Indiana - Day 23 - Levi & Catharine Coffin House and Hoosier Hill

Grandpa's Farm Campground, Richmond
Sunday, 23 June 2019

The people at last night's campground (Westward HO!) pointed out 3 families of ducks in the pond behind the campground.  They said these are Wood Ducks, and they come back every year to nest here.  The ducks very sensibly stayed on the opposite side of the pond and, though I did the best I could editing these photos, they still aren't at all clear.  And these ducks don't look a whole lot like I expect Wood Ducks to look like, but I couldn't find anything else in the bird book that they resemble more.  If anybody has any ideas, let me know.

the little ones are chasing each other around

this is how far away they were

close-up of a family

today's route

Recycling
It's been ages since I found someplace to dump my recycling, so I made a detour for Indianapolis to one of the public recycling deposit spots.

Turns out the recycle bins I went to were so jam-packed that people had been leaving stuff sitting on the ground beside it.  Some really bright person decided that carpet was recyclable and stuffed huge long rolls of it in and around the bins.  Considering that, I wondered what else was in those bins.

There were signs taped to the bin doors saying the area was under video surveillance and people should go to another recycle location or they'd be prosecuted.  So either local folks can't read or they didn't believe the signs.  As it happened, the bins were right behind a store and I saw security cameras that may well have taken in the bins area.  But none of that stopped me.  What did stop me was when I first took a look at the mess and thinking that recycling didn't include creating more mess.  It was when I parked to look up another location that I saw the signs and everything else.

But I was definitely in the minority.  While I was researching (and giving the dogs a short walk), many many others came by and almost all of them left their stuff.  I think only one other left without dumping.

There was another recycle location just a few miles away, so we went over there and some of those bins were nearly empty.

We pulled to the other side of the large parking lot (it was Sunday so nobody was patronizing the business nearby) and had some lunch and walked around a bit.  At this location just like the other one, many many people stopped by to dump their recycling.

We were in the south part of Indianapolis, so either the city isn't picking up recycling at people's homes or these people all lived in some other suburb.  Seems to me Indy's plenty big enough to have a better recycle program than bins around town.  But at least lots of folks were availing themselves of them.

Heading east
I saw a highway sign saying I-465, the ring road around Indy, has been designated the USS Indianapolis Memorial Highway.  I looked it up and learned that the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine June 30, 1945 - near the end of the war.  Out of 1,199 crew, 316 survived, some found by an air crew 3 days later.  One of the survivors was present at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2011.

There was a lot of traffic on I-70 heading toward Ohio - did lots of Ohioans come to Indiana for the weekend?  As far as I know, there wasn't any big do happening in Indy.  There were lots and lots of semis too, so maybe people just thought it was a good day for driving.

I passed a sign telling me Wilbur Wright was born just down this road over here (near Millville).

The road surface got so rough I couldn't go any faster than 60, and the other traffic (that weren't carrying their houses with them) just whizzed on by me.

When we turned off the interstate and headed north into farming country, it was clear we were also heading into Amish country.  We ended up behind a horse and buggy, and that horse managed to do 10 mph uphill.  I know because I just couldn't bring myself to try to pass on a hill, and that particular hill kept cresting only to find another on the other side.  I was very impressed with that horse.

I passed a field that had some kind of lower-growing crop planted between rows of corn and wondered if the field were owned by Amish, and therefore didn't need to keep rows clear for machinery.

Levi and Catharine Coffin House
So if you don't remember this name, you'll wonder why I'm back at somebody's house when I've said so often I'm not interested.  But this house is different.  These are the folks who were so active in helping enslaved people escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.  Their activities were general knowledge, and it was the bounty hunters who gave Levi the nickname "President of the Underground Railroad."  Levi was proud of that and bragged about it.  He owned the local dry goods store, half a block from their house.  In time, he also owned the local mill and a hog farm.

