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On Tuesday night, August 24, 1852, seven heavily-manacled men escaped from the infamous Arterburn slave pen in Louisville, Kentucky. The Louisville Courier described it as a "stampede," and suspected the seven freedom seekers were "lying out" in cornfields near the city, a common resistance tactic adopted by enslaved southerners. Their ultimate fate is unknown. 

On Tuesday night, September 7, 1852, eight enslaved people--five men, a woman, and two children--escaped from Mason county, Kentucky apparently "in concert," in what the Maysville Eagle termed a "stampede." Although the fate of the eight freedom seekers is unknown, the group escape prompted calls for slaveholders to ramp up their patrols. 

On Sunday night, September 26, 1852, a group of 31 freedom seekers escaped from Augusta and Dover, Kentucky. Slaveholders pursued the freedom seekers to Ripley, Ohio, where they found some of the escapees' belongings and managed to recapture three. But African American residents of Ripley threatened to resist the slaveholders' efforts with violence if necessary, and local authorities refused to cooperate with the white Kentuckians. Despite slaveholders' repeated efforts, it appears most of the 31 freedom seekers managed to successfully elude their enslavers. 

On Wednesday, October 20, 1852, a group of 10 freedom seekers--six men and four women--escaped from "an interior county of Kentucky" and crossed the Ohio river below Louisville. According to one account, two of the men had heard rumors that they were to be sold to Louisiana, and set off with their wives in order to keep their families intact. Reports indicated that they eluded re-enslavement and successfully gained their freedom. 

On Sunday, October 31, 1852, approximately 25 enslaved people escaped from Bourbon county, Kentucky on horseback. Some of the freedom seekers were recaptured near Blue Licks, Kentucky, while others were believed to have crossed the Ohio river. Several Kentucky slave catchers visited Cincinnati days later, but apparently without success. The fate of the remainder of the freedom seekers is unknown. 

Two enslaved men and a woman escaped from Boone County, Kentucky in November 1852. With assistance from white abolitionist Levi Coffin in Cincinnati, the three freedom seekers boarded a train. Aboard the train, their slaveholder's nephew, Donn Piatt, recognized the three freedom seekers and persuaded them to disembark with him at West Liberty, Ohio. Piatt promised to steady work and vowed to purchase their freedom. Free Blacks nearby, however, rightly doubted Piatt's motives. Free Blacks and their white allies secured a writ of habeas corpus to compel Donn Piatt and his father, Benjamin McCullough Piatt, to bring the freedom seekers to a court hearing in nearby Bellefontaine. After a local jduge released the freedom seekers, a Black barber named Wililam Johnson drove the freedom seekers to nearby Northwood. There, students and faculty at Geneva College sheltered the freedom seekers for two weeks, before helping guide them to Sandusky, Ohio. The freedom seekers boarded Capt. Sylvester Atwood's steamer the Arrow, and safely landed in Fort Malden near Amherstburg, Canada West.