Underground Railroad: Payne Cemetery

The Underground Railroad consisted of a large secret network of travel routes and safe havens for freedom-seekers escaping slavery in the mid-19th century. The Ohio River divided freedom and enslavement along several Border States, including Ohio. Like most states achieving statehood after Congress issued the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 – which forbid slavery in states entering the union north of the Ohio River – Ohio’s population was split between pro-slavery and anti-slavery sentiments.

However, its location along the Ohio River meant that there were great opportunities to support the Underground Railroad. By the 1830s, Ohio became a hotbed for Underground Railroad activities. While many freedom seekers passed through Ohio at various entry points, others settled into the state.

Archaeologists and volunteers at the Wayne National Forest, in collaboration with the Friends of Freedom Society, the Multicultural Genealogical Center, and several historically Black Colleges, have focused research on two 19th century African-American settlements. These settlements, Paynes Crossing and Poke Patch, existed primarily from the 1820s to the 1880s. The small homesteads consisted of free Blacks, Whites, and Native Americans.

Because of the settlements’ prime locations, both towns most likely served as stations on the Underground Railroad. Only a church and two cemeteries remain today. ___ Paynes Crossing In the mid-19th century, routes toward freedom for escaped slaves went in several directions on the Underground Railroad.

Freedom seekers relied on forests, rivers, and other landscape features for natural paths. Often freedom seekers headed north from slave states through the free state of Ohio. In Ohio, freedom seekers were likely to have come across the free Black community of Paynes Crossing, located in today’s Wayne National Forest.

Paynes Crossing was near New Straitsville, Ohio where farming and the iron industry dominated the landscape.