How they started
Levi (born 1798) and Catherine (born 1803) were both Quakers, originally from North Carolina.  They became sickened by slavery and, in 1826, moved north to Indiana.  There were many Quakers moving north for that reason, but most weren't active in trying to help.  For Quakers it was tricky: they absolutely believed slavery was prohibited by the Bible, but their religion also insisted they follow the laws of the government.  And at that time, it was against the law to assist the fugitives.  In fact, it had been federal law since 1793 that people were allowed to retrieve fugitives who had escaped to other states.  The Coffins looked at their religious teachings a little differently: there was no Bible text saying slavery was okay but there was definitely Bible text saying to love thy neighbor as thyself.

When they first arrived, they came with an entire North Carolina Quaker community, which brought with them 400 black people.  These folks had been enslaved and the Quakers brought them north to be free - but they weren't hiding them and they brought them legally: they'd acquired them gradually by a slave-owner's will or by an outright gift.  (I had a hard time with that sentence; I couldn't figure out how to explain the situation without using words for some people owning other people, which I can't stomach.)  Anyway, this community started out by bringing a bunch of folks to freedom.

The community
The town they lived in, now known as Fountain City, then called Newport, consisted primarily of 20-30 families of Quakers.  Few of them helped actively, but over time they all helped protect the Coffins in their activities.

For instance, when a bounty hunter would come to the Coffin house and try to search for fugitives, Levi would come out into the street and insist on a search warrant, while raising his voice to alert his neighbors, who would come out of their houses and act as witnesses - quite a deterrence to the bounty hunters.  This scrutiny mattered because the bounty hunters were allowed to kidnap with impunity.

Sometimes the neighbors would warn the Coffins that bounty hunters were in the area to give them time to make things look normal.

The women worked in sewing circles to make clothes for the fugitives who often showed up wearing only rags.  They would help to provide food to feed the extra folks coming through the Coffin home.  The local doctor would come to treat injuries.

The local folks paid a heavy price for this assistance, though.  The main Quaker church did whatever the Quaker version of being shunned is - they were kicked out of the main church for flouting the law.  Amazingly, this didn't deter the neighbors from continuing to assist the Coffins.

The house
Levi and Catharine expected to live in this house for the rest of their lives, so they designed it to suit their needs.  There were several unusual features about this house.  Almost every room has more than one way in/out (think about your own rooms and you'll see how unusual this is); it's easy to see why this feature might be handy if you're hiding people. 

door closed, bed moved: hidden room

this is the original brick floor

There's a hidden room upstairs, with a small door that was hidden by moving furniture in front of it.

The kitchen floor was covered with brick, unlike most kitchen floors of the time that were left as dirt. 

hidden up to floor line above

water table is unchanged

And, most important of all, there was a spring-fed pool inside the basement of the home, to allow them to get water for those staying in the house without going to the public water source, which would call attention to how much water they were using. 

This spring was found during renovation of the house; it had been hidden under feet of dirt and debris and was found only because local stories said it was there. 

sitting room

The master bedroom also has 2 closets, very unusual because closets were taxed at the time so were rare; but as far as I know the closets didn't play any role in the Coffins' activities.  There were 6 fireplaces in the house, and each needed to be cleaned and tended daily (imagine the work!).

The house still has its original ash floors; Frederick Douglass was one of those who visited the house and walked on these floors.

The house, shown below, has been painted its original red color - they would have painted the brick to keep it from wicking in the rain.

What the Coffins did

house is red; visitor center is white

The Coffin house sits directly on Route 27, a main road on the way from Kentucky to Canada.  They saw fugitives running up the road daily.  Those who were healthy enough to make the journey on their own didn't stop.  But at least once a week, people would knock on the door for help, usually in the middle of the night. 

These folks were almost always from Kentucky - they were rarely from farther south than Tennessee because few made it that far safely.  There were no bridges over the Ohio River before the Civil War, so freedom-seekers had to find someone to ferry them across, find a time and place of low water flow, or cross when it partly froze in the winter.

