Sara Lucy Bagby
Sara Lucy Bagby | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1843 |
| Died | July 14, 1906 |
| Burial place | Woodland Cemetery |
| Spouse(s) | F. George Johnson |
Sara Lucy Bagby (1843 - July 14, 1906) was the last person in the United States forced to return to slavery in the South under the Fugitive Slave Act.[1]
Born in the early 1840s in Virginia, she eventually escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad and made her way to Cleveland, Ohio, in a free state.[2][3] In January 1861, she was pursued by her owners, William Goshorn and his son, and arrested by a U.S. Marshall.
Despite the state government's and citizens of Cleveland's attempts to intervene—including a purported dramatic armed standoff in a courtroom—she was transported back to Goshorn's property in Wheeling, then still part of Virginia.[2] This episode forms the subject of a poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, titled "To the Cleveland Union-Savers".[1][4][5][6]
After the Emancipation Proclamation, Bagby walked to Pittsburgh to leave the South. She eventually resettled in Cleveland, where she died in 1906 and was buried.[2][3]
References[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b Barrett, Faith, 1965- Miller, Cristanne. (2005). "Words for the hour" : a new anthology of American Civil War poetry. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-509-6. OCLC 60796177.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
- ^ Jump up to: a b c "Biography: Sara Lucy Bagby > Research | Ohio County Public Library | Ohio County WV | Wheeling WV History | Ohio County West Virginia Public Library". www.ohiocountylibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-03-02.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Day, Michelle A.; Wickens, Joseph. "The Arrest and Trial of Lucy Bagby". Cleveland Historical. Retrieved 2020-03-02.
- ^ David Dirck Van Tassel; John Vacha (2006). "Behind Bayonets": The Civil War in Northern Ohio. Kent State University Press. pp. 28–. ISBN 978-0-87338-850-4.
- ^ United States. Work Projects Administration. Ohio (1937). Annals of Cleveland--1818-1935 ... pp. 513–.
- ^ R. J. M. Blackett (25 January 2018). The Captive's Quest for Freedom. Cambridge University Press. pp. 441–. ISBN 978-1-108-41871-3.
- 1843 births
- 1906 deaths
- 19th-century African-American activists
- 19th-century African-American women
- African-American abolitionists
- African-American history of Ohio
- African-American history of Virginia
- African Americans in the American Civil War
- American rebel slaves
- Fugitive American slaves
- History of Ohio
- History of slavery in Virginia
- History of Virginia
- People from Virginia
- 19th-century American slaves
- Underground Railroad people
- Fugitive American slaves returned to their owners