Levi Coffin (1798-1877), a Quaker abolitionist, lived in Newport (now Fountain City) with his family from 1826 to 1847 after moving from North Carolina because he and his wife, Catharine, opposed slavery. He advocated free-labor products not produced by slaves and sold them in his store. His house was built circa 1839 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. Coffin's Reminiscences (1876) documented his work in the Underground Railroad and the antislavery movement. The Underground Railroad was a widespread network of diverse people in the nineteenth century who aided slaves escaping to freedom from the southern U.S.