Cleveland: May 9, 2003

CONTACT:
Deanna L. Bremer
Director of Marketing
Cleveland Restoration Society
Phone: (216) 426-3111
Fax: (216) 426-1975
E-mail: dbremer@clevelandrestoration.org

JOAN SOUTHGATE DEPARTS FROM HISTORIC COZAD-BATES HOUSE

On Monday, May 12, 2003 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. friends and neighbors will gather to send off Joan Southgate on the final leg of her Underground Railroad journey from the historic Cozad-Bates House, 11508 Mayfield Road in Little Italy. The Cozad-Bates House was to be designated a landmark by the City of Cleveland.

Southgate is a community activist and retired social worker who has retraced the footsteps of her ancestors on their flight to freedom on the Underground Railroad. The Cleveland Restoration Society awarded her an Emerging Preservation Leaders Scholarship to attend the National Preservation Conference held in Cleveland last fall.

Southgate will walk to St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada where she will meet relatives who settled there in the Nineteenth Century. She chose the Cozad-Bates House, built in 1853, as a departure point for the final leg of her journey because it is believed to have been a way station on the Underground Railroad. The Cozad and Ford families (for whom nearby Ford Road is named) were well-known abolitionists, and the University Circle area was a major center of the Underground Railroad during the decades preceding the Civil War.

Along with St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ohio City, the Cozad-Bates house is one of our only remaining physical connections to the Underground Railroad and the people who participated in it. The Cleveland Landmarks Commission and the Cleveland Restoration Society have been working to save the house from potential demolition and neglect for many years. Just last week the house was to be named a Cleveland Landmark.

The Cleveland Restoration Society/Preservation Resource Center of Northeastern Ohio is the region’s largest non-profit preservation organization and is a Local Partner affiliate of the National Trust. Founded in 1972, the Society is dedicated to the preservation of greater Cleveland’s historic resources.

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