Roger Hooker Leavitt

The escaped slave Basil Dorsey lived in Leavitt's home for nearly six years until eventually settling in Florence, Massachusetts.

Joshua later became the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator, was a prime force behind the defense of the crew of the Amistad, a slave ship that had sustained a mutiny aboard, and in 1833 founded the New York Anti-Slavery Society.

Violence by pro-slavery factions marred the gathering, but the fracas enabled the three brothers to fully convert their parents to the abolitionist cause.

By that time, apparently, Col. Hooker's home had become known to anti-slavery zealots as a safe place to shelter escaped slaves.

"It was always understood that a resting place was at Mr. [Hosea] Blake's and Mr. Leavitt's," a resident recounted years later of the men operating the local Underground Railroad.

As late as 1895, nearly thirty years after the Civil War, a Franklin County woman called Leavitt "a whole souled Abolitionist & [someone who] did all he could to help the slaves to freedom."

In its obituary, The New York Times noted Leavitt's abolitionist activities and called him "one of the prominent and leading citizens of Franklin County.