George McCoy Farm
© Ypsilanti Historical Society
George McCoy was born into slavery in Kentucky but was freed at the age of twentyone by his wealthy Irish-American father Henry McCoy. Around 1837 George married
an enslaved woman named Milly whose two brothers had recently been sold away.
Shortly after their marriage, George convinced Milly to travel with him to freedom in
Canada. Helped by Underground Railroad agents in Cincinnati, the couple was pursued
by slave hunters as they made their way to Detroit. From Detroit, the McCoys crossed
into Canada, settling in Colchester where their first five children were born.
Interestingly, the McCoy family moved back to the States after the 1850 Fugitive Slave
Act. They settled on the Starkweather farm northwest of Ypsilanti where George
McCoy grew tobacco and made cigars. His daughter Anna related how her father used
his false-bottomed wagon to transport Freedom Seekers underneath his loads of cigars
on frequent trips to Detroit and Wyandotte. George and Milly McCoy had a total of
twelve children, one of whom was the famous inventor Elijah McCoy. The site of the
McCoy Farm at 229 Michigan Avenue was designated by the State of Michigan as a
Historic Site.
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George and Milly McCoy’s daughter Anna was interviewed by Mary Goddard. Anna
related having discovered a black family hiding in her father’s barn when she was a
child. Anna’s mother discouraged questions and the family was gone the following
day. Anna would pick up the mail for her family at the post office and noted that
whenever a letter arrived from John Hatfield of Cincinnati, her mother would
prepare large quantities of food while getting her children to bed early. Historian
Carol Mull recognized that this “colored man from Cincinnati” was most likely Rev.
John Hatfield of Cincinnati’s Zion Baptist Church, an Underground Railroad partner
of famed Levi Coffin. This makes sense, as Deacon Hatfield helped John Fairfeld
transport twenty-eight freedom seekers to the Asher farm in the Ypsilanti area
before they were ushered on to Detroit and Canada. Anna also delivered letters from
Deacon Hatfield to the Prescotts who taught school for black children in their home
(Mull 129-131, 141-142).
Anna surmised clearly that her father was transporting fugitive slaves in his falsebottom wagon on his business trips to sell cigars in Detroit and Wyandotte. When
her brother George was old enough to help, two wagons were used for these trips to
the Detroit River. Anna recalled that a black man named “Bush” in Wyandotte
helped with the arrival of the McCoy wagons. Sometimes the fugitives were boarded
onto the Pearl, which would take them across the river to Canada (Mull 142). In the
Ypsilanti area, the McCoys benefited from the Underground Railroad activity of
African Americans Asher and Catherine Aray, as well as white antislavery activists
William Harwood, Jotham Goodell, John and Mary Starkweather and Harriet
deGarmo Fuller and her husband Edwin Fuller (Mull, 130, 142-143).
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Works Cited & Further Reading
Mull, Carol. The Underground Railroad in Michigan. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &
Company, Inc., Publishers, 2010.
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