Asbury Parker, wearing the suit of clothes in which he escaped, disguised as a freeman of color.
Source: Wilbur H. Siebert Collection, Ohio History Connection, Columbus, Ohio.
Asbury Parker Memorial in ARMCO Park
The Asbury Parker Memorial at ARMCO Park commemorates the 1857 escape of Asbury Parker (c.1830–1903) from slavery at nearby Clinton Furnace. Located approximately one mile from the original furnace site, the memorial was constructed in 2025 by Boyd County Parks and Recreation in partnership with the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative and the Center for Public History at Shawnee State University. The monument memorializes the beginning of Parker’s journey to freedom and the regional Underground Railroad network that made it possible.
Asbury Parker Recounts the Story of His Escape
Asbury Parker’s escape from slavery survives through an 1894 interview he gave to Underground Railroad historian Wilbur H. Siebert. Decades after his flight and his family’s later return from Canada, Parker recounted his journey through the Hanging Rock Iron Region and shared a portrait of himself in the broadcloth suit he wore to pass as a free man. His testimony outlines the route from modern-day Ashland, Kentucky, to Fort Malden, Ontario, and highlights the people and communities who helped him reach freedom.
Birth and Enslavement in Cabell County, Virginia
Asbury Parker was born into slavery on the Brown plantation around 1830 in Cabell County, Virginia, within the bounds of present-day Huntington, West Virginia. At age nine, in 1839, he was separated from his family when his enslaver, Richard Brown, relocated to eastern Kentucky, taking Parker with him. After Brown’s death in 1843, Parker was sold to James Rouse, who later moved to Shopes Creek and the vicinity of Clinton Furnace. There, in the shadows of the Clinton Furnace stack, Parker spent his early adulthood in bondage.
Route of Asbury Parker’s Escape from Clinton Furnace in 1857.
Source: Andrew Feight, Ph.D., Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative, Shawnee State University Center for Public History (2025).
Clinton Furnace and Industrial Slavery
By the late 1840s, Parker had been hired out to work at Clinton Furnace, part of a growing iron industry in northeastern Kentucky’s Hanging Rock Iron Region. There, he labored as “a team-driver about Wm. Patterson’s iron works,” hauling raw materials and finished iron to and from the Ohio River.
In Kentucky, the furnace system depended heavily on enslaved labor. Men like Parker were integrated into an industrial economy that required skilled labor, physical strength, and endurance of body and spirit. This was not plantation agriculture as found in Virginia and Kentucky’s bluegrass region, but a form of industrial slavery.
With abundant natural resources and proximity to the Ohio River (the era’s primary transportation corridor), northeastern Kentucky emerged as a center of iron production in the 1830s. With slavery legal in Kentucky, furnace owners maximized profits by purchasing enslaved people for use in their operations, as well as hiring enslaved labor and paying enslavers for that labor.
These conditions placed enslaved workers on the edge of freedom and within a regional Appalachian network of abolitionists, Black and white, who were prepared to assist those like Asbury Parker who crossed the Ohio River in search of liberty.
The Decision to Escape, 1856
Parker had long yearned for freedom but for years held back from acting on that desire. The outcome of the presidential elections of 1856 was the catalyst for Parker to act and seize his freedom.
Reflecting on the loss of James C. Frémont, the antislavery candidate, Parker stated: “When Buchanan was elected, I made up my mind I never would be freed,” adding that before another year passed, “no white man would be collecting my wages.” He also confessed that at the time, “I had almost fell out with God for making me a slave.”
The Lawrence County Underground Railroad Network
Parker’s goal was to reach Ironton, Ohio, which was roughly 19 miles distant down the river. It is likely that he found assistance in nearby Burlington, home of one of the earliest free Black communities in the state, which had a long history of aiding fugitives. Its Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church was part of the Providence Anti-Slavery Baptist Association, whose ministers urged congregations to provide “shelter, resources, and guidance to freedom seekers.”