Catharine was usually the one who would get out of bed to let them in and help them.  She and Levi had each person choose a new name when they arrived so the Coffins would never know the prior names of those they helped.  They later estimated about 1,000 freedom-seekers came through their house.

shelf is where the fake bottom lay

On average, these folks would stay 2 days before being strong enough to move on.  Levi would hide them in a false bottom of his wagon and usually delivered them to a free black community farther north.  He never knew where they went from there.  Levi called it "the mysterious road."  He was often stopped by bounty hunters and would always insist on seeing a search warrant, which they never had.

Once bounty hunters had the roads covered when Levi was trying to get a man north.  Instead of his wagon, Levi got out the family carriage; they dressed the man in Catherine's clothes with one of those bonnets with a huge brim to hide the face; the man sat in the back of the carriage in the shadows and the bounty hunters assumed he was Catharine and let them pass.

The largest group of escapees to arrive at one time was 17 from Kentucky.  They nearly got caught by bounty hunters and the group scattered through the fields to hide.  After the bounty hunters left, they found each other again by whistling a prearranged song, and the whole group got back together again.

The courage and terror experienced by both parties to the escapes were remarkable.  There were 4,000,000 people enslaved at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation.  The Coffins estimated they'd helped 3,000 total during the 35 years they did this work - and they're widely known as the most prolific conductors on the Underground Railroad.  No one knows how many fugitives actually made it to freedom, but it's certain that most didn't.

Where the Coffins went from here

ad for Levi's free-labor goods

It occurred to Levi that if there was no market for slave-produced goods, then there would be no slavery.

In 1844, he began to buy and sell only free-labor goods, and went to Philadelphia, New York, and Canada to set up suppliers for his store.  Three years later, he was asked to run a warehouse in Cincinnati to distribute free-labor produced goods and, reluctantly, he agreed.  He and Catharine didn't want to leave their home and for years refused to sell it, thinking they'd return.  But they stayed in Ohio until they died and are buried there.

donated quilt dated 1834

Their house passed from one owner to another over the years.  Finally, in 1967, Sun Oil bought the property and decided this was a dandy spot for something or other, intending to tear down the house.  The local folks talked the State of Indiana into buying the house, and many contributed family pieces that dated from the Coffins' period, the Coffins having taking all their own things with them to Cincinnati.

A visitor center has been built next door with many exhibits about the Underground Railroad.

showing escape routes from slave states

Our tour group was so large and asked so many questions that the tour lasted longer than usual.  I'd been gone nearly 2 hours by the time I got back to the critters - glad I'd left some windows open for them because the day really got warm.

I took the dogs out for a walk around the neighborhood, and a couple of Amish boys drove by with a wagon and horse.  They were only about a half block away and both dogs just went crazy over the horse.  It took a while for them to settle down to keep walking.  I could see evidence of horses everywhere so there's clearly a strong Amish presence in the neighborhood.  Though I'm not sure how much "neighborhood" there is - farm fields begin immediately past the creek that runs along behind the Coffins' house.  I think the town must spread out in the area on the other side of the road.

Hoosier Hill
I was aiming for the farm field area, because the map told me Indiana's highest point was just a few miles from Fountain City.

Hoosier Hill (sort of)

I thought the sign was pointing at this "hill" so took this photo (saying the whole time, "you've got to be kidding").  Then I turned the corner and found another sign that pointed a little way further on.  Turns out there are clumps of trees like this in the center of farm fields all over this area, and they all look just like this.  The real Hoosier Hill, all 1,257' of it, must have been measured from sea level because it was indistinguishable from this one.  I also couldn't find a place to stop and take a picture of it from so decided that this would have to be illustrative.  The fact is, most of Indiana's pretty flat.

From there, my next campground in Richmond was about 20 minutes away, entirely on country roads.