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From Noah W. Cheever.
Pleasant Walks and Drives About Ann Arbor.
"Drive 'H,' or the Triangle," p. 6
Just before you come to the cemetery on Lodi Plains on the right hand going south, you will notice a fine, large farm house and large barns with a farm connected consisting of several hundred acres. This farm used to belong to John Lowry, and he was a noted abolitionist and underground railroad man before the [Civil] war. He was considered by many to be at least a very eccentric character, but as history has shown since, it was the entire American nation that was more eccentric that good, old John Lowry. Mr. Lowry's house was one of the stations to the underground railroad and he assisted a great many slaves on their way to Canada. I have been told by one of the old settlers, who used to live in that neighborhood, that he had a large sign hung up in the trees in front of his house with the figure of a stalwart negro painted on each end, and on the sign was written," Liberty to the Fugitive, Captive and Oppressed Over all the Earth. Both Male and Female of all Colors." Mr. Sellick Wood, lately deceased, of our city, told me that when he was a young man he drove a number of loads of fleeing negro slaves from Mr. Lowry's home to the Detroit river and saw that they were safely carried across to Canada. It is also narrated that Mr. Lowry went down to Washington to see President Polk during his administration and warned him that the nation was in danger if the slaves were not freed. President Polk treated him kindly, smiled at his good advice, and undoubtedly perpetrated a good many jokes at the expense of the rabid Michigan abolitionist when it would have been much wiser to have paid some heed to the predictions that came true in '61.