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.

A Crowd Gathered in Milan in the 1890s (Mystery Photo)

In the late 1890s, amateur photographers from Milan, F.T. Cooke and K.P. Ruggles, took photographs of a crowd gathering to hear someone speak in front of an electric railway car. There was no information accompanying the original picture as to the people in the scene, or the reason for the gathering. The man speaking at the time was moving when the picture was taken, so his face is blurred. Several other men are sitting nearby on the speakers' platform.

As was the custom of the time, almost all the people were wearing hats. The ladies’ dresses were floor length. The streetcar was part of the Sandusky, Milan & Norwalk Electric Railway line that was in operation at that time. Frank T. Cooke moved from Milan to Oberlin, where he became an agent for the Eastman Kodak Company. Mr. Cooke worked as a photo finisher at the A.G. Comings and Son bookstore for several years. If anyone has more details about this scene from Milan, please leave a message in the comments section of this post.

Edit: If you look closely particularly at the second image you could see portraits of men, draped in bunting, suggesting that this might be a political rally of some sort. William McKinley ran for Governor in 1891 and President in 1896, but the visible portraits do not show his face. Could he be the blurred-faced man speaking? We don't know, but have some doubts.

New England Influence on the Firelands

The area of land in Ohio known as the Firelands is the far western portion of the Connecticut Western Reserve. The Western Reserve was over three million acres of land in northeastern Ohio which was given to Connecticut residents whose lands were burned by the British during the American Revolution. Because so many of the early settlers to the Firelands were originally from New England, the architecture and mindset of those early residents reflected the architecture and attitudes of New England. The Ohio educator and historian B.A. Hinsdale said about the Western Reserve, “No other five thousand square miles of territory in the United States, lying in a body outside of New England, ever had, to begin with, so pure a New England population.”  Several Huron County townships and towns have names that were duplicates of places in Connecticut, including Norwalk, Fairfield, New London, and Litchfield. When Oran Follett had his lovely home built in the 1830s, it was constructed in the Greek Revival style which was popular in New England.

The layout of the town of Milan reflects the style of the typical New England town square.

Many of the early settlers to the Firelands brought with them the antislavery sentiment that was common in New England. Dozens of fugitive slaves were aided in their journey to freedom by citizens of Huron and Erie County. This monument in downtown Sandusky honors those who assisted fleeing slaves on their way to Canada.

Yankee ingenuity and thriftiness is shown by the fact that so many early homes in Sandusky were built from native limestone, such as the former home of William Townsend.

Ellie Damm wrote in Treasure by the Bay that the stone for many of the early homes had been quarried near the building site.  

Visit the Sandusky Library to read more about the history of the Firelands. The Firelands Pioneer is a multi-volume set of periodicals featuring articles about the earliest settlers to Huron and Erie Counties.

1895 Plan to Rob Milan Bank was Hatched at Sandusky

On Sunday, February 3, 1895, Louis Stoughton hired a team of horses and a surrey from the Herb & Hocke Livery in Sandusky, Ohio. Charles Hocke did not think it unusual for Mr. Stoughton to make this request, as he was a well known customer.
August Reuter, proprietor of Reuter’s Hotel, had seen Louis Stoughton and four other men at his establishment during the first weekend of February in 1895. Mr. Stoughton and the others had been playing cards and drinking at the barroom. Reuter noticed that the men were seen going in and out of the hotel frequently.
According to the Ohio Democrat, about 4 a.m. on February 4, a terrific explosion was heard at the Lockwood Bank in Milan, Ohio. The safe had been cracked and about $30,000 was taken by five masked men. (Later reports indicated the sum was $18,000.) An alarm was heard all over the village of Milan. L.L. Stoddard, a cashier at the bank, saw five men leave the bank building. He fired several shots at them, but they got away.

On February 5, a telegram from Sandusky stated that two Sandusky residents, Edward (also known as Louis) Stoughton and Sol Hirshberger (sometimes spelled Hershberg) had been arrested. A preliminary hearing was held in Mayor Buerkle’s court room in Sandusky on Thursday, February 7. Attorneys Mills and Starbird represented the two in question. Louis Stoughton and Solly Hershberg maintained their innocence. Charles Cramer said that four suspicious looking individuals were acting nervously at his restaurant on Water Street on Sunday night. After the robbery, Mr. Dougherty, an agent with the Nickel Plate Railroad found three empty canvas money bags. It was assumed that the robbers divided the money before three of the robbers got away. There were twenty witnesses involved in the hearing which was well covered by the Sandusky Register.

Louis Stoughton was found guilty on circumstantial evidence, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. After serving a few months, Stoughton was released on parole. At the time of the 1895 trial, it was determined that Stoughton had secured the rig, and drove the robbers to Milan. Sol Hershberg was held as an accessory to the robbery.

Mayor Philip Buerkle’s court was the scene of the hearing for Louis Stoughton and Sol Hershberg in 1895. On February 16, 1911, a front page article in the Sandusky Register, reported the death of Louis N. Stoughton. He died in a sanitarium at Massillon, Ohio on February 14, 1911, after having been in ill health for some time. While in Sandusky, Stoughton was considered “a very clever and bright man. He was a friend of the fellow who was down and out.” Stoughton often remarked that if he had the money that he had given to friends in Sandusky who “happened to be broke for a day or two,” he could have lived in ease for the rest of his life. The article continued that in Sandusky Stoughton was known as “Kid” Stoughton, the “king of them all.”