before. The men had grown up at the same time and may have played together as children. Of the relationship, Thomas Marshall said that he had always treated young Simon as more of a companion than a slave. But by the time they were adults, few would have defined them as friends—largely because the racial and status boundaries between them had hardened, creating an unbridgeable gulf. For Simon Jr. this trip’s significance had nothing to do with work or male bonding; indeed, the trip proved to be a crucial factor in finalizing the Garners’ plans to escape. During that December trip, Thomas made the critical mistake of giving Simon Jr. some freedom to visit his wife’s relatives, Sarah and Joseph Kite. The Kites’ son, Elijah, was Peggy’s first cousin. Peggy, young Simon, and Elijah had spent some portion of their childhoods together in the same Richwood neighborhood before Elijah escaped in 1850.11
After taking leave of his young owner, Simon Jr. had inquired of several African Americans on the street where to find Joseph and Sarah Kite’s home. Most African Americans living in Cincinnati then knew who Joseph Kite was and where he lived. A man named Edward John Wilson directed young Simon to the Kite home on Sixth Street, east of Broadway, near the Bethel AME Church.12
Joseph Kite had been born into bondage on March 16, 1787, in Culpeper Court House, Virginia, where he spent the first sixteen years of his life. By the time he was thirty years old, his owner relocated to east Tennessee. Joseph eventually ended up in Boone County, Kentucky—likely owned by George Kite of Burlington, who had an enslaved workforce of seven. In Boone County, Joseph had met his wife, Sarah, who was nearly twenty years his junior. They had at least one child together, Elijah. Joseph hired his own time and earned enough money to eventually purchase his freedom in 1825. He immediately moved to Cincinnati, joining a heavy stream of African Americans who shed their slave status, legally or otherwise, and settled in Cincinnati, “Queen City of the West,” in the 1820s. Joseph Kite bore the distinction of being among only a small number of African Americans who lived in the city before the great exodus of 1829, when impending mob violence precipitated the historic exodus of half of the black population. Here, at least, jobs abounded to nearly the same extent as the racism and legal proscriptions black settlers faced. Joseph Kite worked as a peddler for many years.13 Although not considered entirely respectable work, the entrepreneurial nature of peddling worked in his favor; he soon had saved enough to purchase his wife and contracted with Wilson Harper, his son Elijah’s owner, to purchase him for $450. Elijah escaped in 1850 with his wife and their five-year-old child before the transaction was complete, though. Now a fugitive slave, Elijah settled in central Ohio for a few years and then moved to Cincinnati to be nearer to his parents. When Harper learned of Elijah’s whereabouts, he chose not to retrieve him under the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, but decided, instead, to take a gamble and sue Joseph Kite for breach of contract regarding the broken purchase agreement. Joseph Kite hired abolitionist attorney John Jolliffe to defend him, who persuasively argued that the contract was nullified because it had been drawn up in Ohio, where laws prohibited any buying and selling of slaves.14
A thirty-year resident of one of the most racist cities in antebellum America, Joseph Kite had witnessed more than his fair share of mobs and near mobs. However, he also had witnessed much good in Cincinnati, including the establishment of several of the city’s first black churches and schools, as well as the growth and stabilization of the black community. He was a pillar of that community. Kite had lived in the city long enough to see the Underground Railroad grow from a few committed free blacks who risked life and limb, to a strong interracial network stretching across several Ohio counties. Joseph and his son, Elijah, knew the inner workings of the Cincinnati Underground Railroad and who the main conductors were. Even if they were not operatives in that movement, they became de facto activists when their own kin made the decision to seek their assistance. Simon Jr. reasoned that the location of the elder Kites’ home—in a very populated section of town in the heart of the black community—was too conspicuous. Besides that, everyone knew Joseph. Elijah, however, lived in a less dense part of town in the western section of the city. Simon Jr. weighed the likelihood of capture at both homes and decided he would take his family to Elijah Kite’s residence once they crossed the Ohio River.
During his Christmas visit with Peggy’s relatives, young Simon had familiarized himself with the exact location of the home at Sixth and Mill Streets. He remained with the Kites for two days and even enjoyed a Christmas play before meeting up with Thomas Marshall to make the journey back to Richwood. That visit ensured him that they had a destination and capable support on the other side of the river and allowed him to finalize the family’s plans to flee.
Young Simon might have claimed his own freedom then, based on his stay in Ohio. State laws protected black freedom for those legally on its soil. According to the 1841 State v. Farr ruling, an enslaved person brought into Ohio willingly by his or her owner, even with the intention of simply passing through it, was considered free.15 He could have taken advantage of Thomas’s mistake of bringing him into the state and boldly claimed his freedom in a court of law and won. Joseph Kite’s abolitionist attorney, John Jolliffe, would have made certain of that. Moreover, had young Simon absconded then, he could have easily put himself into the capable hands of Underground Railroad agents—never to return to bondage or Boone County. Instead, he made the selfless, but ill-fated, decision not to pursue freedom without his family, so he returned to Kentucky with Thomas Marshall.16
The Garners waited nearly three weeks to escape after Simon Jr.’s return to Richwood. Perhaps they did not have an earlier opportunity. When the opportunity did present itself, the family coordinated the departure of Peggy and her children, Tommy, Sammy, Mary, and Cilla, who lived on the Gaines farm, named Maplewood, and Simon Jr. and his parents, Mary and Simon, who lived on James Marshall’s property. Timing was critical: they had to wait until all their owners had retired to bed on the night they planned to leave. They also had to be careful not to leave too early, lest they awaken the sleeping families with the slightest sound; yet they also had to leave enough time to travel the sixteen miles to Cincinnati, which was a day’s journey by foot under normal circumstances. The Garners knew there was no way they could have made the long journey by foot—especially with four small children and with Peggy being pregnant. Moreover, the sixteen miles between their farms in Boone County, Kentucky, and freedom in Cincinnati, Ohio, would seem like a thousand in freezing temperatures. So Simon Jr. found transportation for the family of eight: a sleigh and two old horses from the Marshall farm to pull it. He and his parents brought the horse-drawn sleigh over to Maplewood to collect Peggy and the children at 10:00 p.m. on 27 January 1856.17
The night of 27 January was exceptionally frigid—cold enough that the Ohio River was frozen. Conventional wisdom would lead one to question why the Garners left in the winter with its frigid temperatures and snowy, icy conditions; but the warmer months actually posed more obstacles to travel and risks of discovery. First, more people would have been outside in the evening in the warmer months, ensuring that someone would have seen the fugitive family along the way. Second, there would have been no way to convey a party that size and with such small children in warmer weather; they would have had to walk. The sleigh across snow made travel infinitely easier and faster than walking. Finally, in warmer months, the Ohio River, which separated the slave south from the free north, would have been a barrier to freedom, because they would have needed a boat or skiff to get across. It would have been exceedingly difficult to find someone willing to ferry them across because Kentucky laws forbade ferryman from carrying African Americans across the river without a permit from their owners.18 Moreover, the fugitives would have needed a boat big enough for eight—an unlikely prospect.
One advantage of having worked in such proximity to the river for all those years is that the Simon Jr. knew its particularities. For example, in the nineteenth century, those who knew anything about the Ohio River knew it frequently froze solid in January and February; and when it did, it became a natural bridge from the slave state of Kentucky to the free state of Ohio. This knowledge was invaluable to the fugitives and dictated when they escaped. In sum, it actually was wiser and easier to flee in the winter.
The journey took the family all night.
