The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, but 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. Because those involved faced retribution from civil law and slave-catchers, much of its operation remained secret, yet thousands of runaway slaves passed through Ohio or settled there permanently, shaping the state's history. In north central Ohio, people fleeing bondage faced fear, uncertainty, and danger, but the sparse population and the geography of Wyandot, Crawford, Seneca, Huron, Sandusky, Erie, and Ottawa counties helped ease some of that risk. Villages, Native American missions, and waysides stood seven to ten miles apart, about the distance a male runaway could travel in a night to reach sanctuary, and the region's flat terrain with few hills or ravines allowed runaways to move quickly toward Sandusky Bay in hopes of crossing Lake Erie into Canada. Trails into Clyde in Sandusky County followed what is now State Route 101. Local lore recounts that an escaped enslaved woman and her child were found hiding in a shed on the farm of Loomis Ames; fearful and suspicious, she at first refused to enter the house, wearing no shoes and carrying only a few possessions in a cloth bag. Loomis Ames and his wife left food for them until she finally came out, after which the family hired her as their housekeeper, and she remained in Clyde for the rest of her life. Elizabeth "Lizzie" Anderson died February 11, 1911 and is the only former slave buried in Clyde's McPherson Cemetery.