Of all the footprints left by the men and women who passed through Ashtabula County on the Underground Railroad, the impressions made by Abel Bogguess, better known as Charley Garlick, have been the longest lasting.
Indeed, Charley found Ashtabula County so hospitable and accommodating, he made it his home and is buried in Jefferson.
Garlick, who died May 2, 1912, gained the friendship of Joshua Giddings, Jefferson’s famous abolitionist U.S. rrepresentative, and eventually took up residence with the Giddings family. A photograph of Garlick, taken shortly before his death, shows him sitting in front of the Giddings law office, which still stands in Jefferson.
Having received but just a few hours of education prior to coming to Ohio, Garlick nevertheless proved himself a scholar and, after quickly advancing through the public education options in Ashtabula County, attended Oberlin College. In 1902, he published his autobiography, “Life, Including His Escape and Struggle for Liberty, of Charles A. Garlick, Born a Slave in Old Virginia, Who Secured His Freedom by Running Away from his Master’s Farm in 1843.”
Despite the lengthy title, Garlick’s book is quite short and can be found in its entirety at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill website docsouth. unc.edu/neh/garlick/garlick.html.
Unlike many of the slaves escaping from the Deep South and traveling the Underground Railroad through Ashtabula County, Garlick had a relatively short trip. He was born near Shinnston, Va., in a section of the state that became West Virginia in 1863.
The plantation on which Charley was born in February 1827 was owned by Richard Bogguess. Charley’s parents were slave laborers on the farm, and his mother had charge of the household. Charley had 11 brothers and sisters.
Bogguess was a bachelor and owned about 300 acres of land in Harrison County; his brother owned another 500 adjoining acres. Richard Bogguess, while holding Garlick’s family in the bonds of slavery, provided for their freedom in his will. And so it was that when Bogguess died in 1843, Charley and his family began to make plans to toss off the chains of slavery — until the will was contested.
Charley, his mother and five of the smaller children decided to leave the plantation rather than stick around and see how things turned out with the will. They traveled 15 miles to the hospitable home of a neighbor, who fed them and gave them bread for their journey. The next day, the fugitives hid in a dense forest “on the summit of a huge rock,” until their location was discovered by an uncle and another man.
They advised his mother and siblings to return to the plantation, for it appeared as if the will would be upheld. Charley, 16, was advised otherwise, however, and he continued his search for freedom, even though it meant parting with his family.
The fugitive used the Underground Railroad for part of his journey, much of which was made through Pennsylvania. His entry into Ashtabula County was at the West Andover station, operated by Alba Coleman. From there, he traveled by foot to the home of Anson Kirby Garlick, who opened his home to the 16-year-old.
A.K. Garlick was an abolitionist who swore that he would not cut his beard until slavery was abolished in the United States. He died in 1852, presumably with a very long beard.
From 1843 to 1846, Charley attended a district school during the winter months and worked on the Garlick farm the balance of the time. Anson Garlick addressed his guest as “Charley,” and at his benefactor’s suggestion, Abel Bogguess took the name of Charley Garlick.
His recollections suggest that the presence of a black man in the Yankee-stocked county was quite a curiosity, despite the abolitionist spirit that pervaded much of the region.
“Sometime after my arrival in this state, I attended church with Mr. A.K. Garlick, of West Andover, Ohio, and it was an event long to be remembered by me, for the preacher did not receive much attention,” Garlick wrote in a memoir. “I was the center of attraction that day, being a stranger and a colored man at that, coming to church in a strange land, a chattel liable to arrest at any time. But I stayed in Ohio and lived to see slavery put down after living in a free state for a number of years.”
Canadian refuge
In 1847 the Rev. N.T. Chamberlain of the West Andover Congregational Church made a recommendation for Charley Garlick to attend Oberlin College.
“I become one of a class of 60 or 70 colored boys in Liberty Hall as it was then called,” Garlick wrote in his memoir. Sickness fell upon Garlick, however, and he had to return to Ashtabula County and his benefactor’s Dorset farm.
