Clark Lane

A native of Hamilton County, Clark Lane was born 5 April 1823, the son of John and Rosanah Lane. He was born in a one-room log cabin on the farm of his parents. The property at the junction of Hamilton Avenue and Mill Road was still in family hands at the time of his death in 1907. His parents had come to Ohio from New Jersey in 1793 and settled 10 miles north of Cincinnati. According to a page compiled from a Lane family Bible, he was named Robert Clark Lane, but the first name was seldom if ever used.

Clark was a Hamilton industrialist and philanthropist. Lane, who first came to the Butler County area at age twenty-one as a blacksmith.

See the website of the Lane Libraries for much more about the biography of this abolitionist, philanthropist, and entrepreneur.

"Clark Lane's determined belief on slavery, the burning issue of its time, was shared by other members of the Lane family. According to One Square Mile, a history published by the Mt. Healthy Historical Society in 1992, the Lane home was said to be a station on the so-called “underground railroad.” Feelings ran so high in Mt. Healthy that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) closed its doors for five years over the question of slavery."
"...There is evidence that the Lane home was a stop on the Underground Railroad that helped slaves to freedom prior to the Civil War..."
"...in 1844 there was a presidential election: James K.Polk, Henry Clay and James G. Birney, the latter being the Liberty Party candidate, who advocated abolition. Clark Lane recorded that he was a confirmed abolitionist since the age of 16. “Day following said election the smoke and flame and cursings of pro-slavery wrath burst upon me with such threatening of violence... that my contract though but half done had to be abandoned....” In Hamilton, or more specifically, the town of Rossville, he was denounced as “an abolitionist, an idiot, fool and traitor to his country.” He decided to seek opportunities and residence elsewhere and booked passage for Dayton, Ohio..."
..."I was an abolitionist, I voted for Birney, the abolition candidate," Lane recalled in an 1892 interview. "Next morning, Brown (the wagon maker) came into the shop, and in language more forcible than polite, told me, that no abolitionist should work in his shop."

Sources:

• http://www.journal-news.com/news/hamilton-news/architect-seeks-to-s...
• http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=...
• http://www.remarkableohio.org/HistoricalMarker.aspx?historicalMarke...
• The Lane-Hooven House in Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio, built in 1863 for Clark Lane, a Hamilton Industrialist who is often regarded as Hamilton’s first philanthropist. The house,which because of its octagonal shape is widely regarded as Hamilton’s most unique residential structure, was sometimes called Lane’s Folly. Construction began in 1863 and took eleven months to complete. The doors were always open for every charity and aid society. The largest entertainment numbered more than three hundred...Clark Lane’s company, Owens, Lane and Dyer, prospered mightily. The company manufactured a new mechanical marvel that could thresh and separate grain in one operation (both horse-drawn and steam-powered), a springtooth riding or horse-drawn rake, and, above all, the road engine, a steam engine that could be moved from place to place to power farm machinery.