Learning 9: Levi Coffin

Spring Grove Cemetery is a beautiful place with graves and big trees (pin oaks) and ponds. We found out that Levi Coffin was in there somewhere.  Even though it was raining and thundering and even though there are over 700 stunning acres of life and death, we kept trying to find the grave of this Quaker abolitionist and his wife Catherine.  With help from a flikr photo on my smart phone, we did find it and we were over the top happy. I felt like I was in that Alice Walker short story where she searches for Zora Neale Hurston's unmarked grave. Quaker graves are usually unmarked, I learned. At first Levi's grave was an unmarked grave but then African American people of Cincinnati got a marker for his grave, as a tribute. They placed it in Spring Grove in 1902. Levi and his wife helped 1000s of people escape on the Underground Railroad. His home was called the Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad.






I wish I had brought some flowers for the graves. And I also wish I could learn more about Catherine White Coffin.  Not much out there about her.   I did learn from wikipedia that Coffin was part of organizations that were trying to only use products made with paid labor.  Quote from wiki-know-it-all-ia here:

The problem caused Coffin to begin to travel into the south to seek out plantations that did not use slave labor, but he met with only limited success. He located a cotton plantation inMississippi where the owner had freed all his slaves and operated by paying them as free laborers.^[21] The plantation was struggling financially because they had no equipment to automate the cotton production. Coffin helped the owner purchase a cotton gin that greatly increased their productivity and provided a steady supply of cotton for his association. The cotton was shipped to Cincinnati where it was spun into cloth and sold.^[21] Other trips to Tennessee and Virginia were less successful, although he did succeed in spreading the word about the movement.

The Coffins started out in Indiana, but then moved to Ohio. If you are ever in Cincinnati, I think you would like to drive through Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum.  Really lovely.