[3] Cass County—particularly Calvin, Penn, and Porter townships—was settled by Quakers from Ohio and Indiana and free blacks beginning in 1829.

They became a network of people who provided freedom seekers with food, shelter, and transportation along the Underground Railroad to sites in Canada, where slavery was illegal.

He made trips down to the Ohio River and into Kentucky to bring people escaping slavery directly north into Michigan.

Angry slaveholders banded together for the Kentucky raid on Cass County of 1847 to recover former slaves.

[6] He was also a central figure in The South Bend Fugitive Slave Case of 1849.