Portsmouth, Ohio’s Steamboat Landing: A Gateway to Freedom
With the opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal in the early 1830s, Portsmouth, Ohio’s Steamboat Landing emerged as an important Underground Railroad destination and escape site in the Upper Ohio Valley. Freedom seekers escaping from western Kentucky, western Tennessee, and as far away as Mississippi, traveled by steamboat up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Portsmouth, which served as an intermodal transportation hub, allowing freedom seekers to then travel by stagecoach and wagon to Columbus and points further north or by canal boat to Cleveland on Lake Erie.
Portsmouth would also attract others escaping from the southeastern United States, men and women who made their way over land from the Carolinas and Virginia, crossing the Appalachian Mountains before arriving on the banks of the Ohio River.
Additionally, the iron furnaces of Greenup and Boyd counties in eastern Kentucky, which relied heavily upon slave labor, became an additional source of freedom seekers. Taken together, documented stories of escape reveal Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing as a Gateway to Freedom, one that linked Appalachian and Ohio River escape routes to a broader international Underground Railroad network extending to Canada.
A Gateway to Canada
The experiences of Lewis Clarke, Henry Goings, and Henry Bibb demonstrate how Portsmouth functioned as both a destination and a gateway. All three men, who would go on to be active in the abolition movement, arrived by steamboat and, after brief stays in the city, continued their journeys northward to Canada.
Lewis Clarke (c1812-1897) arrived in Portsmouth by steamboat in 1841, found work at the American Hotel, and eventually continued his journey to Canada, where he founded the Voice of the Fugitive, the first Black newspaper published in Canada. Credit: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.
The Escape of Lewis Clarke in 1841
In August 1841, after first crossing the Ohio River and reaching Cincinnati, Lewis Clarke received advice from another former slave who urged him to “go up the river, to Portsmouth, then take the canal for Cleveland, and cross over to Canada.” Clarke followed this suggestion, “took passage for Portsmouth,” and soon found himself “on the canal-boat, headed for Cleveland.”
Clarke’s memoir, entitled Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, was first published in 1846. Here, Clarke documents the existence within Cincinnati’s Black community of a known escape route that began at Portsmouth and ran north along the Ohio and Erie Canal to Cleveland, allowing freedom seekers to cross Lake Erie to free Black settlements in western Ontario.
The Escape of Henry Goings in 1839
In the early spring of 1839, Henry Goings escaped from slavery in Alabama. Disguised “in the habiliments of a sailor,” he boarded the steamer Lexington and traveled up the Ohio River, stopping in Louisville and Cincinnati before continuing to Portsmouth. He secured employment in a Portsmouth barber shop, but “made no permanent engagement, as I was anxious to get on to Cleveland.”
Through a chance encounter with the captain of a Portsmouth and Cleveland canal boat, Goings obtained both transportation and employment. Once in Cleveland, Goings was able to cross Lake Erie and reach Ontario. There, in 1855, in the town of Gault (now Cambridge), Ontario, he was interviewed by Benjamin Drew for his abolitionist treatise, A North-Side View of Slavery. Later, in 1869, Goings would publish his full narrative, Rambles of a Runaway from Southern Slavery.
Henry Bibb (1815-1854) arrived in Portsmouth by steamboat in 1841, found work at the American Hotel, and eventually continued his journey to Canada, where he founded the Voice of the Fugitive, the first Black newspaper published in Canada. Credit: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.
The Escape of Henry Bibb in 1841
Henry Bibb, remembered today as the editor and publisher of Voice of the Fugitive, the first Black newspaper in the history of Canada, is another noted freedom seeker who escaped with the assistance of steamboat travel that brought him to Portsmouth, Ohio.
Like Lewis Clarke and Henry Goings, Bibb’s account of his escape from slavery documents his arrival and time in Portsmouth. His experience reveals Portsmouth’s historical role as a Gateway to Freedom, a place where escape was possible, but where safety was never guaranteed.
“When the steamboat arrived at Portsmouth, Ohio,” Bibb would later recall, “I took off my trunk with the intention of going to Canada.” Short of money, Bibb found work at the American Hotel on Front Street as a boot-black and steward. There, one day in 1841, he unexpectedly encountered one of his former enslavers who had recently sold him, presumably to cover his gambling debts.
“My first thought was that he was after me,” Bibb wrote. “I then made up my mind to leave Portsmouth; its location being right on the border of a slave State.” For Bibb and others, Portsmouth functioned as a gateway, providing access to short-term employment, guidance, and multiple modes of transportation, but it was not a place where freedom could be secured.
The experiences of Clarke, Goings, and Bibb reveal Portsmouth’s importance as a gateway rather than a final destination. Freedom seekers found work, assistance, and transportation in the city, but most sought to place as much distance as possible between themselves and the slave states by continuing toward Canada.
The Escapes of Ben, Joshua, and Jane at Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing
In addition to autobiographical narratives, such as those by Clark, Goings, and Bibb, variousother records document the escape of many lesser known and unidentified freedom seekers, who also traveled routes that led them to Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing.
The story of a freedom seeker known only as Ben provides an example. Following his escape aboard the steamer Fashion No. 2 in January 1852, his enslaver placed a runaway advertisement in the Portsmouth Inquirer, reporting that Ben had boarded the steamer at Catlettsburg, Kentucky, and “went to Portsmouth, O., where he was last seen.” Ben had initially escaped from his enslaver near Ft. Gay, Wayne County, (West) Virginia.
