Two enslaved men and a woman board a train and escaped from south of West Liberty, Kentucky. But on the train a former local judge, Don Piatt, recognized the three freedom seekers, who belonged to a relative. Piatt persuaded the three freedom seekers to disembark with him at West Liberty, with promises that he would pay them for their labor. Antislavery activists, however, doubted the sincerity of Piatt's motives and freed the three freedom seekers through a writ of habeas corpus. The three immediately "started on their way to Canada." When the slaveholders finally caught wind of the escape, a Quaker sympathetic to the freedom seekers' diverted their enslavers long enough to enable their escape.
"Fugitive Slave Case in one Chapter," Ravenna (OH) Ohio Star, December 1, 1852, p. 3