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Sowing seeds of freedom

Rescued by Stafford County's Moncure Conway, former slaves flourish in Ohio community

Date published: 2/9/2002

Second of a two-part series for Black History Month

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio--Stafford
County's Moncure Conway took the
hard road to his place in history.

Despite a complicated legacy in Virginia, he's celebrated here as a radical Southerner who led a ragged group of liberated slaves to Ohio, and a better life.

This town's Antioch University, a stubbornly progressive institution founded by Conway's friend and fellow abolitionist Horace Mann, holds Conway's memory in an institutional embrace.

"In the context of Antioch, we love people who live by their convictions," university archivist Scott Sanders said.

Sanders' interest extends to Conway's colorful life, which was marked by melodrama and spiritual skirmishes.

Conway's family disowned him during the Civil War, congregations sent him packing for his feverish anti-slavery sermons, and he traveled constantly, following causes to far-flung cities, from Boston to Cincinnati to Paris.

By the end of his life, in 1907, he had stood up for women's rights, world peace and other humanitarian causes. But he is best remembered for his fierce attacks on slavery. It was a Southern institution he learned from the inside out--in his own family home in southern Stafford County.

His character comes into sharp focus in one act of courage, early in the Civil War.

Conway collected his father's slaves, who, like many blacks in the South, began to scatter at the first glimpse of a blue uniform. He led them on a suspenseful train trip from Washington to freedom and safety in Yellow Springs.

During the journey west, Conway was heroic, principled and humane--all of the qualities he espoused in his many passionate sermons, letters and books.

But when the men, women and children disembarked in this village, in the rolling hills of southwestern Ohio, it wasn't just Conway's moment on the stage of history.

Those 31 former slaves went on to build houses, buy land and establish a church that still hosts worshippers each Sunday. Their community became known as the "Conway Colony."

Some descendants live here still. Others settled throughout Ohio and beyond, spreading out like seeds on a summer wind. They are professors, homemakers, laborers and social workers.

But that's where the story rests today.

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Date published: 2/9/2002