Tubman holds the title as the most famous “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, but history teachers rarely get into how the network first began. There's no definitive information on when the Underground Railroad first started because it was, after all, supposed to be quite secret. However, the network was supposedly first mentioned in 1831 when a slave named Tice Davids was able to travel from Kentucky to freedom in Ohio. Even earlier than that, one of the earliest known persons to guide slaves to freedom was a Quaker from North Carolina named Levin Coffin . He began working to free slaves around 1813 when he was just 15 years old.