Benjamin Lundy Home / Free Labor Store

Benjamin Lundy Home, also, Free Labor Store. . , Benjamin Lundy Home. After witnessing the slave trade in Wheeling, Virginia, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy (1789-1839) resolved to battle the institution, first organizing the Union Humane Society in St. Clairsville in 1815. In 1821, Lundy moved to Mount Pleasant and began publishing the Genius of Universal Emancipation, a newspaper devoted wholly to anti-slavery issues. The newspaper would later be published in Tennessee, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. Lundy traveled widely to promote circulation, lecturing on the moral evils of slavery and its associated negative economic and social effects. The Lundy home served as an Underground Railroad stop., Free Labor Store. Built in 1813, the left side of this structure was the site of the Free Labor Store. Residents of Mount Pleasant, a predominately Quaker community, organized the Mount Pleasant Free Produce Company in 1848 "for the sale of goods, wares, and merchandise in general which shall be exclusively the product of free labor." The store operated until 1857 when the company was dissolved. The dissolution of the Free Produce Company was not a reflection on the lessening of anti-slavery sentiment in Mount Pleasant. This is the only free labor store known in continued existence.