Lucy Depp Settlement and Park

In early 1835, the newly manumitted family of Abraham Depp quietly and hurriedly packed their belongings and fled their plantation quarters in Powhatan County, Virginia. Mindful of their actions, they took extreme care not to arouse suspicion as they negotiated the precarious maze of paramilitary checkpoints set up to enforce the slave codes. The South had become a brutal armed camp after the 1831 cataclysmic Nat Turner Rebellion. The Depp family was escaping to Ohio seeking the promise of freedom and equality. Purchasing 300 acres in Delaware County from Joseph Sullivant (third son of Franklinton Founder Lucas Sullivant), Abraham Depp established a settlement that has offered this promise to its residents for 182 years.

The SharedSpace Community Building at Lucy Depp Park is about 17 miles northwest of Columbus in scenic Concord Township, Delaware County. This 4-acre home-place, once part of the Underground Railroad, is the last Depp residence standing in Lucy Depp Park. It is located on the west side of the O’Shaughnessy Reservoir on Harriot Road, a mile north of the Scioto River bridge at Glick and Dublin Roads. Hear former home-place co-owner Gwyn Stetler (civic activist; non-profit and spiritual leader) and Michael Hamilton (artist-in-residence and co-historian) share their story of this very special community. They will explain the unique legacy of the Lucy Depp Settlement (1835) and later Lucy Depp Park (1928). As an Underground Railroad safe-haven and an early African-American-owned, lake-front summer resort, Lucy Depp provided a physical refuge and an emotional tonic to generations of families whose just and caring descendants continue to call it home.