _Narrative of Henry Box Brown, who escaped from slavery enclosed in a box 3 feet long and 2 wide, written from a statement of facts made by himself_, 1849, by Charles Stearns.
Abolitionists that drove wagons or carriages containing refugees, "conductors" as they came to be called in the terminology of the Railroad service, generally took the precaution to have ostensible reasons for their journeys. They sought to divest their excursions of the air of mystery by seeming to be about legitimate business. Hannah Marsh, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, was in the habit of taking garden produce to the Philadelphia markets to sell; when, therefore, she sometimes used her covered market-wagon, even in daytime, to convey fugitives, she attracted no attention, and made her trips without molestation.[143] Calvin Fairbank abducted the Stanton family, father, mother and six children, from the neighborhood of Covington, Kentucky, by packing them in a load of straw.[144] James W. Torrence, of Northwood, Ohio, together with some of his neighbors exported grain, and sometimes feathers, to Sandusky. These products were generally shipped when there were fugitives to go with the load. As the distance to Sandusky was a hundred and twenty miles, refugees who happened to profit by this arrangement were saved much time and no small amount of risk in getting to their destination.[145] Mr. William I. Bowditch, of Boston, used a two-horse carryall on one occasion to take a single fugitive to Concord.[146] Mr. John Weldon and other abolitionists, of Dwight, Illinois, took negroes to Chicago concealed in wagons loaded with sacks of bran.[147] Levi Coffin, of Cincinnati, Ohio, frequently received large companies for which safe transportation had to be supplied. On one occasion a party of twenty-eight negroes arrived, towards daylight, in the suburbs of Cincinnati, from Boone County, Kentucky, and it was necessary to send them on at once. Accordingly at Friend Coffin's suggestion a number of carriages were procured, formed into a long funeral-like procession and started solemnly on the road to Cumminsville.[148] An almost endless array of incidents similar to these can be given, but enough have been recited to illustrate the caution that prevailed in the transportation of fugitive slaves toward Canada.