Another case involved a skilled carpenter named Joshua. On 4 September 1855, Captain William McClain brought Joshua to Portsmouth aboard the steamer Bostona after Joshua had secured passage at Vanceburg, Kentucky, while passing as a free man. Joshua’s last name has been lost to history, but court records generated by his escape preserve an important fact: after arriving at Portsmouth, he disappeared from the historical record and made his way to an anonymous life of freedom. When his enslaver, Eliza Esham found that her slave property could not be recovered, she sued McClain and won a $1,500 judgment for the loss of her slave, Joshua.
The most dramatic account concerns a young woman known only as Jane. Escaping from Virginia, she received assistance from African American crew members aboard the steamer Diana. Thomas Brown, the vessel’s steward and a documented Black Underground Railroad conductor from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, quietly asked Jane, “Are you a slave?” When she replied that she was, Brown then asked, “Do you wish to be free?” “O, yes I do,” came the earnest response.
When the Diana reached Portsmouth, with the help of Thomas Brown and the boat’s Black stewardess, Jane was disguised as an elderly woman and secretly escorted ashore by Brown.
“I passed the ‘old woman’ from the Diana to another boat in port,” explained Brown. From the Steamboat Landing, “I almost dragged her up the steep bank, placed her in the hands of friends always on the lookout for the unfortunate. Several months later I learned that within a few hours from the time she left the boat, she was on her way to Canada, via the ‘Underground Railway.’”
Josiah Henson (1789-1883), who Harriet Beecher Stowe credited with inspiring her character of “Uncle Tom,” boarded a steamboat here in 1833 during one of his rescue missions back into Kentucky to help others escape from slavery. Credit: Ross J. Kelbaugh Collection, National Gallery of Art,
The Gateway in Reverse: Josiah Henson’s Rescue Mission
The Gateway to Freedom at Portsmouth swung both ways. Josiah Henson, whose life inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s character “Uncle Tom,” had established a free Black settlement in eastern Ontario. Yet he would repeatedly return south to assist others in their escapes from slavery.
In November 1833, during one such rescue mission, Henson reached Portsmouth on foot and waited for a steamboat bound for Maysville, Kentucky. He later recalled that the city was “frequented by a number of Kentuckians, who were quite ready to suspect a colored man.” To avoid detection, Henson disguised himself, wrapped his face in cloth, and pretended to suffer from severe tooth pain.
Even with this strategy, he attracted suspicion and was questioned repeatedly about “who I was, where I was going, and to whom I belonged.” Nevertheless, he maintained his disguise and successfully boarded the steamboat for Kentucky. Henson’s experience demonstrates that Portsmouth functioned not only as a gateway northward but also as a staging point for secret rescue missions and extraction efforts back into slave states.
The Piketon 59 and the Civil War
On April 1, 1862, during the American Civil War, one of the largest group escapes of freedom seekers in Kentucky’s history reached Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing. At the conclusion of future President, Colonel James A. Garfield’s Sandy Valley Campaign, fifty-nine formerly enslaved men, women, and children fled their enslavers. They secured their passage to freedom aboard the steamer Piketon, owned by Portsmouth grain merchant and Underground Railroad conductor Captain Milton Kennedy.
Captain Milton Kennedy (1819–1901) was a Portsmouth grain merchant, Ohio River steamboat captain, abolitionist, and Underground Railroad conductor. In 1862, his steamer Piketon carried fifty-five formerly enslaved men, women, and children to Portsmouth after their escape during the Civil War’s Big Sandy Valley Campaign. Credit: Henry A. Lorberg Scrapbook, Local History Department, Scioto County Public Library.
The Portsmouth Times reported: “The steamer Piketon, Captain Kennedy, engaged in the Government service, brought down from Western Virginia, on Tuesday last, fifty-five negroes, represented to be free. …. They were immediately sent by railroad farther into the State.” The freedom seekers were placed on board the Scioto and Hocking Railroad and transported some thirty-five miles to the northeast to Jackson County, Ohio. According to additional reporting in the Portsmouth Times: “The band of negroes which passed through this city last week on their way to Jackson County, having been driven away from there, have taken their flight toward Canada.”
While it is unclear if any of the original Piketon 59 made their way to Canada, the historical record documents that many stayed in the region after disembarking in Jackson County. Manysettled in neighboring Pike County, in what was a free Black community known as East Jackson. Today, descendants of the Piketon 59 can still be located in the hills of northeast Pike County, as well as in Portsmouth, Ohio.
A Gateway to Freedom
The trajectories of the freedom seekers who passed through Portsmouth demonstrate that their escapes were part of a much larger movement of sustained resistance to slavery on an international scale. Through the city’s steamboat landing, freedom seekers would eventually reach Canada, where they disappeared into freedom, while helping build the free Black communities of Canada that became lasting havens for others fleeing bondage. Josiah Henson, Lewis Clark, Henry Bibb, and Henry Goings would also share their accounts of passing through Portsmouth in their published memoirs, which helped fuel the growth of the abolition movement. Together, these stories establish Portsmouth’s Steamboat Landing as an important Gateway to Freedom, one that linked Appalachian and Ohio River escape routes to a broader Underground Railroad network extending to Canada.
