The Huston Household
At the time of the 1851 escape, Ashley was living in one of Portsmouth’s most influential households. Around 1830, Captain Samuel Huston and his wife, Elizabeth Huston, constructed their large residence at the southwestern corner of Court and Second Streets during Portsmouth’s first major economic boom. The city was then rapidly expanding as the southern terminus of the Ohio and Erie Canal and as a major commercial center serving the Hanging Rock iron region.
Samuel Huston became known as Portsmouth’s first builder of steamboats and emerged as one of the city’s leading Democratic political figures. He represented Portsmouth’s old Third Ward on City Council and later served Scioto County in the Ohio legislature from 1854 to 1856. The Huston residence became a prominent social and political gathering place where visiting Democratic politicians dined and conducted business while in Portsmouth.
Huston Corner today is the site of the Elks Building (constructed in 1891), the former location of James M. Ashley’s residence from 1848 to 1851. Source: Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tourism Initiative, Center for Public History, Clark Memorial Library, Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio (2025). Photograph by Drew Feight, Ph.D..
Also residing in the household was Samuel Huston’s mother, Susannah Boyd Huston, a Maryland-born Quaker who later joined Portsmouth’s First Presbyterian Church. Through Susannah Boyd Huston, the household connected older Quaker antislavery traditions with the Presbyterian world of Portsmouth, which included figures such as Joseph Riggs, who had made a fortune in the iron industry and was a statewide leader in the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society and an agent for its newspaper, The Philanthropist. Notably, Rebecca Baldridge Riggs, his wife, served as president of the congregation’s Ladies’ Sewing Society, which according to local tradition provided assistance to freedom seekers.
Ashley himself later recalled that after successfully assisting the group of five freedom seekers in 1851, Joseph Riggs quietly handed him a “$20 gold piece,” saying, “James you may need this,” while another Portsmouth resident whom Ashley identified only as “an old Quaker” provided an additional $10. Whether Ashley’s mysterious “old Quaker” may have been Susannah Boyd Huston is impossible to know. Nevertheless, Ashley’s account of this unsolicited support illustrates the overlapping religious and social networks that sustained Underground Railroad activity in Portsmouth.
Elizabeth Huston and Ashley’s Early Career
While living at Huston Corner between 1848 and 1851, Ashley studied law under Portsmouth attorney Charles O. Tracy and entered the newspaper business, helping publish Democratic Party-affiliated papers. Historian Nelson Evans later credited Elizabeth Huston as “the founder” of Ashley’s “fortunes.” Her obituary recalled that when Ashley was a struggling law student, “poor and unable to pay his board and without a library,” she lent him books, encouraged him to “make her house his home,” and allowed him to defer payment until he could afford it. “Not until he became a member of Congress,” the obituary noted, “was the debt discharged.”
The Making of an Abolitionist
It was here, at Huston Corner, that Ashley’s legal studies, political exposure, and firsthand experiences aiding freedom seekers converged. Ashley’s opposition to slavery had initially developed in his childhood. As a young man, he rejected his father’s proslavery theology, later condemning the belief that slavery was a Biblical relation, without sin, as “a perversion of the teachings of Christ.” The disagreement with his father over the morality of slavery led Ashley to runaway himself. He initially found refuge with the Nurse family in Nile Township in western Scioto County, where his antislavery convictions only deepened under the influence of the Nurse’s Quaker faith.
Congressman James M. Ashley, while living at Huston Corner in 1851, aided a group of five freedom seekers escape from their enslavers in Greenup County, Kentucky. Source: Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
Firsthand experiences with the evils of slavery while working aboard steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers further strengthened his opposition to slavery. Ashley witnessed Black co-workers (some of whom were free) arrested and sold into slavery. He recalled that at river landings they would be seized “on the charge of being runaway slaves” and, lacking the means to defend themselves, “would finally be sold to pay the expenses of apprehending them.” These experiences transformed Ashley from an observer into an active participant in the struggle against slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Act and Ashley’s Departure
The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 dramatically increased the dangers associated with Underground Railroad activity. The law strengthened federal enforcement, imposed severe penalties on those who aided freedom seekers, and heightened the possibility of arrest for men like Ashley.
Following the 1851 escape, Ashley became convinced that his activities were no longer secret. The warnings from Riggs and others reinforced the danger he faced. Biographical accounts later noted that Ashley came to believe he was in serious danger of arrest for assisting freedom seekers and that remaining in Portsmouth had become increasingly unsafe. That same year, Ashley lost a race for mayor of Portsmouth. Soon afterward, he left the city and relocated to Toledo, where his political prospects would rise rapidly.
From Portsmouth to the Thirteenth Amendment
Ashley eventually became one of the nation’s leading abolitionist politicians, helping establish both the Ohio and national Republican parties. In Congress, he advocated for the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C., led the fight to repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act, and emerged as the principal House sponsor of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Yet the foundations of that later career were laid here in Portsmouth, Ohio, within the Huston household and within the larger Appalachian Underground Railroad network that shaped Ashley’s understanding of slavery, the law, and the need for constitutional change.
Fire and Construction of the Elks Building
The original Huston residence no longer stands. After the Huston family relocated in the 1870s, the building was converted into commercial space housing banks, offices, saloons, and other businesses.
Huston Corner, built c. 1830, the home of Capt. Samuel and Elizabeth Huston, served as the residence of noted abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor James M. Ashley. Source: Henry Lorberg Scrapbooks, Scioto County Public Library, Local History Department.
In June 1890, fire destroyed the entire corner. The blaze killed saloon keeper Tom Murphy and left behind ghost stories and legends that would later attach themselves to the site. The following year, the Portsmouth Elks Lodge purchased the property and constructed the Elks Building, which still stands on the corner today. Although the original Huston family structure has disappeared, the site remains one of Portsmouth’s most important lost landmarks.
A Portsmouth Street Corner with National Significance
It was here, at Huston Corner, where James M. Ashley’s experiences with slavery, religion, law, politics, and the Underground Railroad converged. While residing with the Huston family, Ashley participated in a secret network that helped hundreds of freedom seekers escape bondage, first by helping with the crossing of the Ohio River and then by safely forwarding them to the next stop, along a chain of safe houses that reached all the way to Canada. From these experiences emerged a politician who would later help destroy slavery through constitutional amendment.
In 1848, James M. Ashley and Edward W. Jordan established the Portsmouth Enquirer, a Democratic Party newspaper
This site is part of the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tour, funded by an ARC POWER Grant and developed by the Lawrence Economic Development Corp.
