Underground Lines of Morgan County, Ohio.
Drawn by Thomas Williams.
Of the local maps, the first represents the lines passing through a portion of Morgan County, in the southeastern part of Ohio. It was drawn by Mr. Thomas Williams, whose services in behalf of runaways made him familiar with the location of operators in the western part of his county.[436] The area represented is twenty-five miles in length and sixteen in width at the widest part, and contains nineteen stations including the towns through which routes passed. The irregular distribution of these stations, and the way in which trips could be varied from one to another to suit the convenience of conductors or to elude pursuers is apparent. The fugitives that travelled over these routes crossed the Ohio River in the vicinity of Parkersburg and Point Pleasant, in what is now West Virginia, and proceeded north twenty or thirty miles by the help of abolitionists before reaching Morgan County. The southern part of this county was traversed by two parallel lines, one of which branched at Rosseau and ran on in parallels to the northern part of the county whence after sharp deflection to the west the branches converged at Deavertown; the other issued from its first station in three divergent lines, which rapidly converged at Pennsville and were united by a single course to the first route. In case of emergency a guide used his knowledge and discretion as to whether he should "cut across lots," skip stations, travel by the "longest way around," or go back on his track. The houses noted on the map as being off the regular routes appear to have been emergency stations and hence not so frequently used.
A special map of exceeding interest and importance is that drawn by Mr. Lewis Falley, of La Fayette, Indiana, showing the underground lines of Indiana and Michigan about 1848. Mr. Falley's acquaintance with the Road came about through the work of his father in the interest of fugitives in La Fayette after 1841. Subsequently Mr. Falley learned of the lines traversing his state through an itinerant preacher who sometimes stopped as a guest at his father's house. When Mr. Falley's map was received in March, 1896, the author himself had already plotted from other testimony a number of routes in southern and eastern Indiana and in Michigan, and a comparison of maps was made. On Mr. Falley's map three main roads appear, the eastern, middle and western routes. The first of these ran parallel, roughly speaking, with the eastern boundary line of the state only a few miles from it, and took its rise from two lesser paths, which converged at Richmond from either side of the state line. The second or middle route sprang from three branches that crossed the Ohio at Madison, New Albany, and the neighborhood of Leavenworth, passed north through Indianapolis and Logansport, and entered Michigan a few miles east of Lake Michigan. The third or western route followed up the Wabash River to La Fayette, where it crossed the river, proceeded to Rensselaer, and thence northeasterly to the Michigan line, making its entrance to Michigan at the point where the middle route entered that state. From the two crossing-places on the Michigan border the northern extensions of the Indiana routes found their way to Battle Creek, from which station one trail led directly east to Detroit, and the other, by a more northerly course, to Port Huron. In southern Indiana the eastern route was connected with the middle route by a branch between Greensburg and Indianapolis, and the middle with the western by two branches, one between Salem and Evansville, and the other between Brownstown and Bloomingdale.
Routes through Indiana and Michigan in 1848.
As traced by Lewis Falley.
In the general map prepared by the author, the southern route through Michigan to Detroit, and the eastern, middle, and a portion of the western routes in Indiana on the map of Mr. Falley are duplicated with more or less completeness. The initial stations along the Ohio River correspond in the two maps almost exactly, and many of the way-stations seen on the one map are to be found on the other. It is not to be expected that the two maps would agree in all particulars, and some stations occur on each that are not to be found on the other. Such differences are due to the development of new or the obliteration of old lines and the insufficient knowledge of the draughtsmen. It is not known that a map similar to Mr. Falley's has been devised for any other state or states among the many through which well-defined underground routes extended.
