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Hamilton UGRR is an independent historical research project focused on reconstructing Hamilton, Ohio's documented Underground Railroad story through primary sources, local records, historic geography, and careful comparison of evidence.
The goal is not to repeat local legend or force every person and building into an Underground Railroad story. The project asks what the surviving evidence actually establishes, where sources agree, where they conflict, and what remains unknown. That approach has led to a growing picture of Hamilton as a documented way station, legal intervention point, transportation junction, and community network connected to freedom seekers moving through southwest Ohio.
The website is designed so readers can do more than read our conclusions. Through the Research Library, visitors can follow the evidence for themselves, opening the same newspapers, books, letters, church histories, maps, and archival materials used in the research.
My name is Meg Brown, and this project began with questions about the history of The Presbyterian Church of Hamilton and the role Hamilton's Presbyterian communities may have played in the city's antislavery and Underground Railroad story. Because I am part of that church community, those questions were a natural starting point.
As the research grew, it quickly became clear that Hamilton's Underground Railroad story was much larger than any one church, denomination, family, or individual. The project expanded to follow the evidence across Hamilton's Black community, churches, legal networks, transportation routes, families, businesses, and civic institutions.
My hope is that this website encourages others to explore the evidence, ask new questions, share additional sources, and continue learning about Hamilton's Underground Railroad history together.
This project has grown because historians, archivists, churches, libraries, and community members have shared sources, answered questions, opened collections, and helped point the research toward records that might otherwise have remained hidden.
Special thanks to Hanover College and the Duggan Library Archives for preserving and making the Elias Riggs Monfort Papers available to researchers. The online Civil War letters give readers direct access to Monfort's own words and provide an important window into slavery, emancipation, military life, and nineteenth-century culture.
Explore the Monfort letters →Thank you to Brad Spurlock of the Smith Library of Regional History and Cummins Local History Room, Lane Libraries, for his archival research and generous assistance locating and sharing materials for this project, including the historic Butler County Jail photograph by George Cummings and research on Alfred J. Anderson and Hamilton's nineteenth-century Black community.
Thank you to Brian Smith and the Butler County Historical Society for their interest in the project and for their assistance in providing access to local historical collections and research materials.
Thank you to Dr. Robert S. “Bob” Wicks, Professor Emeritus at Miami University and former Director of the Miami University Art Museum, for his scholarly engagement with the project, source identification, and generous sharing of research leads and historical context. His work and correspondence have been especially helpful in examining John C. Elliott, Dr. Loammi Rigdon, Hamilton City Council records, and the wider setting of the 1854 freedom seeker case.
Special thanks to Boone County Public Library's Archive & History Center and to Hillary Delaney for generous research assistance on the Kentucky side of the 1854 Hamilton freedom seeker case. Her help with Boone County records, the Acra/Acre family, Cornelius Carpenter, and the wider connections between Boone and Butler counties has been invaluable as the project works to identify the people named in contemporary Hamilton reporting.
Thank you to The Presbyterian Church of Hamilton for access to its historical materials and for preserving records, photographs, artifacts, and institutional memory that are essential to understanding the city's Presbyterian and antislavery history.
Thank you to the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, and especially Jennifer Barr, Reference and Outreach Archivist, for research assistance and guidance concerning the historical records of First Presbyterian Church and First United Presbyterian Church of Hamilton. The Society preserves important Hamilton church minutes and records and has generously helped identify additional ministerial, biographical, and archival sources relevant to this project.
Visit the Presbyterian Historical Society →Documented fact, strong inference, family tradition, and open research questions are not the same thing. The site aims to make those distinctions visible. When a building is only a research lead, it will be labeled that way. When a person's antislavery beliefs are documented but Underground Railroad participation is not, the site will say so. When new evidence changes an earlier interpretation, the project will revise it.