Introduction to Local Underground Railroad Activities
In the decades of the early nineteenth century, freedom seekers from the South traveled northward by many varied routes toward freedom in Canada or in safe havens in free states like Ohio. The network of persons who assisted freedom seekers became known as the Underground Railroad. Columbiana, Mahoning, Trumbull, and Ashtabula counties, the four Ohio counties from the Ohio River to Lake Erie and bordering western Pennsylvania, were active locales for the Underground Railroad.
Trumbull County has many Underground Railroad sites, and most of those sites, which still exist today, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This tour will take you along the Warren Ashtabula (Route 45) beginning in North Bloomfield to Ashtabula.