Arnold Gragston had escaped slavery in Kentucky. After he was free, he returned to Kentucky and helped others escape to freedom, taking them across the Ohio River to an Underground Railroad station in Ohio. Here is an excerpt from an interview he did in 1938. Well, there in Ripley [Ohio] was a man named Mr. Rankins; Mr. Rankins had a regular “station” for the slaves. He had a big lighthouse in his yard, about thirty feet high, and he kept it burning all night. It always meant freedom for [a] slave if he could get to this light. Sometimes Mr. Rankins would have twenty or thirty slaves that had run away on his place at the time…Those that wanted to stay around that part of Ohio could stay, but didn’t many of them do it, because there was too much danger that you would be walking along free one night, feel a hand over your mouth, and be back across the river and in slavery again in the morning. And nobody in the world ever got a chance to know as much misery as a slave that had escaped and been caught… So a whole lot of them went on North to other parts of Ohio, or to New York, Chicago or Canada... I don’t think there was much chance for a slave to make a living in Canada, but didn’t many of them come back. They seem like they rather starve up there in the cold than to be back in slavery…

I never got anything from a single one of the people I carried over the river to freedom. I didn’t want anything; after I had made a few trips I got to like it…I did it for four years

What was the greatest danger that people who had escaped slavery faced?