In the early 1800s, Putnam and Zanesville held opposing attitudes toward slavery, with anti-slavery New Englanders settling Putnam and pro-slavery Virginians and Kentuckians settling Zanesville. The Emancipation Society of Putnam formed in June 1831, and the Muskingum County Emancipation Society formed in Zanesville the following month, though it had only a few members. In March 1835, abolitionist speaker Theodore D. Weld came to Zanesville to lecture but was turned away by pro-slavery sympathizers; when Stone Academy in Putnam provided a room, a mob disrupted the lecture and Weld took refuge in the home of church Elder A.A. Guthrie. After seeking protection from the Sheriff and County Prosecutor, the Muskingum County Emancipation Society invited the Abolitionist Society of Ohio to hold its convention in Putnam in April 1835, but a pro-slavery mob again disrupted the proceedings. Eventually, hundreds signed petitions in favor of immediate emancipation. By 1836, the Muskingum County Anti-Slavery Society, Female Anti-Slavery Society, and New Concord Society represented anti-slavery sentiment in Muskingum County, even as tensions grew. Pro-slavery forces disrupted conventions and threatened the homes and property of Putnam residents H.C. Howell, Horace Nye, Levi Whipple, and Adam Francis. In response, the Putnam Grays formed using weapons from Harpers Ferry. Fugitive slaves traveling from Deavertown were hidden in the hollow abutment of the Third Street Muskingum River Bridge connecting Putnam and Zanesville, then sent to the homes of Alexander Brown, Robert Folet, and William Speers at New Concord, and G.W. and Edward Adams at Trinway. Meanwhile, Dr. J.M. Simpson, a noted African American abolitionist in Zanesville, wrote emancipation songs, essays, and newspaper articles that circulated nationwide. In 1837, Harriet Beecher Stowe visited her brother Reverend William Beecher, a pastor at the Putnam Presbyterian Church, where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1852.