Southgate Freedom Seekers
From the Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate
Shaler, grandson of Richard Southgate. A copy of which is held at the Campbell
County Historical Society in Alexandria, Kentucky
"Now and then negroes ran away. About 1857, those belonging to my grandfather, my aunts and my mother, all household servants, some of them old people, decamped in one night. I remember the excitement when at dawn, a certain Sam Morton, who had also suffered from the exodus, roused the families. My grandfather at once ordered that they should not be pursued.
In the course of three months, there came a letter from the party, then in Canada, begging tht they be allowed to return. This he refused to grant, saying that they had broen the bond that bound him to look after them, and that he would have nothing furthr to do with them. By threatening to 'sell them South' the ancient threat which he never would have executed, he kept them from returning.
This was one of several migrations from my part of the country which were laid to the charge of 'Underground Railroad' people."