GDG- Underground Railroad Locations

[128thpa at comcast.net]

No, this is not necessarily true.  There were those who would ALWAYS help - but they wouldn't purposedly risk getting caught for a variety of reasons - yes, they could be arrested and lose their possessions if caught helping runaways - however, they would also risk the slave being taken back into slavery and also risk the house not be available for other runaways.  Levi and Catherine Coffin (Indiana) made changes to their house specifically for helping escaping slaves.  The UGRR was informal enough to foil slave catchers, but there were known safe houses. And in other cases, slaves had to rely on their own resources.   In some cases, slave catchers knew of "safe houses", but somehow the owners managed to fool the catchers.  William Still writes of some of these escapes in his book, "The Underground Railroad".  

<< it 
sounds like there was not really a set of houses that you could say:  this was 
always a safe house, but rather, if the person was able to help the slave, they 
did, but there was no guarantee they would.  If the slave catchers were close, 
they woudlnt' risk their house, their freedom, their possessions to help the 
slave, but if they could, they would do what they could?  >>