Sargents Station - Underground Railroad
Sargents Station was founded and named around 1800, specifically as a "station -- for helping terrified slaves who had managed to get across the Ohio River." Strategically chosen at the center and narrows of the Lower Scioto Valley, astride both the land and river routes going north from Portsmouth, Sargents Station was a principal stopover along the Scioto Trail, en route to Chillicothe and the Pee Pee Settlement in northwest Pike County.
The Sargent family, which had manumitted their slaves in Maryland in 1781, moved to the Ohio frontier for the express purpose of combating "the horrors of slavery." The Sargent Home, which still stands, has extensive underground tunnels emanating from its cellar.
In Ohio, the Sargents hooked up with a prominent political clan of like convictions, the Barnes family. James Barnes served as owner and editor of the Scioto Gazette (now the Chillicothe Gazette), while helping to establish Underground Railroad connections in Ross County. His nephew, John Barnes, Jr., built a grand home just south of the Sargent estate. Both James and John fought fugitive slave laws as Ohio state legislators. The Barnes Home also is well preserved.
Three of John's male descendants would marry Sargent girls, uniting the families and creating a nexus of UGRR activity at the strategic center of southern Ohio. Together, the Barnes and Sargents founded the Sargents Methodist Episcopal Church. A spin-of that church was established as Bailey Chapel in Wakefield, the first and only Methodist parsonage in south-central Ohio. The parsonage served as a training center for liberationist preachers.
Snowden Sargent IV, who was born at Sargents Station, Ohio migrated to eastern Illinois in 1830, at the age of 19. He became a wealthy rancher, and the patron of a Whig attorney his same age, named Abraham Lincoln. At Snowden's arrangement, Linchol visited Sargents Station in 1848, on his way to serve out his term in Congress. He stayed at the Barnes Home, hosted by Isaac Newton Barnes and Mary Sargent Barnes. This visit may explain why Lincoln took his first public stand against slavery immediately upon his arrival in Washington, authoring a bill to outlaw slavery in the District of Columbia.
Today, the Sargents Historic Preservation Project works to preserve the historic and prehistoric sites of Sargents Station and to establish a Sargents Station Historic District.
Information Oct 2007 from
Sargents Historic Preservation Project
P. Box 161, Piketon, Ohio 45661
October 2007
Copyright © 2007
Pike Co. Genealogy & Historical Society
P. O. Box 224, Waverly, Ohio 45690