d began publishing his own antislavery paper, The Genius of Emancipation. The house where Lundy lived during his second residence in Mount Pleasant remains today and is a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. It later shared a common wall with the village’s Free Labor Store, which sold goods not produced through the toil of slaves and which operated from 1848 to 1857.
Lundy only lived in Mount Pleasant for about a year before moving on again. It was the beginning of his one man crusade to end slavery and led to the publication of The Genius in many locations. His crusade separated him from family, and saw the premature death of his wife in 1826 and the raising of his five children for much of the time by friends. It also took him to such various locations as Haiti, Mexico, and Canada in search of places for the colonization of fugitive slaves and free blacks. He died in 1839 in Illinois, reunited with his children, but never seeing the fruits of his efforts.
By the time of the first convention of the Ohio Yearly Meeting, Mount Pleasant is believed to have begun aiding fugitive slaves. It was during the War of 1812 when slaves served the American army that they became aware of the freedom that awaited them in Ohio and other places north of the Mason-Dixon Line. They would escape through Wheeling, Va., swimming across the Ohio River to Martins Ferry. On occasion, it is said that David and Benjamin Stanton, members of one of Mount Pleasant’s earliest pioneer families, visited the marketplace in Wheeling and took fugitive slaves to Ohio, concealed in their wagons, by way of Martins Ferry. With the antislavery publications coming out of Mount Pleasant, word spread that the village was a haven for fugitive slaves. Michigan Underground Railroad conductor Nathan Thomas, who grew up in Mount Pleasant and left during the 1820s, wrote in his autobiography that “many a panting fugitive from slavery” passed through the village. Thomas described two specific incidents: one in which a fugitive slave was rescued by a former slave who lived in Mount Pleasant, and another incident in which a fugitive slave who had been settled in Mount Pleasant for three years was apprehended by his former master but managed to escape and was forwarded to a place of safety in northern Ohio.
Adding circumstantial evidence to the claims of Underground Railroad activity was the substantial number of free blacks in the area. In close proximity were at least two black settlements, one of about 40 families, who mainly comprised the slaves of Virginian Thomas Beaufort, who were manumitted in 1825 and provided with a 200 acre tract near Smithfield, which was known as the McIntyre settlement. Another small settlement called New Trenton was located just south about a mile west of the Short Creek. Black settlements are known to have been magnets for fugitive slaves.
Local legend testifies to the participation of a number of residents in the Underground Railroad. Since it was bypassed by the National Road, the canals, and finally the railroads that developed during the 1850s and after, which stunted its growth, much of its pre-Civil War architecture has been preserved. A total of 44 structures are listed in the National Historic Register with the Benjamin Lundy House and Free Labor Store, a National Historic Landmark.
Most of these homes in the village’s Historic District are of Federal and Italianate style architecture, and a number of them belonged to those who were said to have participated in the Underground Railroad.
Entering the village from the southeast side of the county is the Jonathan Binns house at 20 Union Street, an Italianate and Greek Revival structure built in 1856 and located at the highest spot in the county. It is said that it had a trap door leading to a hiding place for fugitive slaves in the roof of the kitchen. According to legend a lantern was placed at night there in its captains’ walk that sent a beacon that could be seen as far as the Ohio River.
To the north of Union Street, up Quaker Hill, is the hom