Local History · From Brunswick
The abolitionist on the township line, and the marker that finally came home
Hiram Miller, 55 years on the Underground Railroad, and the 1931 memorial that traveled less than a mile to reach Brunswick's Heritage Farm.
Hiram Barlow Miller moved his family from New York to Ohio in 1833 and built a farm at the corner of what is now West 130th Street and Laurel Road, on the line between Hinckley and Brunswick Hills. From that year until his death in 1888, his house, his barn, and his mill were an Underground Railroad station.1
His neighbors did not appreciate what he was doing. He was pelted with rotten eggs. He was forced onto a fence rail and paraded out of town. He was assaulted, thrown to the ground, and injured. On one Sunday he brought a Black friend to church with him. The congregation ejected him mid-sermon.2 He kept operating the station anyway. He also employed freed Black workers on the farm and sang antislavery songs in church services when he was still allowed to attend them.
How many people he helped is not settled. The 1931 memorial to him says "hundreds." Local oral tradition passed down through the twentieth century puts it in the thousands. The high end is around three thousand. Anyone who tells you a firm number is telling you more than the record can support.3
What he did with the people who came to him is also not settled. The 1931 marker says he "shipped them to Canada in drygoods boxes." Later accounts drawn from the Siebert Collection at the Ohio History Connection describe hiding them in his barn or mill, then moving them north in wagons under piles of hay, dropping them at Dover Bay (now Bay Village) for boats to Canada.4 Both accounts trace back to community memory. The drygoods-box version is the older recorded one. It has not been independently corroborated in period documents.
Miller lived and farmed in Hinckley Township, not Brunswick proper. But he is buried in Town Line Cemetery on the west side of West 130th, in Brunswick Hills. And when the old Miller house was finally torn down in 2017, the 1931 memorial did not go with it. It was moved, less than a mile south, to Heritage Farm in Brunswick, where it stands today at 4613 Laurel Road.5
The plaque was bolted into the ground in 1931 by the Hiram B. Miller Association and the Nathan Perry Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Both groups had been formed specifically to make sure the story did not get lost. Sixty-five years after Emancipation, they were already worried that it might.
The house is gone. The barn is gone. The mill is gone. The marker is at Heritage Farm. Hiram Miller is buried a quarter mile north of where he lived.
Footnotes
- 1833 arrival, farm at West 130th and Laurel Road. Documented in the Ohio Memory Wilbur H. Siebert Collection (the original manuscript source for northeast Ohio Underground Railroad records), and summarized in the 2025 Found in Ohio account of Miller's life. Miller's birthplace, birth date (April 3, 1807 in Ontario County, New York), and death (1888) are recorded on his Find a Grave memorial and confirmed by the Town Line Cemetery burial index.
- Eggs, rail-riding, assault, and ejection from church. All four incidents are described in the Found in Ohio account, which draws on the Siebert Collection and the Weymouth Preservation Society archives. The specific mid-sermon ejection after Miller brought a Black friend to worship is cited to the Weymouth records.
- Range of "hundreds" to "thousands" of freedom seekers helped. The 1931 memorial inscription (visible on the plaque photograph in the Historical Marker Database) says "hundreds." Oral tradition captured by local historians reaches roughly three thousand. The higher figure is not documentable in period sources.
- Drygoods-boxes versus wagon-under-hay accounts. The drygoods claim is the 1931 marker text itself, which is Brunswick's earliest formal record of Miller's method. The later wagon account is drawn from the Siebert Collection manuscripts. Both trace back to secondhand community memory, not to a period document written by Miller himself.
- 2017 relocation of the memorial to Heritage Farm. Documented on the Historical Marker Database entry for the marker at its current location, 4613 Laurel Road, Brunswick. Heritage Farm is operated by the Brunswick Area Historical Society.
Sources
- Wilbur H. Siebert Underground Railroad Collection, Ohio Memory / Ohio History Connection (primary manuscript source, 5,000+ items). ohiomemory.ohiohistory.org
- Found in Ohio, “Often Harassed Hinckley Abolitionist Hiram Miller,” April 29, 2025 (compiles Siebert Collection, Find a Grave, Hinckley Ohio Historical Society, and Weymouth Preservation Society archives). foundinohio.com
- Historical Marker Database, “Historic Underground Railroad Station” marker page (Heritage Farm, Brunswick). hmdb.org/m.asp?m=136815
- Historical Marker Database, “Heritage Farm” marker page. hmdb.org/m.asp?m=136814
- Find a Grave memorial #39202564, Hiram Barlow Miller. findagrave.com
- MedinaCountyGraves.com, Town Line Cemetery burial index. medinacountygraves.com
- Brunswick Area Historical Society (current steward of the marker). brunswickhistory.com
Miller lived and farmed in Hinckley Township. Brunswick's connection to his story is the burial at Town Line Cemetery in Brunswick Hills, and the 1931 memorial that moved to Brunswick's Heritage Farm in 2017. Adjacent townships share this history; we tell it here because the physical marker now lives in Brunswick.