Sutliffs active in Underground Railroad

WARREN - Sally Thomas doesn't know why the Sutliff family's contribution to the Underground Railroad is not well known, but she's doing all she can to change that.

Thomas is the curator of the Sutliff Museum at the main branch of the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library and helped put together the museum's Underground Railroad exhibit, which is on display now during Black History Month.

Trumbull County and Warren have a place in history for their part on the Underground Railroad, she said. Several homes served as stops for escaped slaves from the South seeking freedom.

Levi Sutliff and his brother Milton were both actively involved in the railroad, Thomas said.

Levi helped shelter slaves at his High Street home in Warren, while Milton, a lawyer and later an Ohio Supreme Court justice, helped out financially, she said.

Born in 1805, Levi was the first of six Sutliff boys born in Trumbull County to parents who came from Massachusetts. His parents instilled in him the abolitionist cause that was common among New Englanders of the time, Thomas said.

Levi and Milton went to a meeting of the National Anti Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833, and when they returned to Trumbull County, Levi began forming local anti-slavery societies. He ended up running 23 of them, Thomas said.

Ruth Sutliff, their mother, founded the first female anti-slavery society, Thomas said.

Levi married his wife, Phebe, in 1840. Four of their eight children lived to adulthood. Phebe shared her husband's passion in helping runaway slaves and was feisty in her own right, Thomas said.

''I'm sure that's what attracted him to her - that spirit,'' Thomas said.

And it would take spirit - as well as ingenuity - to achieve their cause.

Once, Sutliff had a group of escaped slaves in the parlor of his High Street home when a group of bounty hunters came looking for them. Sutliff shut the parlor doors and then invited the bounty hunters to search the house. They searched high and low except for the parlor, which they ignored, Thomas said.

''They looked everywhere but the parlor because it never dawned on them that black slaves would be in the parlor,'' Thomas said.

The home was located on the site of the current parking lot for St. Mary's Church.

Sutliff's aid went beyond helping slaves escape their old lives: He also helped them start new ones.

He once treated a group of five escaped slaves to breakfast at a local hotel and gave them all a dollar to get started on their lives in Warren. One of those men, Charles Washington, stayed and worked on the railroad. His grave was found earlier this decade in Oakwood Cemetery.

Two other Sutliff brothers supported abolitionist efforts in Iowa and were awarded by having the town named after them, Sutliff, Iowa, Thomas said.

jgorman@tribtoday.com