In August 1836, after discovering he was to be sold to the “lower markets,” thirty-year-old James Major Monroe escaped from his Guyandotte, Virginia-based enslaver, Victor LeTulle. Leaving behind his wife, whom he remembers “gazing after him until he had passed the stream, and he could only discover her obscure form like a melancholy statue in the place where he left her,” Monroe fled across the Ohio River in pursuit of freedom.
Monroe made his way alone toward Chillicothe, Ohio, concealing himself along the route until he was captured and his pistol taken. Held in a tavern and wounded, he managed to escape again that night by leaping through a window. A Quaker took him in and tended to his injuries. After two weeks of recovery, Monroe resumed his journey. With aid from his hosts and others, he traveled through Medina, Oberlin, and Cleveland before reaching Toronto, Canada, in 1840.
Portrait of Rev. Hiram Wilson. Monroe’s account was recorded and written up by Rev. Hiram Wilson, a graduate of Oberlin College and abolitionist who assisted with Underground Railroad operations in Chatham and St. Catherines, Canada, where he worked with other noted freedom seekers, conductors, and abolitionists, including Josiah Henson, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass.
His remarkable journey was recorded by Rev. Hiram Wilson, an abolitionist, and published in 1841 in The Monthly Offering by John A. Collins in Boston, Massachusetts. Monroe’s narrative documented not only the brutality he endured—including being slashed in the face by LeTulle, a grocer and butcher—but also the network of individuals who helped him on his road to freedom. Wilson described Monroe as “a robust, athletic frame, quite intelligent, and possessed of uncommon vigor of mind and decision of character. All who saw him, saw a ‘knock down argument’ that slavery was wrong.”
Cover page of the Monthly Offering, which published James Major Monroe’s freedom seeking story in 1841. Published in Boston, Massachusetts, this publication, including Monroe’s story, helped awaken the conscience of many White Americans to the struggles of freedom seekers and the horrific evils of slavery. Image Credit: Shawnee State University Center for Public History, from Google Books (public domain).
Victor LeTulle became a wealthy Guyandotte merchant through a grocery and butcher business and numerous land investments, including Lot 3 in the original town purchased in 1819. This lot likely housed both his store and Monroe’s residence. Guyandotte’s development as a commercial hub—and its location across from the free state of Ohio—helped make such escapes possible. Dr. Cicero M. Fain III notes that steamboats transported “ideas as well as merchandise,” allowing enslaved people contact with free Black communities and the opportunity to observe others who had seized their freedom. Guyandotte’s proximity to the free state of Ohio, along with its steamboat trade and communication network undoubtedly contributed to Monroe’s decision and shaped his successful escape.
View of Guyandotte, [West] Virginia, from the State of Ohio, circa 1821. Long before there was the City of Huntington, West Virginia, the Village of Guyandotte stood at the confluence of the Guyandotte and Ohio Rivers. Directly across from the mouth of the Guyandotte, in Lawrence County, Ohio, was the settlement first known as Quaker Bottom, where antislavery settlers, White and Black, helped establish the region’s Underground Railroad. Image Credit: Felix Achille de Beaupoil Saint-Aulaire, painter, whose original composition and color (painted circa 1821) have been enhanced with AI by the Center for Public History at Shawnee State University.
Safe in Canada, Monroe never forgot his wife. In 1838, he attempted to return to Guyandotte to rescue her, traveling with support from abolitionist allies, including Hiram Wilson. Though he briefly reunited with her, she did not arrive at their planned meeting point. As Wilson recorded, “he failed of accomplishing his object and was under the necessity of flying back to the North in sad loneliness, grieved and disappointed.” Later, Monroe learned she had been sold south.
His story offers rare insight into the emotional, physical, and spiritual toll of seeking freedom. Monroe’s narrative captures the reality that enslaved people were not anonymous figures in history, but individuals with identities, relationships, and unshakable resolve. His testimony, published to awaken the conscience of Northern readers, helped elevate public understanding of slavery’s horrors.
James Major Monroe’s inclusion in the National Park Service’s Network to Freedom honors his remarkable story as a vital part of Underground Railroad history. His flight from Guyandotte and return to rescue his wife reflect the courageous choices made by countless others.
This site is part of the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Tour, a public history initiative funded by an Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) POWER Grant and led by the Lawrence Economic Development Corporation and the Center for Public History at Shawnee State University.
