Known far down in the southern states

The route ran north.

The station south of Waterhouse's house was at the Whitfords', in Allen Township over in Noble County. The first one north of him was Orland, in Steuben County. The one after that was his brother John's house, twelve miles south of Coldwater in Michigan.

He had a covered buggy, and when the number was small that is what he used. When there were too many for it he took a wagon and put a blanket over them.

At Orland he handed them to a wagon-maker named Clark, or to a man named Barry, or to one or two others he trusted. From there they went on north.

The county history published in 1882 says his house became a noted harbor, and that it was known to colored people far down in the southern states.

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Benjamin B. Waterhouse was born in Connecticut and raised in Oswego County, New York. He was a Methodist, and the county history says he took his position on slavery because he believed God would approve of it.

His neighbors mostly left him alone. Some of them did not like what he was doing. Some of them said his carriage smelled of the people who rode in it.

There is a story in the county history about a neighbor named David Randall that says more about the road than any description of it could.

Randall went out one morning with a hoe to dig potatoes and had barely started when a man came fast out of the woods toward him. Randall could see what he was from the torn clothes, the exhaustion, and the bundle. He decided to have some fun with him and called out that he could see the man was running from his master, and that he had better turn around and start back south or Randall would report him.

The man did not think it was funny. He set down his stick and his bundle, took off his coat and laid it on the ground, made two fists, and started walking toward Randall telling him to get ready.

Randall said quickly that he had only been joking.

The man went back, picked up his coat, put it on, and let Randall point him the way he needed to go.

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Early one morning in the autumn of 1853, Augustus Whitford drove up from Noble County with five or six men in a wagon.

They were going straight on to Orland, so Mrs. Waterhouse and her daughters put together a substantial breakfast in a hurry. The men ate it the way people eat who have been traveling, and then they were back on the road. They reached Orland within a few hours.

Somebody saw them there. The whole party was seen, Waterhouse and Clark and Barry and the rest, and it was reported to a deputy United States marshal named Marsh who lived near the town.

The men in the wagon got to Canada.

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The following autumn, the men who had owned them found out how it had been done and who had done it, and had Waterhouse and the others arraigned before the United States Circuit Court at Indianapolis for violating the Fugitive Slave Act.

One of the witnesses for the prosecution was Cyrus Fillmore, brother of Millard Fillmore, who had signed that act into law four years earlier.

Cyrus Fillmore was not brought in from anywhere. He lived in this county, in Greenfield Township, about eleven miles from the man he was testifying against.

Waterhouse was convicted. The court fined him fifty dollars and sentenced him to twenty-four hours in jail. The county history says the jail time was remitted or avoided and the fine was probably paid.

It also says the conviction did not deter him one iota from frequent future violations of what it calls the odious law.

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By the county historian's estimate, Waterhouse helped about a hundred people get out of the country.

Around the time of the trial there were anti-slavery meetings across this part of the state. There was one at Orland, which had a good many abolitionists in it then, and a large one at Brushy Chapel over in Springfield Township. A Miss Whitford came from Allen Township to sing at both of them, and the county history says she sang with great power and effect.

It prints one verse of what she sang.

The baying hounds are on my track,
Old massa's close behind,
And he's resolved to take me back
Across the Dixon line.

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Weston Goodspeed finished his account of Waterhouse by writing that his name should be set down with those of John Brown and Owen Lovejoy.

Cyrus Fillmore was still in Greenfield Township when the census takers came through in 1880. He was seventy-eight. The same book that records his testimony lists him, seventy pages later, among the oldest people in the county.