[Footnote 1: Howe, _The Refugee from Slavery_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 2: Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Johns Hopkins University Studies, series xxxi., No. 3, p. 107).]
On perusing this sketch the educator naturally wonders exactly what intellectual progress was made by these groups on free soil. This question cannot be fully answered for the reason that extant records give no detailed account of many colored settlements which underwent upheaval or failed to endure. In some cases we learn simply that a social center flourished and was then destroyed. On "Black Friday," January 1, 1830, eighty Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio, at the request of one or two hundred white citizens, set forth in an urgent memorial.[1] After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 the colored population of Columbia, Pennsylvania, dropped from nine hundred and forty-three to four hundred and eighty-seven.[2] The Negro community in the northwestern part of that State was broken up entirely.[3] The African Methodist and Baptist churches of Buffalo lost many communicants. Out of a membership of one hundred and fourteen, the colored Baptist church of Rochester lost one hundred and twelve, including its pastor. About the same time eighty-four members of the African Baptist church of Detroit crossed into Canada.[4] The break-up of these churches meant the end of the day and Sunday-schools which were maintained in them. Moreover, the migration of these Negroes aroused such bitter feeling against them that their schoolhouses were frequently burned. It often seemed that it was just as unpopular to educate the blacks in the North as in the South. Ohio, Illinois, and Oregon enacted laws to prevent them from coming into those commonwealths.
[Footnote 1: Evans, _A History of Scioto County, Ohio_, p. 613.]
[Footnote 2: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 249.]
We have, however, sufficient evidence of large undertakings to educate the colored people then finding homes in less turbulent parts beyond the Ohio. In the first place, almost every settlement made by the Quakers was a center to which Negroes repaired for enlightenment. In other groups where there was no such opportunity, they had the coöperation of certain philanthropists in providing facilities for their mental and moral development. As a result, the free blacks had access to schools and churches in Hamilton, Howard, Randolph, Vigo, Gibson, Rush, Tipton, Grant, and Wayne counties, Indiana,[1] and Madison, Monroe, and St. Clair counties, Illinois. There were colored schools and churches in Logan, Clark, Columbiana, Guernsey, Jefferson, Highland, Brown, Darke, Shelby, Green, Miami, Warren, Scioto, Gallia, Ross, and Muskingum counties, Ohio.[2] Augustus Wattles said that with the assistance of abolitionists he organized twenty-five such schools in Ohio counties after 1833.[3] Brown County alone had six. Not many years later a Negro settlement in Gallia County, Ohio, was paying a teacher fifty dollars a quarter.[4]