The Night Road to Freedom: Black Conductors Above Martins Ferry

Part Three of “Across the River: A Centennial Reflection on Belmont County”

In the hills above Martins Ferry, there once stood a station on a railroad without tracks.

It had no timetable, tickets, locomotive, or station platform. Its passengers traveled through woods and along isolated paths, usually under cover of darkness. Its destinations were farms, barns, mills, and private homes. Its ultimate purpose was freedom.

Belmont County’s 1903 centennial history preserves a rare account of this Underground Railroad route. The recollection came from Ellis B. Steele of Pease Township, who wrote that he had served as one of its conductors.

His account begins near the Ohio River—but its central figures were two Black men: Richard Naylor and Samuel Cooper.

The First Station

According to Steele, the first station he remembered stood amid the woods and underbrush covering the hills between Martins Ferry and Burlington.

Naylor and Cooper established and operated it.

Naylor had been born into slavery before obtaining his freedom. He then entered what Steele called the “hazardous business” of receiving freedom seekers arriving from Virginia. Naylor ferried them across the Ohio River and brought them to the first station behind Martins Ferry.

There, Samuel Cooper and his son Henry helped receive and shelter them.

If it was safe to move, a conductor guided the travelers through the woods to another station in the settlement then known as Concord, now Colerain. Some reportedly hid beneath the floor of Joshua Steele’s log barn. Others were taken to Joseph Parker’s farm or to the flour mill operated by Joshua Cope.

From there, the route continued through additional stations, eventually leading north toward Canada.

Black Agency at the River

Too many popular accounts of the Underground Railroad place Black people only in the role of frightened passengers being rescued by white abolitionists.

The Belmont County account tells a more complete story.

Richard Naylor, Samuel Cooper, Henry Cooper, and Thomas Pointer were not passive participants. They organized stations, crossed the river, sheltered travelers, coordinated transportation, and accepted enormous personal risks. They possessed the local knowledge and relationships necessary to operate a secret network in a dangerous border region.

They were conductors, strategists, and defenders of freedom.

Their efforts came at a price. Suspicion eventually fell upon Henry Cooper. Steele wrote that he faced possible arrest—or even kidnapping and enslavement—because of his work. With help from friends, Henry escaped through the same Underground Railroad he had used to assist others and reached Canada.

Samuel Cooper later followed him.

When the Coopers were forced to abandon the station, Thomas Pointer, another Black conductor, took their place. Working with Tobe Hance, Pointer reopened the route.

Naylor also lived under constant danger. Steele recalled that he sometimes pretended to be intoxicated to divert suspicion. When he learned of a plan to capture him, he too escaped by the clandestine network he had served.

A Crossing Near Wheeling

Before West Virginia became a state, the Ohio River separated free Ohio from slaveholding Virginia. For freedom seekers living in or passing through the Wheeling area, the lights visible across the water represented possibility—but the crossing remained perilous.

The ferrying work attributed to Naylor demonstrates that the Underground Railroad was not an abstract national system. It depended upon local people who knew where to cross, whom to trust, and which road or hollow could conceal a traveler.

The river was not crossed by metaphor. It was crossed in boats, in darkness, by human beings who knew capture could mean punishment, sale, or death.

In August 1859, Steele and his uncle, O. C. Parker, reportedly helped move nine freedom seekers from the station near Martins Ferry to the next points on the route. Steele remembered it as the last “full train” to pass that way, although individuals continued to travel through the area afterward.

Restoring the Conductors to the Story

The names Richard Naylor, Samuel Cooper, Henry Cooper, and Thomas Pointer deserve a permanent place in the history of the Upper Ohio Valley.

Their work reminds us that freedom was not simply announced from Washington or delivered by famous national figures. It was pursued night after night by ordinary people willing to resist an unjust system.

Some ferried boats. Some opened barns. Some prepared horses. Some stood watch. Some traveled ahead to determine whether the road was safe.

Together, they transformed the hills above Martins Ferry into a road toward freedom.

-T

Research note: This account appears in Ellis B. Steele’s “Some Recollections of the Underground Railroad,” published in McKelvey’s Centennial History of Belmont County, pp. 141–142. Additional Belmont County background is available through the Belmont County Heritage Museum. Because Underground Railroad activity was deliberately secret, names, routes, and dates should continue to be compared with contemporary records.