Runaway slaves used a web of routes through Crawford County, most going through Bucyrus. Present-day State Route 98 to State Route 4, laid out in 1822 from Norton in northern Delaware County through Bucyrus to Sandusky in Erie County, was so straight that no conductor was needed. Bucyrus’ notable abolitionists included its second sheriff, John Moderwell, a Presbyterian whose house could hold twenty slaves in a false attic, and John Anderson, who used an upstairs room in the American Hotel on Sandusky Avenue at Warren Street to hide runaways; a famous abolitionist speech had been given in that same room in 1839. Benjamin Warner, known as the Old Quaker, lived five and a half miles south of Bucyrus on Route 98 and gave runners a place to sleep, a hearty breakfast, and then sent them onward, often hauling trembling passengers in broad daylight under loose straw to Friends living north of Bucyrus. Along the Tiffin Road, runaways worked for a time for Fisher Quaintance on the Jackson Farm, and Jackson’s sons were often seen hauling wagonloads into Seneca County, where blacks living there provided aid and shelter. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Peter Wert moved to New Winchester, and Black Pete hid hundreds of slaves coming from Ripley, Portsmouth, Alum Creek, and Iberia on toward Sandusky and Oberlin. The Underground Railroad was a loosely connected system of safe havens where people escaping slavery were sheltered, fed, clothed, nursed, concealed, disguised, and instructed on their journey to freedom, and Ohio’s history was permanently shaped by the thousands of runaway slaves who passed through or settled in the state.