Born October 28, 1798
New Garden, North Carolina
Died September 16,1877
Cincinnati, Ohio

Teacher, merchant, abolitionist, reformer,
relief worker, author

Levi Coffin was born and raised in the southern United States at a time when slavery was legal and widespread. However, the Coffin family had been practicing Quakers (religious body formally known as the Religious Society of Friends) for generations, and long opposed to slavery. Like many other people who wanted to see slavery abolished, the Coffins moved north in the 1820s, at first to Indiana and then to Ohio—where slavery was illegal. Levi Coffin quickly established profitable businesses, which allowed him to engage, at his own expense, in many antislavery activities. This included turning his home into a "station" for fugitive slaves fleeing north on the Underground Railroad. Over the years Coffin assisted an estimated three...