Escape from Clinton Furnace, April 1857
In April 1857, Parker escaped from Clinton Furnace and made his way to the Ohio River near present-day Huntington. He had returned to his place of birth and early childhood, where a trusted friend assisted him across the river in a skiff.
Once on the northern shore, Parker’s passage to freedom took him via Burlington to Ironton in Lawrence County, Ohio, a key entry point into a regional Underground Railroad network that extended across the Appalachian foothills.
Assistance in Ironton: Gabe Johnson and Quinn Chapel AME
Upon arriving in Ironton, Parker was met by Gabriel Johnson, a Black barber and central figure in the local UGRR. He took Parker to the home of Perlina Pogue, part of a network connected to the AME congregation later known as Quinn Chapel who, guided by antislavery faith, aided freedom seekers like Parker in their pursuit of freedom.
Movement Through the Furnace Region
From Ironton, Parker was guided north into the furnace region by African American conductors Dan Holt and Nat Salisbury, traveling by night and hiding by day. At Olive Furnace he was sheltered before being sent on to James Craddolph, a formerly enslaved man freed in 1826, whom Parker remembered as “an old colored man and a great U.G.R.R. worker.”
Craddolph was connected to the Stewart family and Union Baptist Church at Poke Patch, a key station on the UGRR. In that free Black community, sustained by faith and kinship ties, Craddolph provided Parker with protection and practical guidance: “The old man told me I could travel in broad daylight if I’d hold up my head and act free.”
Routes North Through Ohio to Canada
From Poke Patch, Craddolph guided Parker to Washington Switch on the Scioto and Hocking Valley Railroad where he boarded a train. Passing through Chillicothe and Cincinnati, Parker arrived in Columbus, and then continued on foot to the Benedict Settlement, Iberia, and Gallion. From there he followed the railroad tracks to Sandusky where, with the aid of a Black youth, Parker secured passage on the steamer Bay City which carried Parker to Fort Malden, Canada … and to freedom.
Life in Canada and Continued Resistance
In Canada, Parker joined a growing community of freedom seekers. “They was settled there by the hundreds,” he remembered, many from Kentucky and Virginia. He later reunited with his wife, Hannah Pogue, and established a new life. Evidence indicates that Parker also participated in aiding other freedom seekers, becoming part of the same network that had facilitated his own escape.
Return to Ironton and Later Life
By the late 1860s, Parker and his family returned to Ironton, Ohio, where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. When interviewed by Siebert in 1894, he reflected on his journey as one defined by determination and self-emancipation. His account preserves not only the details of his escape, but the broader history of the Underground Railroad in the tri-state region of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia.
Asbury Parker Memorial (built 2025), ARMCO Park, Boyd County, Kentucky.
Source: Andrew Feight, Ph.D., Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative, Shawnee State University Center for Public History (2025).
ARMCO Park and the Parker Memorial
The original Clinton Furnace no longer stands, and its site is not publicly accessible. The Asbury Parker Memorial at ARMCO Park serves as a place of interpretation, connecting the modern landscape to this history of resistance to slavery. Designed as a scale replica of the furnace stack, the memorial recalls the industrial system that depended on enslaved labor while marking the place where Parker’s journey to freedom began in the spring of 1857.
The Legacy of Asbury Parker
Asbury Parker’s story endures because he told it. His likeness endures because he chose to have it photographed. His life inspires because it embodies the indomitable spirit of liberty and self-determination that resides in the hearts of all men and women. Parker’s own words provide a rare firsthand account of escape through the Appalachian foothills and illuminate the networks that made such journeys possible.
“I always wanted to be free,” Parker said, and in 1857, he acted on that desire. His successful escape reflects a broader “geography of resistance,” where individuals, families, and communities in the region worked together to aid those resisting their enslavement through escape and flight.
This site is part of the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tour, funded by an ARC POWER Grant and developed by the Lawrence Economic Development Corp.
