From under the floorboards of a large, white building in Maysville, Kentucky, African American slaves making the arduous, secret escape from the south would hide one final time. Freedom, across the Ohio River to the north, was in clear sight.
The Underground Railroad term was thought to have first been coined in Maysville, when Tice Davids, a slave, escaped a life of cruelty in 1831 by swimming across the roiling Ohio River. For tens of thousands of people such as Davids, the river was the final barrier to freedom, separating the free state Ohio from slavery in the south.
