During the 1800s, over one hundred thousand enslaved fugitives sought freedom through the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad is the symbolic term given to the routes enslaved Black Americans took to gain their freedom as they traveled, often as far as Canada and Mexico. Free Blacks, Whites, Native Americans and former slaves acted as conductors by aiding fugitive slaves to their freedom. This 19th century freedom movement challenged the way Americans viewed slavery and freedom. Oberlin, Ohio was one of the major stopping points for southern slaves seeking freedom in Canada. Throughout the city there are points of interest that will help to retrace that road to freedom. While looking for the cache, I will only take you near to 2 of these points.
The coordinates posted at the top of the page start you at a symbol of the Underground Railroad. They are railroad tracks symbolically plunging underground. There is a plaque there that will tell you what Class of the college, provided the funding for the sculpture. Add the last 2 digits of that year to N41 17.122 W82 13.9XX to find your next stop.
You should now be standing in front of the Underground Railroad Monument, erected in 1993, to pay tribute to all the slaves who passed through or lived in Oberlin. The poem is one read, at the funeral of Lee Howard Dobbins, a four year old fugitive slave who died in Oberlin on his way to freedom in Canada. He is memorialized on the bottom of the monument. Although he is buried at Westwood Cemetery, his gravesite is unknown. Take the last 2 digits of the year he died and subtract 37, and add those numbers to N41 17.019 W82 14.0XX this will take you to the cache.
The cache is a camo peanutbutter jar. The founders of Oberlin originally started the town’s cemetery in another location but by 1861 with the Civil War fallen soldiers were filling up the small 2 acre lot. The land for Westwood Cemetery was cleared by the town’s residents and the first burial was in August, 1863. Eventfully all the bodies from the original cemetery were move here by the end of the year. Westwood is filled with graves from Civil War Solders and fugitive slaves, sometimes buried next to each other along with other historical figures from throughout northern Ohio. The following link is will take you to walking tour of the graves and trees in this historic cemetery. http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/westwood/westwood.pdf