se
contaminating influences which had so long crushed them in our cities and
villages."[18] They consented on the condition that he would accompany
them and teach school. He travelled through Canada, Michigan and Indiana,
looking for a suitable location, and finally selected for settlement a
place in Mercer County, Ohio. In 1835, he made the first purchase of land
there for this purpose and before 1838 Negroes had bought there about
30,000 acres, at the earnest appeal of this benefactor, who had travelled
into almost every neighborhood of the blacks in the State, and laid before
them the benefits of a permanent home for themselves and of education for
their children.[19]

This settlement was further increased in 1858 by the manumitted slaves of
John Harper of North Carolina.[20] John Randolph of Roanoke endeavored to
establish his slaves as freemen in this county but the Germans who had
settled in that community a little ahead of them started such a
disturbance that Randolph's executor could not carry out his plan,
although he had purchased a large tract of land there.[21] It was
necessary to send these freemen to Miami County. Theodoric H. Gregg of
Dinwiddie County, Virginia, liberated his slaves in 1854 and sent them to
Ohio.[22] Nearer to the Civil War, when public opinion was proscribing the
uplift of Negroes in Kentucky, Noah Spears secured near Xenia, Greene
County, Ohio, a small parcel of land for sixteen of his former bondsmen in
1856.[23] Other freedmen found their way to this community in later years
and it became so prosperous that it was selected as the site of
Wilberforce University.

This transplantation extended into Michigan. With the help of persons
philanthropically inclined there sprang up a flourishing group of Negroes
in Detroit. Early in the nineteenth century they began to acquire property
and to provide for the education of their children. Their record was such
as to merit the encomiums of their fellow white citizens. In later years
this group in Detroit was increased by the operation of laws hostile to
free Negroes in the South in that life for this class not only became
intolerable but necessitated their expatriation. Because of the Virginia
drastic laws and especially that of 1838 prohibiting the return to that
State of such Negro students as had been accustomed to go North to attend
school, after they were denied this privilege at home, the father of
Richard DeBaptiste and Marie Louis More,