Many and many a dark skinned, emaciated, terrorized negro, ignorant of locality, depending, in fear begotten flight, on almost animal instinct, lay hidden in the old Coffin home while the man who later accepted open leadership of abolitionists in his community, planned for their escape. Catherine Coffin knew all about this. She is pictured as “Rachel Holliday, ” the “Quakeress” by Harriet Beecher Stowe in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and it is said that her characterization there, quiet, efficient, deploring force and violence but with courage equal to all danger in administering to the needs of the down trodden, is quite accurate.
Coffin himself was the original of “Simeon Holliday.” Mrs. Stowe knew all about the Coffins. She was still living in Cincinnati when they came there, in 1847, from Wayne County, Indiana, where they had been active in their work of mercy.
They had aided the real “Eliza” to escape after she had crossed on the broken ice of the Ohio River.
The Coffins conducted a store in which was sold only goods produced by free labor. In connection with this they developed the almost unbelievable but, as it proved, altogether practical system known as the “Underground” of routing slave refugees on to Canada. The first “station” out of Cincinnati, College Hill, is now a part of the city. From there they were routed through Indiana to Michigan and via Detroit into Canada.
But Eliza was sent by the Sandusky route to Chatham, West Canada according to Henry Howe. The Coffins, on a visit to Canada years after the escape of Eliza, met her there, well established in her new world of freedom.
To all such services in the cause of human helpfulness Catherine Coffin is said to. have contributed her full share.
Credit is due a Cincinnati woman of today for preserving a graphic record of the old Coffin home. Just before this was torn down, in 1937, Carolyn Williams, artist and newspaper woman, whose etchings provide a unique service for her paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, sketched the historic “Underground” building. The etching is one of about 100, most of them picturing ancient landmarks which have been reproduced in a book “The City on Seven Hills” published for Miss Williams in 1938.
Little is known of ESTHER DEMPSEY McCAHAN except that she gave to the world a son who has been known to the world for many years as “the Liberator of Bulgaria.” We do know that: the mother of the liberator was born at Pigeon Roost or Five Points ; that while still in her teens she married J. A. McGahan, a struggling and hardy pioneer; that she managed to teach her children at home since the nearest school was too far for them to attend; and that she found sufficient resources to send at least one of them to college; Janairus A. McGahan, the second son went to Notre Dame College, from which school he graduated.
