Lyman Scott and the Underground Railroad

Lyman Scott was born on March 6, 1797 at Middlebury, Vermont. In the spring of 1818, at around 21 years old, Lyman packed all his worldly goods into a knapsack and traveled by foot to Ohio, finding work in a tannery business in Norwalk. A couple years after arriving in Ohio, he purchased farmland north of Milan. In 1824 Lyman Scott married Mary McKinney, and they had a large family of eight children.

For thirty years prior to 1860, Lyman Scott was an active agent of the Underground Railroad. At times he hid up to thirteen fugitives from slavery in his barn. Mr. Scott undertook this activity at his own expense, even though it was at times quite dangerous. In an article in the January, 1866 issue of the Firelands Pioneer, G.R. Walker wrote that Lyman Scott’s activities in the Underground Railroad were “acts of heroism and humanity which should live in history…” One particular incident was quite exciting. Mr. Scott was hiding eleven fugitives in the hay mow in his barn. Several men from the south were searching for runaway slaves. For more than two weeks, armed men looked in the windows of the house and around the property owned Mr. Scott. They came onto the property at all hours of the day and night. Mr. Scott had contracted with the captain of a vessel to take the fugitives across the lake to Canada. In the middle of the night, the fugitives walked through the woods from Scott’s farm to a boat waiting for them on the Huron River. The ship captain, unbeknownst to Mr. Scott, had arranged for the runaway slaves to be given over to the slave catchers once they got to Huron. Just as the vessel made its way down the river to Huron, a violent storm sprang up, and the captain was unable to keep his contract with the slave catchers. The boat was driven far out into the lake near the Canadian shore before the storm let up. Mr. Walker wrote that many other stirring incidents took place in the life of Lyman Scott. In 1874 Mr. Scott sold his farm, and moved to Norwalk, where he lived until his death on November 7, 1885.

Though the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center does not have any photographs of Lyman Scott, in our holdings are two pictures of the former Scott residence on Huron-Avery Road. To read more about Lyman Scott’s life, see G. R. Walker’s article about Mr. Scott on page 113 of the January, 1886 issue of the Firelands Pioneer. Several articles about the Underground Railroad of the Firelands is found in the July, 1888 issue.