"[18] They consented on the condition that he would accompany
them and teach school. He travelled through Canada, Michigan and Indiana,
looking for a suitable location, and finally selected for settlement a
place in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1835, he made the first purchase of land
there for this purpose and before 1838 Negroes had bought there about
30,000 acres, at the earnest appeal of this benefactor, who had travelled
into almost every neighborhood of the blacks in the State, and laid before
them the benefits of a permanent home for themselves and of education for
their children.[19]
This settlement was further increased in 1858 by the manumitted slaves of
John Harper of North Carolina.[20] John Randolph of Roanoke endeavored to
establish his slaves as freemen in this county but the Germans who had
settled in that community a little ahead of them started such a
disturbance that Randolph's executor could not carry out his plan,
although he had purchased a large tract of land there.[21] It was
necessary to send these freemen to Miami County. Theodoric H. Gregg of
Dinwiddie County, Virginia, liberated his slaves in 1854 and sent them to
Ohio.[22] Nearer to the Civil War, when public opinion was proscribing the
uplift of Negroes in Kentucky, Noah Spears secured near Xenia, Greene
County, Ohio, a small parcel of land for sixteen of his former bondsmen in
1856.
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