Lewis Sheridan Leary

Lewis Sheridan Leary was born in this day in 1835 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Leary's father was a free born African-American harnessmaker. Leary moved to Oberlin, Ohio in 1857 and married Mary Sampson Patterson (grandmother of famed poet Langston Hughes). Leary took part in the Oberlin-Wellington rescue in which a group of abolitionists from Oberlin freed slavery escapee John Price from the custody of a U.S. Marshall who was attempting to return him to slavery. Leary and another Black man named John Anthony Copeland Jr. who was involved in this rescue went on to join John Brown in the raid on Harper's Ferry. Leary would die of his wounds sustained during the raid. He is remembered as an important abolitionist for his work on the underground railroad, in this important rescue which led not only to John Price's freedom but to raising the national awareness and debate over slavery, as well as for his involvement in the daring raid on Harper's Ferry.