Saturday, September 06, 2008

More on the Underground Railroad house

Just said this to Bill in the comments, but will go ahead and post it on the front page as well...

...the weird thing about the house is that I almost failed to find it. After unsuccessful attempts to find a hidden geocache, I decided to shift gears towards a more attainable goal. Houses aren't usually hidden. Mostly they have addresses right on them.

And this one did, nice and big. But out of order.

When I was looking for 2828 Sunbury, I came first to 2826. Right after that was 2832. Both houses looked decidedly modern, and there was no tiny house hiding between them that I could discern. I went back to my car, and did a search for the Margaret Agler House on my phone. Thought maybe the person who listed it on the Waymarking site could have gotten the address wrong. But every reference I saw had the same address.

Weird. So I got into my car and headed toward home. A couple houses later, and there it was--out of numerical sequence.


I quickly pulled over and took a couple pictures before heading home.

Just now, as I was downloading the pictures I took with the camera on my phone, I discovered for the first time that the current owner of the house was standing there in the doorway, watching me taking pictures. That startled me a bit when I first realized--but I imagine I'm not the first person to come by and take pictures of his historic house.


Here's something from an article I found about the Underground Railroad in Ohio...

Locations throughout Franklin County can boast of their participation within the Underground Railroad.

Several buildings standing today served as stations. These buildings include Second Baptist Church, the Kelton House Museum and Gardens, Margaret Agler House and Southwick-Good Funeral Chapel, located at 3100 N. High St.

“I think the operation of the Underground Railroad is a very important part of American History,” said William Good, owner of Southwick-Good Funeral Chapel. “We’re proud to be a part of it.”
A thought occurs to me. The people who made the Underground Railroad possible were probably not by and large government officials. I'm guessing they were more like, oh, just to take a stab in the dark...community organizers.

Comments

1 comment:

  1. hello! we are current owners of the margaret agler house.. yes hard to find, numbers out of order... anyhow, we are honored to be here, and welcome pictures anytime... you can contact us for an "offical" tour, any ol time.. after all , the history of the house says we welcome all...
    Adrian and Anne Bennett, ugrr1841@aol.com... peace

    ReplyDelete