Levi Coffin was a Quaker who opposed slavery. He has been called the President of the Underground Railroad. In his biography, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin (Cincinnati, 1876), he describes some incidents in his youth that were significant in forming his anti-slavery belief. One of these involved Rev. David Caldwell. During his younger years he lived about a mile and half from Rev. David Caldwell’s farm in Greensboro, NC. He recalls that the Rev. Caldwell decided to make a present of a slave Ede (owned by a third person) to his son, Rev. Samuel Caldwell, a Presbyterian minister, who resided about 100 miles away, in Charlotte. The change in ownership meant that Ede would be forced to leave her husband (owned by yet another master) and four children, the youngest, a baby a few months old. Upon learning of the impending separation, Ede ran away and hid in the woods, taking her baby with her. After provisions ran out within a few days, she made her way to the house where Levi Coffin resided. Faced with penalty of death for harboring a slave, Levi Coffin returned her to her master, but pleaded for leniency. The master relented. Shortly afterwards, the Underground railroad was established.

Coffin reports that the thickets between Caldwell’s farm and that of Coffin’s father thereafter served as a “good hiding place for fugitive slaves. Caldwell’s slaves helped the fugitives with supplies while they remained hidden in the woods.

In 1821 Levi decided to teach slaves to read. “We knew that the Caldwell family–the old doctor, and two or three of his sons who lived on their own plantations—and a few other slaveholders, were lenient and would have no objection to our teaching their slaves to read the Bible.” Their desired permission was obtained. He quotes a prayer at one of these Bible classes from Uncle Frank, one of Thomas Caldwell’s slaves: “Oh, Lord, teach us to be good sarvents, and touch our massas’ hearts and make’em tender, so dey will not lay de whips to our bare backs, and you, great Massa, shall have all de glory and praise. Amen.” The Bible teaching was discontinued when other slaveowners objected, and “threatened to put the law in force against us.”

Coffin states: “Strange as it may seem to us now, there were then no Sabbath schools in that part of the country, either among Friends or other religious denominations.”

In actuality, Rev. Samuel Craighead did teach Bible reading in Sugaw Creek Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, NC, and other nearby churches, to slaves.