1853 Boone County KY Stampede

On Saturday night, April 2, 1853, 25 enslaved people escaped from Boone county, Kentucky. Reports suggest they may have travelled north, through Cincinnati to Preble county, Ohio, where Underground Railroad activists reported that "twenty-four Fugitives passed through." This account may have been referencing the same group of freedom seekers. If so, the Boone County escapees managed to elude slave catchers, who were "within fifteen feet of them, and yet failed to get them, owing to the timely attention of a friend of the slave who secreted them." Later in May, further reports from Detroit papers indicated a group of around 30 Kentucky freedom seekers passed through that city en route for Canada.