A unique combination of strong-principled religious communities, free black settlements, and tightly knit extended families fostered a widespread attitude of willful defiance that made Delaware County one of Ohio's strongest anti-slavery counties in the early nineteenth century. Among the Delaware County congregations participating in the Underground Railroad were Berlin United Presbyterian, Wesleyan Methodist, Alum Creek, Friends, and Otterbein's United Brethren. Manumitted slaves who settled the hamlet of Africa, at the intersection of present-day Polaris Parkway and Africa Road in southeastern Delaware County, and those who came to the area with early white settlers John McClure and Benjamin Bartholomew, had a fierce hatred of bondage and helped escaping slaves whenever possible. Bartholomew and his son Major Bartholomew operated a station near the Olentangy River in southern Liberty Township. Sometimes more than one member of a family participated in the Underground Railroad. Northern Delaware County resident William Cratty publicly denounced the unjust Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and vowed to continue to run slaves regardless of who knew it. Aided by his brother John and sister Peggy, Cratty claimed to have assisted 3,000 fugitives to Canada, and the bounty on his head was $3,000, dead or alive. Other local Delaware stations were Halfway House, George Gooding's tavern on State Route 23, and Seven Oaks on William Street. The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor a railroad, but a system of loosely connected safe havens where those escaping the brutal conditions of slavery were sheltered, fed, clothed, nursed, concealed, disguised, and instructed during their journey to freedom. Although this movement was one of America's greatest social, moral, and humanitarian endeavors, its details were often cloaked in secrecy to protect those involved from the retribution of civil law and slave-catchers. Ohio's history has been permanently shaped by the thousands of runaway slaves passing through or finding permanent residence in the state.