WOMEN IN HISTORY - SARA LUCY BAGBY (LAST FUGITIVE SLAVE)

Prior to the start of the Civil War, Sara Lucy Bagby was a runaway enslaved person who was captured amid protests of abolitionists and returned to her Master. 

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DATE OF BIRTH

1833

PLACE OF BIRTH

(Probably) Richmond, Virginia

DATE OF DEATH

1906

PLACE OF DEATH

Woodland Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio

BACKGROUND

On October 3, 1860, Bagby fled from slavery in Wheeling, Virginia. Her arrest in Cleveland, Ohio on January 19, 1861, became a test case of the Fugitive Slave Act. Wheeling resident John Goshorn and his son showed proof of ownership and the federal court ordered her return to Virginia. She was one of the last slaves retuned to bondage under the law.  After the war ended, eventually Lucy married George Johnson and returned to live in Cleveland, Ohio.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery
  By R. J. M. Blackett · 2018
• The Reverse Underground Railroad in Ohio
  By David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker · 2022
• Cleveland and the Civil War
  By W. Dennis Keating
• Behind Bayonets: The Civil War in Northern Ohio
  By David Dirck Van Tassel, John Vacha
  
• 1861: The Civil War Awakening
  By Adam Goodheart
• Fear and Doubt in Cleveland
  By John Stauffer (New York Times)

SOURCES

• Representative Image Courtesy of the Library of Virginia. Unidentified woman by David Hunter Strother, Contrabands in Virginia (1862).
  
• Background: State of West Virginia Historical Marker Database description