I am a descendant of Lot Holmes (1806-1880) of Loudon County, Virginia, Columbiana, County, Ohio, and Marshall County, Iowa. He was an outspoken abolitionist and for many years sat on the publication committee of The Anti-Slavery Bugle newspaper, published in Salem, Ohio. In 1832, he left Virginia because he refused to vote in a state where slavery was legal. In 1847, he sent a petition signed by 60 men to the Ohio Legislature asking that Ohio secede from the United States after Texas was annexed as a slave state (it failed 33 to 21). He moved his family to Iowa in 1853. Lot Holmes and his brother, Dr. Jesse Holmes, (as well as other Quaker relatives) opened their homes and provided safe passage to escaped slaves as part of the "Undeground Railroad" in Ohio and Iowa. --Nick Sheedy, John Day, Oregon