New Richmond is famous as an abolitionist town. But its history is more complex

As the Civil War raged in America, a group of slave catchers caught up with Leroy Lee, who had fled slavery to Cincinnati.

They took him east to New Richmond, intending to ship him back to his enslaver just across the river in Kentucky.

But word had reached the village they were coming, and the townspeople took up arms to secure Lee's freedom.

Historian Greg Roberts stands next to the Ohio River in New Richmond on a recent afternoon, telling the tale as he leads a tour of the village's historic abolitionist sites.

"So outnumbered and outgunned, the slave catchers relented," he says. "Leroy Lee was free. He stayed here a short time in New Richmond before enlisting to fight for the Union in the Civil War."

Roberts says Lee's story captures the anti-slavery fervor that set New Richmond apart in 19th century Ohio.

But how did the tiny village in Clermont County become a bastion for abolitionism?

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's Novella Nimmo Black says first of all, it was simply an easy place to cross the river.

"The Ohio River during that time didn't have a dam in it," she says. "So during the fall and winter from West Virginia all the way to the Mississippi, there were pockets where the river was so low you could actually wade across it. So it got around by word of mouth, 'If you cross this way, you can get to this area.' "

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The village 20 miles east of Cincinnati was also very remote at that time. That made it especially attractive to those whose religious beliefs drove them to oppose slavery.

Roberts' tour starts and ends at Cranston Memorial Presbyterian Church. The church was founded in 1821 and almost from the start, its congregation was integrated. It hosted a litany of high-profile abolitionist speakers and figures from the underground railroad.

"Many of the folks who converged here in New Richmond, due to their faith convictions, came with strongly held anti-slavery views," he says. "They were people who were outsiders, free thinkers and what not, who did not fit in. So where did they go? To the wilderness."

Putting their money — and their safety — where their mouths were, some of the abolitionists in New Richmond promised protection and even a bit of funding to a fledgling newspaper called The Philanthropist.

At the time, printing such a publication was a dangerous endeavor. After threats, James Birney changed his plans to bring the paper to Cincinnati and set it up in a blacksmith's shop in New Richmond, where it published its first issue in 1836. More than 70 village residents — calling themselves The Chieftains of Liberty — quickly signed up to protect it from more threats by enraged slavery supporters.

That willingness to stand up against slavery made the village a beacon for others opposed to the practice. There are numerous stories of high-profile resistance to slavery in the village.

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One, involving a man named Jonathan Poindexter who promised to buy himself out of slavery in 1856, wound up before the Ohio Supreme Court. Poindexter's enslaver tried to collect on the money he said Poindexter owned him for his freedom. Staying in New Richmond, Poindexter and white co-signers on the debt, including New Richmond merchant Thomas Gowdy, refused.

State Supreme Court justices decided in Poindexter's favor, and he remained free. The decision was quickly rendered null by the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Dredd-Scott decision, which stripped rights from Black Americans, but Poindexter had already settled further North by that time.

But the spirit that drove residents to defend the abolitionist publisher and people escaping slavery faded following the Civil War, when a backlash against racial equity efforts swept the nation and birthed the Ku Klux Klan. Incidents of violence and intimidation against Black residents in New Richmond cropped up and historic accounts suggest the Klan was active in the area.

Roberts stops on his tour around town to tell the story of Noah Anderson. Historical records suggest Anderson was a successful businessman and property owner in New Richmond in 1895.

He was also Black, and accused of murdering a prominent white man in the village. There was no trial and no eye witnesses to the supposed attack, but that didn't stop a white mob from killing him just hours after the murder allegation.

"Anderson was one of over 26 Black lynching victims in southern Ohio between 1870 and 1920," Roberts says. "So things we think only happened down there in the deep South happened right here in this little abolitionist town."

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That act of violence and subsequent racial tension are likely among the factors that drove away much, but not all, of New Richmond's thriving Black population in the early 20th century.

Roberts says those later parts of New Richmond's story don't diminish its participation in the anti-slavery movement. In fact, he suggests they highlight the bravery of village residents who worked in the face of threats and violence for decades.

Nimmo Black with the Freedom Center agrees.

"Even in the harshest times, you'll always find pockets of people who are willing to stand up for what is right," she says.