Wright Modlin

Modlin and his Underground Railroad partner, William Holden Jones, traveled to the Ohio River and into Kentucky to assist enslave people on their journey north.

Two years later, he helped free his neighbors, the David and Lucy Powell family, who had been captured by their former slaveholder.

Wright Modlin—born March 26, 1797, in Back Creek, Randolph County, North Carolina[3][4] — was the eldest son of Leah Copeland and Benjamin Maudlin.

The men traveled to Kentucky and Ohio to transport freedom seekers north into free soil, which meant that they could avoid a number of stops along the Underground Railroad.

They stopped at the Erastus Hussey house in Battle Creek, Michigan,[5][7] where she was disguised as an old woman with a sunbonnet that covered much of her face.

Minutes after she was in a boat bound for the Canadian shore, the slave catchers rode up and saw her in the river, but it was too late for them to capture her.

[5][7] On October 9, 1847, David and Lucy Powell, and their sons, George, James, Lewis, and Samuel, escaped from their slaveholder, John Norris of Boone County, Kentucky.

[3][17] After heading north into free states, they settled near Cassopolis, Michigan, where they operated a farm.

In the middle of the night, on September 27, 1849, Norris broke into the Powell's house with eight armed men and captured Lucy and three of her sons.

Norris and his cohorts brandished weapons in the courtroom, and it was learned that he had a writ according to an Indiana law of 1824 that helped slaveholders recapture their former slaves.

The family's neighbors, black and white citizens, came to South Bend en masse, which caused Norris to retreat and decide to drop the case.