Wellsville Underground Railroad - Part II

Since writing an article about the Underground Railroad house this past March 15th we have learned much more about that particular house. Thanks in large part goes to our friend "jws" for furnishing us with copies of his snapshots, some information dug up at the EL library and sharing his knowledge of the place. Back in the 80s "jws" was looking into buying this land with the thoughts of restoring the house for its historical value. Unfortunately that fell through.

This house was built by a black man named Edward Devore 206 years ago on Oak Grove Road. Devore and Daniel Spires were two of the earliest black settlers in the tri-state area. Mr. Devore was a bonded servant and arrived in this area by flat boat. He earned money for his freedom driving freight wagons "across the mountains". In some of our sources he is said to have been a contemporary of town founder William Wells and he along with Wells and a Mr. Dobbins contributed money for the building and upkeep of the first school in Wellsville near the mouth of Little Yellow Creek. I can only presume Mr. Devore continued his freight hauling business after earning his freedom. He is said to have seventeen descendents.

Above are some of "jws"s pictures of what the house looked like in 1987. As you can see the painting on the floodwall is sort of backwards. Artist Gina Hampson has windows on the left side of the house. There were none on the left side. Below the "jws" photos is a picture by the late sketch artist Grace Burford she dated in 1979. Miss Burford's sketch appeared in Edgar Davidson's book and another unknown source found by "jws". Both write ups were nearly identical. The walls of the house were said to be "over a foot thick". "jws" tells us it was closer to 2o inches thick as he recalls. There is one other picture available from a 1948 news article but it is so faded we had trouble duplicating it.

From that 1948 newspaper article by Betty Weir we learned that the house remained in the Devore family except for a brief time back in the early 1900s when it was sold at a sheriff's auction. At that time Mrs. Emiline Collins lived there. I think Mrs. Collins was a granddaughter of Devore. In 1911 Mrs. Collins daughter Fredericka paid $4.50 for an option to hold the place when it again came up for sale. Fredericka Hurndon promised her mother that one day they would get the place back. Fredericka and her husband lived in McKeesport and after scrimping and saving eventually paid off the house. It was her desire to refurbish the house exactly as it had been in Colonial Days. She, her daughter Mrs. Grace Hammond and Grace's daughter would travel from Cincinnati each summer for the months of July and August to live there and work on the place. Until we can do some more digging we sort of lost track of the place from there. "jws' tells me he can remember someone living there until at least the late 1960s. Gina Hampson told me there's not much left of the place except rubble.

Precious little is recorded about the Underground Railroad in Wellsville that I have found so far but we are working on it. There was no mention of it in Wallace Fogo's 1903 book. Edgar Davidson only mentioned the Devore house. Francis Bush in his Wellsville Story made two mentions on the subject. He said "Many of the old houses along Riverside were stations for the Underground Railway before and doing the Civil War". However he didn't elaborate on which houses. Later on in his story he wrote "From 1850 onward, Wellsville was one of the stations on the Underground Railroad system, passing slaves from Virginia (across the Ohio river) on to Salem and Lisbon and to Canada and freedom". One of our commenters on the March piece said one of the houses behind Pizza Hut was another station. The owner of Dixie and Mary Jane Frontone's former home in Hillcrest said his house was another one.

I have no problem believing Wellsville was very active in the Underground Railroad. Back then Wellsville was a very active freight center just across the river from a slave state. Back before Stratton Dam was built there was a very wide shore along the river down over the railroad tracks. I've been told that up around the Silver Switch area the water level on the river would get very shallow in the summer months. That's before the locks were built. It's not too difficult to imagine escaping slaves just walking across on their way to freedom. That area is just down over the hill from the Devore stone house. Route 45 to Lisbon was one of the first roads out of town heading north. It the early days it was called "Mud Road" among other things. No sir, it's not difficult at all to imagine our humble village was very active in helping slaves escape back in those days. Passions ran high on both sides of the issue and eventually led up to the Civil War. Wallace Fogo did indicate that Wellsville folks were extremely proud of their anti-slavery beliefs.

We're still digging and maybe we'll someday have more information to share with you. We're also trying to dig up more information of the Devore and Spires families. From the little bit that I've seen so far it's quite interesting finding out who around town is in those family trees.

ole nib