In Fountain City, Indiana, Levi and Catherine Coffin opened a store/manufacturing plant and began to help fugitive slaves escape to freedom. Their zealous antislavery sentiment and involvement in helping runaways earned Levi the nickname "president" of the Underground Railroad.Devout Quakers, the Coffins made their home into a well-known "safe house" for escaping slaves. [So successful was the Coffin sanctuary that not a single slave failed to reach freedom from their home. One of the many slaves who hid in the Coffin home was "Eliza", whose story is told in Uncle Tom's Cabin.] In 1847, they moved east to Cincinnati and opened a warehouse that handled goods produced by free—not slave—labor.
During and after the Civil War, the Coffins were important figures in the Western Freedmen´s Aid Society, which helped educate slaves. Levi´s lectures and efforts in England and Europe raised more than $100,000 in one year. Levi died in 1877 and is buried in Cincinnati´s Spring Grove Cemetery.
The Coffins´ Indiana home is open to the public. (Access this Web site for more information about the Underground Railroad as well as a list of helpful links.) For information, call 765-847-2432 or write to Box 77, Fountain City, Indiana 47341.
For younger readers:
Cosner, Sharon—The Underground Railroad (Franklin Watts, 1991).
Hamilton, Virginia—Many Thousands Gone: From Slavery to Freedom (Knopf, 1993).
Haskins, Jim—Get on Board: The Story of the Underground Railroad (Scholastic, 1993).
Swain, Gwyneth and Ralph L. Ramstad, illus.—President of the Underground Railroad: A Story about Levi Coffin (Carrolrhoda Books, 2000).
Wisehart, Randall—A Winding Road to Freedom (Friends United, 1999).
For older readers:
Coffin, Levi—Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (Robert Clarke and Co., 1876).