Published: October 12, 2008 04:07 pm      

New book explores history of Underground Railroad

HUNTINGTON — When Don Daniel McMillian took a look into the past at the Civil War, he kept having to cross that shallow river you could once wade across.

McMillian traipses back and forth across the now mighty Ohio River in his new book, “The Underground Railroad Lawrence County, Ohio and Cabell County, Virginia,” ($24.99, Book Surge) taking a look at the people, the places, the history and architecture on both sides of the river.

A Huntington native whose family has been in the Virginia region since the 1650s, McMillian provides an overview of the people and houses involved in the network to freedom in our region.

McMillian, who has written three other books including, “On the Threshold of Splendor: Historical Homes and Families of Cabell County,” said the book naturally evolved as he was doing his research for “On the Threshold of Splendor.”

“I thumbed through thousands of pages of archival records and made notes of dates and events and information about the Civil War,” McMillian said. “I just kept finding nuggets about the Underground Railroad.”

McMillian said the volume of notes about the subject just kept growing over several years of research.

For McMillian, study of the time period around the Civil War is personal, as he has family from both sides of the Ohio River. His mother was from Rome in Lawrence County, and he had family on both sides of the border.

“The book was difficult for me because one of my great-grandfathers on my mother’s side fought for the Union and one of my great-grandfather’s on my dad’s side, fought for the Confederacy,” McMillian said.

McMillian said growing up he heard lots of stories about the Civil War and about slaves and the Underground Railroad, and always wondered what was true.

“I heard so many guesses and was tired of hearing about tunnels that don’t exist,” McMillian said. “Once I start, I can’t stop until I find out as much truth as possible. I love history, so it’s like putting together jigsaw puzzles.”

Not unlike “Threshold of Splendor,” McMillian uses a lot of photos (157) and a modest amount of text to introduce readers to the many families and groups that helped fugitive slaves escape across the Ohio River in such towns as Ripley, Burlington, Getaway and South Point.

McMillian said he found a ton of amazing facts in researching the book, whose seven chapters take readers from the settling of the region and the roots of slavery in the region, up through profiles of the important people and groups on both sides of the Ohio River that played a role in the Civil War, and in the Underground Railroad.

One thing is that Ohio’s Statehouse was built in part by Confederate soldiers who had been imprisoned in Ohio.

“I found that disturbing,” McMillian said. “Is that not a form of slavery?”

Prison labor from the Ohio Penitentiary was used to construct the foundation and the ground floors on the Statehouse, which took 22 years to construct.

McMillian, who works, researches and edits his own work, said he hopes the book inspires others to appreciate the history that is around them.

“I studied architecture and design and when I came back to Huntington one of the things I found most difficult was negative the attitudes were toward our own county,” McMillian said. “There was so much architecture and history here I was just swept away.”