Levi coffin cause of death

Levi Coffin Jr. October 28, — September 16, was an American Quaker , Republican, abolitionist , farmer, businessman and humanitarian. An active leader of the Underground Railroad in Indiana and Ohio , some unofficially called Coffin the "President of the Underground Railroad", estimating that three thousand fugitive slaves passed through his care.

Born near what became Greensboro , North Carolina , Coffin was exposed to and came to oppose slavery as a child. His family immigrated to Indiana in , avoiding slaveholders' increasing persecution of Quakers , whose faith did not permit them to own slaves and who assisted freedom seekers. He farmed, as well as became a local merchant and business leader.

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Coffin became a major investor in and director of the local Richmond branch of the Second State Bank of Indiana in the s, Richmond being the Wayne County seat. His financial position at the bank and standing in the community also helped supply food, clothing and transportation for Underground Railroad operations in the region.

At the urging of friends in the anti-slavery movement, Coffin moved southward to the important Ohio River port city of Cincinnati in , where he ran a warehouse that sold only free-labor goods. Despite making considerable progress with the business, the free-labor venture proved unprofitable; Coffin abandoned the enterprise after a decade.

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Meanwhile, during this through period, Coffin assisted hundreds of runaway slaves, often by lodging them in his Ohio home across the river from Kentucky and not far downriver from Virginia. Kentucky and Virginia remained slave states until slavery was abolished after the American Civil War. In his final decade, Coffin traveled around the Midwest , as well as overseas to France and Great Britain , where he helped form aid societies to provide food, clothing, funds and education to former slaves.

Coffin retired from public life in the s, and wrote an autobiography, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin , published in , a year before his death. As Coffin later explained in his autobiography, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin , he inherited his anti-slavery views from his parent and grandparents, who had never owned slaves.