Leaps of faith lead an estimated 2,000 runaway slaves to the home John and Jean Rankin shared with their 13 children on the Ohio River in Ripley.

The slaves knew only to look for a house on a hill with a light in the window.

John Rankin, an American Presbyterian minister and outspoken abolitionist, often stood on that hill - Liberty Hill - and used a candle or lantern to signal slaves across the Ohio River. Jean Rankin cooked for the runaways and sewed them clothes.

An estimated 100,000 slaves sought freedom in the 1800s through a network of supporters and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad, according to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.

Watch National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Outpost dot southern Ohio.

Clermont County alone has 33 abolitionist or Underground Railroad sites.

Some of the slaves who made it to Ohio after arduous journeys from Kentucky, Tennessee and other slave states went on to Canada.

Many settled in the Dayton area and other parts of the Ohio.

Read Woman enlightens listeners about Ohio and Underground Railroad

Carl Westmoreland, the Freedom Center’s senior adviser for historic preservation, said while there were only a few Underground Railroad out-posted in the Miami Valley, it was here where many former slaves experienced liberation for the very first time and found opportunity for the first time.

“People went there to become free and that was about jobs, education and a future, ” Westmoreland said of Dayton, Xenia and Wilberforce.

He pointed to the education endeavors in Wilberfore and the stories of celebrated Dayton poet Paul Laurence Dunbar’s father Joshua Dunbar, an escaped slave and Civil War veteran, and Jordan Anderson.

Anderson’s bodacious 1865 letter to his former slave owner created an online buzz last year. In it, he rejects his former master’s request to leave Dayton and return to work for him on a Tennessee plantation.

Many of Anderson’s descendants still call Dayton home.

Road to freedom

Betty Campbell, site manger for Rankin House — a National Historic Landmark owned by the Ohio Historical Society — passage to freedom was a dangerous undertaking.

“The sad truth is that more people who tried to escape failed than were successful,” Campbell said.

Ohio was a free state, but laws did not prevent slave owner from coming here to recapture people legally considered property.

Conductors - the network of whites, freed and enslaved blacks and Native Americans - that helped runways could face fines and jail times.

There were rewards out for both Rankin and John Parker, a former slave and Ripley foundry owner who used his row boat to sneak into Kentucky under cover of night to help those escaping.

“He was very daring and very bold,” Campbell said of Parker. “By doing that he is risking everything. He is putting his life on the line.”

Back then, the river was 12 to 14 feet deep and a half as wide as it is today, Campbell said. It froze every winter.

Campbell said the Rankins and Parker were among many abolitionist in Ripley - a community founded by Revolutionary War veterans. Many did not believe one person should own another.

Rankin’s sons routinely took runaways north by foot, horseback or buggy to others conductors in Red Oak, Sardinia, and Decatur. From there they were escorted onward until they found a safe place to settle.

“It took the help of a lot of different people,” Campbell said.

Contact this columnist at arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com or Twitter.com/DDNSmartMouth