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 risked punishment under civil law and from slave catchers, much of its work was kept secret. Ohio was permanently shaped by the thousands of runaway slaves who passed through or settled there. In 1838 in Marion County, a black man known as Bill Anderson or Bill Mitchell fled bondage in a Virginia salt works and settled near Marion, but he was soon recognized. A mail dispatch to Virginia led the alleged slaveholder to demand his incarceration by local authorities. Forty days after his capture, six strangers arrived in Marion claiming ownership and carrying bowie knives, pistols, and clubs. At trial, one man identified as Smith presented notes of sale showing that three of them had purchased Bill at different times, with John Smith as the most recent buyer. After lengthy preamble, Judge Ozies Bowen, a local Underground Railroad stationmaster, ruled for the prisoner on the grounds that Mr. Smith and John Smith might be different persons. The ruling touched off pandemonium as the Virginians refused to accept the verdict, drew weapons, and fought over Bill while clubs and pistols struck bodies and several Quakers fought back. A local black man helped Bill escape, and Quakers escorted them to the Rueben Benedict home near Marengo in Morrow County. After a long and anxious night, Bill went north to Oberlin and then to freedom in Canada.