Sylvania history is also Black history.
The town has a strong history in aiding Black people to freedom with two properties that were part of the Underground Railroad.
“My family's history goes back to 1835. The Harroun family, that’s my mom’s side,” Timothy Scovic said of his mother, Jan Harroun Scovic, a former Sylvania Schools history teacher.
“My four times great grandfather, David Harroun, came with his family from New York and settled in Sylvania and built a farm there. He and his wife, Clarissa, hid freedom seekers coming from the South to go up through to Canada in the barns there,” he said.
Assisting escaped slaves was a risky — and illegal — act but the couple opted to stand on their beliefs that everyone deserved to be free.
“He would bring people up and hide them,” he said. “He had a false bottom wagon, and he would hide them, and then put hay on top and bring them up to his barn from Maumee, and then would also bring people to the Lathrop House.”
Sylvania’s proximity to the Michigan border along with wooded rural terrain, made it an ideal location for Underground Railroad stations.
The city was one of the last stops in Ohio on fugitive slaves’ journey toward Detroit before ferrying across the Detroit River to Canada and into freedom.
Lathrop House, built in 1850 by Lucian and Larissa Lathrop, was also one of those stops.
“In the ’30s, they did an excavation of the house and when they did that, they were down in the summer kitchen and realized there was a room, essentially, that wasn't on the floor plans,” said Samantha Ayres, executive director of Heritage Sylvania.
The basement, excavated in the 1930s, revealed two ovens and a hidden room that were part of the Underground Railroad.
“They found this room and the two ovens,” Ms. Ayres said. “They had ash and whatnot in it and there was a small door in the back of one of them with a little passageway, something just wide enough for somebody to crawl through.”
The escapees were sheltered in the secret area of the fireplace in the Lathrop kitchen, accessed through the second, false brick oven.
“This was very clever the way they did it,” said Sue McHugh, a Heritage Sylvania board member.
Originally located at 5362 Main St., in 2002, the Lathrop House was moved 1,000 yards to its current location in Harroun Park.
“We could only move the floors; we could not move the basement [because] the basement crumbled,” she said. “So, in honor of the importance of the basement — because that was the most important part of the house where [runaway slaves] hid — we salvaged as much stone as we could.
“We had two huge dumpsters full of stone from the basement and worked it back into the walls,” she said. “So those are our touchstones for those who passed through, to give them that honor,” Ms. McHugh said.
Sylvania takes pride in celebrating its shared history with the African-American community. In partnership with the Starlite Theatre Group, Celebrating our Black Heritage is set to take place at 7 p.m., Wednesday at Nederhouser Community Hall, 6930 W. Sylvania Ave, Sylvania.
During the event, WGTE Public Media will present Cornerstones: The African Americans, a PBS documentary that celebrates the history of African-Americans in Toledo.
Heritage Sylvania is set to present The Harroun Story that highlights the Harroun family’s connection to the Underground Railroad.
“This year, I’m really focusing on the Harrouns,” said Tristen Turkopp, programs and events manager and presenter.
“Our main ... smoking gun for Sylvania’s connection in the Underground Railroad is through the Harrouns and their family oral history and all that really exciting stuff. And we still have them on that property,” he said of the two barns that remain on the grounds of ProMedica Flower Hospital.
“I’ll talk about the role that they played, not as being station masters, abolitionists and these really great people in Sylvania, but more as a small part in a larger picture. The anonymous story that they played the part in, we can't tell that story,” he said. “But we can tell the overall, broad aspect of that story for them while being able to mention the part that we get to play, even though we’re not the main characters.”
Mr. Scovic expressed a sense of honor of being a descendant of the Harrouns and in their family’s actions, knowing they did what was right despite the risks.
“It gives me a sense of pride that, my family, my ancestors did something that they knew was right that was considered at the time to be illegal to help these people,” he said. “But they did what they knew was right in their hearts — to help people escaping slavery.”
“I loved being able to tell my two daughters that our family was involved with that because I think it's an important part of history,” he said.
First Published February 18, 2025, 1:14 a.m.
