A Free Man or a Dead Horse! Joseph Langford and the Underground Railroad at the Maumee Rapids

Last week I wrote a blog post about Captain David Wilkeson, who came to the Maumee River as a deck hand on his uncles schooner in 1815, and stayed to eventually become a successful captain and ship owner in Perrysburg. In tracing his career I found references to Joseph Langford, an African American man who served as cook aboard his ships and eventually became co owner (and thus partner) in Wilkeson's first steamship. I've been able to reconstruct some more details about Langford's life in Perrysburg during the 19th century, and his involvement with the Underground Railroad.

The approximate location of Joseph Langford's house today.

Langford is remembered in local history sources as "Old Joe" Langford, and in connection with an incident that occurred in 1845. His house on Mulberry Street near Front Street (described as a cabin located in an alley in one source) was on the outskirts of town but still located about a block from the waterfront and shipyards, and on the depression or edge of the gulley that runs west from the site of Fort Meigs (which passes through the town cemetery and the site of British batteries along a deep ravine). This would have been an ideal place to hustle fleeing bondspeople through on their way north to Canada: within spitting distance of the shipyards and the toll bridge over the river, but far enough from the center of town to escape notice. 

Perrysburg was an abolitionist town and a crossroads for travelers passing north over the Maumee River at the toll bridge near the foot of the rapids. Not only that, but according to local history, at least one house on the river bluff at Front Street had a hidden passageway leading from the cellar to the waterfront, where a small schooner or sloop could take freedom seekers down the river and across Lake Erie to Canada. With fugitive slave laws in force nationally, it was dangerous for bondspeople to remain in the town, but several African American families, like the Williams and the Langfords, made their homes there. 

On one occasion, a bondsman escaping in through the Perrysburg area was apprehended and placed in the town jail by slave hunters, pending a hearing by local magistrate Elijah Huntington. Lawyer Shibnah Spink defended the man, but although both Huntington and Spink were sympathetic to the freedom seeker, they knew the laws were not on his side and he would be taken south. According to one source, while the two officials stalled for time as they examined the slave hunter's papers, Joseph Langford went down to the shipyard where the propeller steamship Superior was then being built for David Wilkeson. He enlisted 40 shipwrights who came back with him and crowded into the courthouse, which stood where the former Citizens Bank building at 114 Louisiana Ave. As they crowded between the slave hunters and their prey, "Old Joe" made a signal and the bondsman ran for the door, helped by the workers who prevented the slave hunters from giving chase. 

An engraving showing the Maumee Perrysburg toll bridge in 1846.

Langford had brought his own, apparently very fast horse to the courthouse door, and the bondsman was able to get on it and ride out of town. Joseph slapped the horses flank and shouted "a free man or a dead horse" and it sped out of sight. His horse had been on many trips to the Canadian border and would actually return on its own when released. The bridge keeper at the toll bridge between Perrysburg and Maumee, Joshua Chappel, was in on the rescue, and let the horse through. But when the slave hunters, pursuing on horseback, reached the bridge they found the gates locked. Chappel "had much difficulty in understanding the great haste of the gentlemen... and was very slow in unlocking and permitting them to pass." Three days later, the horse came back alone to Langford, and it was learned that the bondsman had made it to freedom in Canada.

It is probably inappropriate to refer to Joseph Langford as "Old Joe", because when this incident occurred, according to the 1850 census he would have been 35 years old. His wife, whom William Hodge regarded as the most ladylike in Perrysburg, was named either Hazel or Harritt (this requires more research on my part). Joseph had been born in Tennessee, and Hazel in Maryland, but not much appears in the records about their early lives before settling in Perrysburg. In 1850, 15-year old Charles Thompson was living with them. Although there is no occupation listed for them, Joseph had worked as a cook aboard Wilkeson's schooner and continued aboard the steamship Commodore Perry.

Working on the newer steamboats Wilkeson built would have been a big step up in terms of responsibility: the steamboats were described as "floating palaces" and the food was a major selling point in competing for passengers between Buffalo and Detroit. Langford would have gone from cooking for a dozen crew members and the occasional passenger aboard the schooners (passenger service as a rule was dominated by the more reliable steam vessels), to planning and serving elaborate multi-course meals, perhaps even negotiating for fresh produce and provisions from local farmers. Therefore local histories undersell him when they describe Joseph as a simple shipyard worker living in a cabin on Mulberry Street. 

According to death records, Hazel or Harritt Langford died on December 13, 1860 and is buried in Fort Meigs Cemetery. Local records show that Joseph remarried to Mary Ann Richardson on May 20, 1863. He died in the spring of 1868 according to a probate record dated April 24 of that year, and left his property to his widow. I've not been able to find more information regarding his death or place of burial, although I imagine it was in April 1868 and his gravesite is somewhere in Fort Meigs Cemetery. I hope to continue to find more information on the Langfords and other African American people involved in the early steamship industry in Perrysburg in the future.

Most of the information in this article is drawn from the Ohio Miscellany, a book of newspaper clippings found in the State Library of Ohio. The story of the horse and the courthouse is also repeated in many local histories of Perrysburg.