The Underground Railroad 1786–1860
Eakle and Cerny, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, p.591
From 1786 onward, fugitive slaves could escape northwards on the Underground Railroad which covered fourteen Northern states by 1830. From 1840 to 1860 some 50,000 slaves travelled it to settle in the North or Canada. The Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 was countered by the "personal liberty laws" of many northern states.
Eakle and Cerny, The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, p.591
If any portion of your family settled in a northern city, in Canada, or in a black community in the Midwest established before the Civil War, the chances are excellent that they travelled on the Underground Railroad at least some of the way. See Wilbur H. Seibert, The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom (1898; reprint ed., New York: Russell and Russell, 1967) and William Still, The Underground Railroad (1872; reprint ed., New York: Amo Press, 1968). These two works list stationkeepers and agents of the Underground network. Once you have their names and where they were in operation, you can check the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) to see if they kept journals, diaries, or account books and, if so, where these records are located.

===================
From loose papers
Contributor unknown