It was about this time that he became acquainted with Joshua Giddings, who was making his fiery anti-slavery speeches in the U.S. House of Representatives. Charley would read aloud to Anson Garlick the speeches as published in the newspapers of the day. The words so stirred Charley, he one day saddled a horse and rode to Jefferson to shake the hand of the congressman. A friendship was forged with Giddings and his family, which, in a sense, lasts to this day — Garlick’s grave is in the Giddings plot at Oakdale Cemetery, a short distance from that of the famous congressman.
Anson Garlick died in 1852, and his home was sold. The Fugitive Slave Law placed Charley at risk if he stayed in Ohio. Garlick decided to take his chances in Canada and spent the winter chopping wood for a steamboat company at Lake St. Clair.
Charley Garlick eventually returned to Ashtabula County and found work with T.S. Edwards, who was a half brother of Anson Garlick’s widow. In 1864, Charley Garlick entered the Union Army and served in Co. G, 3rd U.S. Heavy Artillery, at Fort Pickering, Memphis, Tenn. A brief line in the March 1, 1865, Ashtabula Sentinel stated “Charley Garlick (colored) who was drafted and paid his commutation has gone to the war, wishing to be in at the death of his old master, slavery.”
Fire and freedom
Garlick returned to Ashtabula County but found the place changed by the war. Edwards had sold the old farm in Dorset and was engaged in the grocery business in Ashtabula. He took in Garlick, who stayed there until 1870, when the Giddings family took him into their home at the corner of Chestnut and Walnut streets, Jefferson.
Garlick’s residence was the rear, upper chamber of the house. Sometime around 1874, the house caught on fire, causing quite a commotion in the town. A.L. Talcott, an attorney who was a high school student in Jefferson when the fire occurred, recalled in a letter to the editor of the Gazette that all of the Giddings family members escaped the fire, but Garlick was “so sound asleep he did not hear the racket until the fire and smoke got into that part of the house, and he was for a time what seemed to him to be real danger.”
As neighbors frantically tried to save furniture and whatever else could be carried from the doomed house, Garlick raised his bedroom window and tried to attract their attention. Fire had isolated his bedroom from the staircase, leaving one option for escape: jumping.
“He had splendid lungs and soon had a small congregation under his window, yelling to him: ‘Don’t jump. We’ll get a ladder.’ But he did not want to wait for a ladder and asked someone to fetch a fence rail , which was done and the fence rail set up against the side of the house under his window,” wrote Talcott.
“We thought we got his idea, all right, and he wanted to put his feet out of the window and let himself down as he could slide down the rail, but Charley was in great haste and as soon as the fence rail was set up against the house, he shot out through the window head first and, grabbing the rail, slid down to the ground and struck his head, though that didn’t hurt him any, I feel quite sure. At any rate, he was able to play his violin for many years after that.”
Seen it all
Joshua A. Giddings, the famous lawyer and U.S. representative, died in 1864, and Garlick had made his home with his son, J.A. Giddings, and his family. J.A. rebuilt on the lot, a fine, large brick home that would later fall to “progress.” There is today but a vacant lot there.
Garlick lost all his possessions in that fire. He continued to live with the Giddings family after they rebuilt, but it is unclear if he resided in their house or the former law office.
“... and these lines are written in the little office so long occupied by that staunch friend of the colored man, Hon.. Joshua R. Giddings,” Garlick wrote in 1912, a few weeks before his death.
An obituary that appeared in the Gazette noted that “Charley and his old violin were well known to every resident of Jefferson. The many men who have come from that place had a warm spot in their heart for Charley.”
Garlick’s mother, who died in Pennsylvania, lived to be 103 years old. Of the five siblings Garlick parted with on the summit of that rock, he would see only three of them again. His brothers, Oscar D. and Richard, retained the Bogguess surname and settled in Youngstown.
“Of myself,” Garlick wrote, “I can only express gratitude that I have been allowed to live to see the downfall of the accursed institution of human slavery in our glorious country and to see the countrymen in national affairs, to see them given the advantages of schools and colleges and become thus fitted for greater usefulness to themselves and their race.”
