Underground Railroad network adds Hayes Home

FREMONT — The historic Hayes Home is part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, a group of more than 600 sites across the United States that connect in some way to the Underground Railroad. Although the home of President Rutherford and First Lady Lucy Hayes at Spiegel Grove was not a stop on the Underground Railroad, it is included in the network because of Rutherford Hayes’ work in defending runaway slaves while he worked as an attorney in Cincinnati. The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom is organized by the National Park Service. It collaborates with local, state and federal entities to preserve and promote the history of resistance to slavery through escape and flight. Two cases of Hayes defending runaway slaves have been recorded. One involved a slave named Lewis who did not wait for the verdict of his case and decided to make a run for it. Hayes wrote that Lewis “slipped out under the table at which we were sitting, and crawled along under the legs of a row of fellows, and was taken to a buggy in a lane nearby, and was spirited on.” Hayes’ most important case involved a young girl named Rosetta Armstead in 1855. Working with Salmon P. Chase, a well-known attorney who would go on to serve as Ohio governor and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln, Hayes made the closing argument for Armstead, which reportedly resulted in “unrestrainable applause” from the courtroom audience. The court declared Armstead free under both U.S. and Ohio law. When escaped slaves surrendered themselves to Hayes, he recommending some for employment on his uncle’s property of Spiegel Grove, which became his home later in life.