Struggle for Emancipation

People who lived in Westerville took part in the struggle for emancipation.

The Underground Railroad has left a strong imprint in Westerville’s collective memory. This is largely due to the fame of the song “Darling Nellie Gray,” written by Benjamin Hanby, a member of an abolitionist family. However, the dangers associated with Underground Railroad activity meant the names of the people who sought freedom were not written down, nor did they survive in the oral traditions of Westerville’s white families. We only know the name of one freedom seeker who came through Westerville. Thomas Harrison fled from a plantation in Lexington, Kentucky after he learned that two of his brothers had been sold. He traveled at night and crossed the Ohio River on a makeshift wooden raft. In Westerville, he hid in the basement of the Stoner House, an inn and tavern along State Street, before continuing to Canada.[1]

The struggle for emancipation took many other forms. One group of people enslaved in North Carolina, the Alstons, gained their freedom through their owner’s will before settling in East Orange near the present-day Alum Creek Lake & dam. A white pro-slavery neighbor, Leo Hurlburt, sneered at their presence and began calling the area “Africa.” The name stuck.[2]

Others self-emancipated by making their way to the safety of Union lines during the Civil War in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation. Angelina Heath was born enslaved in Surry County, Virginia in 1832. Heath and a man named Joseph Ellis, along with large numbers of other Black refugees, made their way through the war-torn landscape to nearby Fort Powhatan. An army chaplain married Heath, Ellis, and about 19 other couples who arrived safely at Fort Powhatan, a momentous occasion since most enslaved people – who the law treated as property rather than as people who could enter into legal contracts – had not been allowed to legally wed. The Ellises and some other newlyweds soon made their way to Franklin County, Ohio.[3]

Definitions

Abolitionist

Someone who supports a movement to end something, especially slavery.

Emancipation

Public Opinion, 4/29/1897, accessed through the Westerville History Museum.

Some men, like William Perry Milton, worked towards emancipation on a grander scale, as part of the United States Colored Troops (USCT). These soldiers could have decided to fight in the Civil War for a variety of reasons, whether it was to fight slavery, out of a sense of duty or patriotism, for money, to prove their manhood, to be recognized as equals to whites, or to have an adventure. But regardless of their individual motivations for enlisting, men like Milton fought for a government that was working to end slavery.

Black men from Westerville joined the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. The 127th USCT (later the 5th USCT) organized at Delaware, OH in 1863. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

References

[1] Hugh Fullerton, “De Lawd of Green Pastures, Son of Two Escaped Slaves, Is Hero of Amazing History,” Ohio Memory, Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio History Connection, accessed 10/6/2022, https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/siebert/id/4072/rec/12.

[2] James R. Lytle, 20th Century History of Delaware County, Ohio and Representative Citizens (Chicago: Biographical Pub. Co., 1908), 474; Alston Family Vertical File (A15), Westerville History Museum.

[3] Public Opinion, 4/29/1897.

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Ohio’s history of systemically oppressing African Americans dates back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which carved out the nation’s first organized territory and included the future state of Ohio. It prohibited slavery but allowed enslavers to reclaim freedom seekers who had escaped to Ohio (later reinforced by federal law). The state’s first constitution only allowed white males to vote, and starting in 1804, Ohio began passing a series of Black laws that further oppressed African Americans. It was against this inequitable backdrop that Westerville’s earliest Black settlers toiled and raised their families.

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3. Westerville & Slavery

Slavery was never legal in Ohio, but its legacies are entwined with the lives of those who lived here. Black people could still be held in bondage via indentured servitude, and freedom seekers, if caught, could be sent back into slavery. Local white families could be found all over the pro- and anti-slavery spectrum. For many survivors, slavery was not an episode in their lives that they could leave in the past after they moved to Ohio. Their actions in Westerville were a direct result of their experiences living under slavery’s shadow.

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4. Segregation & Discrimination in Westerville

Racial discrimination was not confined to the South in the first half of the twentieth century. The Ku Klux Klan flourished in Westerville. Its presence cast an ominous shadow over the town’s Black residents and other minorities, who had to work harder to find employment, experienced segregation, and were racially stereotyped.

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5. Activism & Civil Rights in Westerville

After the Civil War, an era known as Reconstruction, Black Americans used their newfound freedoms to reimagine what it meant to be an American citizen. Despite facing decades of Jim Crow laws and violent opposition to civil rights, they challenged white Americans’ ideas about who could participate in democracy. Into the Civil Rights era and beyond, a subset of Westerville residents continued to look for opportunities to move the needle in the national discourse about justice and equality for all.

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6. Changing the Narrative

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