By John Nixon Photography
A large part of early United States history is entwined with the history of slavery. As a Union state that resisted this history, Ohio played a key role in helping enslaved people escape from the South.
Here in the Tri-Village area, the Upper Arlington Historical Society seeks to educate residents on the vital role central Ohio played along the Underground Railroad through the organization’s History Speaks series. Leslie Blankenship, who has dedicated decades to sharing that history, will give an hour-long presentation on April 5.
Blankenship co-founded the Friends of Freedom Society in 1996, an organization that works to preserve historic locations of the Underground Railroad across Ohio and worked as the group’s central regional coordinator.
“Ohio was probably one of the most active states on the Underground Railroad,” Blankenship says, “because it bordered Canada and Kentucky and Virginia – today it’s West Virginia. Most runaways and freedom seekers came from the border states and ran into Ohio to get assistance.”
Blankenship will speak for the historical society’s Understanding Columbus’ Underground Railroad event on April 5. The event follows a February historical society discussion with author Ann Hagedorn about her book Beyond the River, which documents Underground Railroad stories from Ripley, a small village that sits on the Ohio side of the border with Kentucky.
The history Blankenship intends to share will include Columbus conductors as well as activists and stations in Clintonville and Union and Morrow counties.
Blankenship discovered her interest in history at a young age, and at one point planned to be a history teacher. Instead, she went back to school to study science and worked in marketing communications at Chemical Abstracts Service for 37 years. She never shed her love of history, though, and particularly a love for Ohio history.
“My dad was a good storyteller,” Blankenship says. “He lived through the Depression, he became a pilot in World War II, so he always had good stories about life in Ohio. He would talk about that and that really interested me.”
Blankenship works as a docent at the Kelton House Museum and Garden, a stop on the Underground Railroad that now focuses on local history from the second half of the 19th century. Blankenship participated in Kelton House’s Underground Railroad Advisory Committee and Education Committee and helped research the museum's Underground Railroad story.
Blankenship frequently participates in events to raise awareness of Ohio history related to the Underground Railroad and women’s suffrage. She often portrays influential Columbus suffragist Belle Coit Kelton, one of the first women to attend The Ohio State University, in historical reenactments.
At the event, she plans to discuss some of the known participants in the Underground Railroad as well as important historical events such as the infamous Lucy Depp fugitive case that played out in central Ohio. Her intention is to highlight the hard work these people did during a defining moment in American history.
“I wanted people to know that the Underground Railroad is not just a story about happy little freedoms stories,” Blankenship says. “It’s not. It was very dangerous. If you got caught you could be sent to prison, you could lose your life. I wanted people to know that. I want people to think, ‘Do you think you could do this?’ People like to think they could, but it was jeopardizing your livelihood and your life.”
Since the Underground Railroad was so secretive, a lot of what we know about it is speculative. Blankenship is quick to credit her sources, particularly the late 19th-century work of Wilbur Siebert, an OSU professor who documented Ohioans’ stories from the Underground Railroad.
“How do we know the stories that we know today? How do we know who in Columbus operated on the Underground Railroad? We know what came from Wilbur Siebert because he did research,” Blankenship says. “He was trying to tap into people’s memory. He sent his students home over Thanksgiving break and went, ‘See if you can find any of your relatives that know anything.’”
Blankenship says that Siebert’s students came back with stories. That indicated to him that, now that the American Civil War had ended, people were willing to discuss some of what had taken place. While Siebert’s work is important, Blankenship places similar value on the participants who shared their stories.
“We know (these stories) because someone took the time to ask questions,” she says. “Someone also took the time to answer them.”
Courtesy of Leslie Blankenship
Lindsey Capritta is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
