Levi Coffin

(October 28, 1798 – September 16, 1877)

Quaker, Republican, abolitionist, farmer, businessman and humanitarian.

He was an American active leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio, some unofficially called Coffin the “President of the Underground Railroad,” estimating that three thousand fugitive slaves passed through his care. The Coffin home in Fountain City, Wayne County, Indiana, is now a museum, sometimes called the Underground Railroad’s “Grand Central Station”.

Born near what became Greensboro, North Carolina, Coffin was exposed to and came to oppose slavery as a child. His family immigrated to Indiana in 1826, avoiding slaveholders’ increasing persecution of Quakers, whose faith did not permit them to own slaves and who assisted fugitives. In Indiana, Coffin settled near the National Road with other Quakers in Wayne County, Indiana, near the Ohio border. He farmed, as well as became a local merchant and business leader. Coffin grew wealthy from his various businesses assisting neighbors and travelers in the important transit corridor. Coffin became a major investor in and director of the local Richmond branch of the Second State Bank of Indiana in the 1830s, Richmond being the Wayne County seat. His financial position and standing in the community also helped supply food, clothing and transportation for Underground Railroad operations in the region. At the urging of friends in the anti-slavery movement, Coffin moved southward to the important Ohio River port city of Cincinnati in 1847, where he ran a warehouse that sold only free-labor goods. Despite making considerable progress with the business, the free-labor venture proved unprofitable; Coffin abandoned the enterprise after a decade. Meanwhile, during this 1847 through 1857 period, Coffin assisted hundreds of runaway slaves, often by lodging them in his Ohio home across the river from Kentucky and not far downriver from Virginia, both of which remained slave states until slavery was abolished after the American Civil War.

In his final decade, Coffin traveled around the Midwest, as well as overseas to France and Great Britain, where he helped form aid societies to provide food, clothing, funds, and education to former slaves. Coffin retired from public life in the 1870s and wrote an autobiography, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, published in 1876, a year before his death.

Bio

Levi Coffin was born in North Carolina on October 28, 1798 into a Quaker family who greatly influenced by the teachings of John Woolman a Quaker preacher, who believed slaveholding was not compatible with the Quaker beliefs and advocated emancipation. Growing up in the South, Coffin was frequently exposed to slaves throughout his childhood and sympathized with their condition.

By the age of 15, William was helping his family assist escaping slaves by giving them food and shelter on their farm. In 1821, William became a teacher and opened up a school for slaves to teach them how to read, though it was not successful as slave owners would not permit their slaves to attend. In 1826, he moved to Indiana and over the next 20 years he assisted more than 2,000 enslaved persons escape bondage, so many that his home was known as the “Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad.”

On October 28, 1824, Coffin married his long-time friend, Catherine White at the Hopewell Friends Meetinghouse in North Carolina. Catherine’s family probably also helped slaves escape, and it is likely she met Coffin because of this activity.

The couple postponed their move to Indiana after Catherine became pregnant with Jesse, the first of their six children, who was born in 1825. Coffin’s parents moved to Indiana in 1825; Levi, Catherine and their infant son followed his parents to Indiana later that year. In 1826 they settled in Newport (now Fountain City), in Wayne County, Indiana.

Like her husband, Catherine actively assisted fugitive slaves, including providing food, clothing, and a safe haven in the Coffin home. As Levi commented on his wife’s humanitarian work, “Her sympathy for those in distress never tired, and her effort in their behalf never abated. Catherine White became known as Aunt Katie to slaves on the run

Moving to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1847, he operated the Western Free Produce Association, a store that sold only goods produced by free labor, and continued to operate his home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. During the Civil War he visited numerous contraband camps and continued to aid slaves in their quest for freedom on the Underground Railroad.

After the war ended, Coffin raised over $100,000 for the Western Freedman’s Aid Society to provide food, clothing, money, and other aid for recently freed blacks. With the war over, slavery illegal, and the passage of the 15th Amendment, granting African Americans the right to vote, Coffin retired from public life and wrote his memoirs.

Coffin died on September 16, 1877, at around 6:30 p.m. at his home in Avondale, Ohio. His funeral was held at the Friends Meeting House of Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Daily Gazette reported that the crowd was too large to be accommodated indoors; hundreds had to remain outside. Four of Coffin’s eight pallbearers were free blacks who had worked with him on the Underground Railroad. Coffin was interred in Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery in an unmarked grave. Coffin’s wife, Catherine, who died four years later on May 22, 1881, is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery as well.[

Known for his fearlessness in assisting runaway slaves, Coffin served as a role model who encouraged his neighbors to help contribute to the effort, although many were wary of providing them with a safe haven in their homes as he and his wife did. Best known for his leadership in aiding fugitive slaves, Coffin was first referred to as the unofficial “President of the Underground Railroad” by a slavecatcher who said, “There’s an underground railroad going on here, and Levi’s the president of it.” The informal title became commonly used among other abolitionists and some ex-slaves.

Historians have estimated that the Coffins helped approximately 2,000 escaping slaves during their twenty years in Indiana and an estimated 1,300 more after their move to Cincinnati. (Coffin didn’t keep records, but estimated the number to be around 3,000.) When questioned about his motives for aided fugitive slaves, Coffin once replied: “The Bible, in bidding us to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, said nothing about color, and I should try to follow out the teachings of that good book.”

On July 11, 1902, African Americans erected a 6-foot (1.8 m) tall monument at Coffin’s previously unmarked gravesite in Cincinnati.

The Levi Coffin House in Fountain City, Indiana, was named a National Historic Landmark and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Indiana’s state government purchased the Coffin home in 1967 and had it restored to its original condition. The home features the actual secret hiding places where slaves would hide while on the run. Also featured at the home is an original false-bottom wagon where slaves would hide while Coffin would take them to their next destination without being discovered. The Coffin House was ranked as “one of the nation’s Top 25 Historical Sites” by the History Channel. In 2016, the Smithsonian named the Levi Coffin House Interpretive Center “one of 12 new museums around the world to visit,” while the Indiana Office of Tourism Development voted it as one of the top museums in the State of Indiana. The home opened to the public as a historic site in 1970