As a native Ohioan, I had never even heard of the tiny town of Mt. Pleasant, much less known its story. But as it turns out, this little hamlet deep in the rolling hills on the eastern edge of the state has quite a tale to tell.

The town was one of the centers of the abolitionist movement in Ohio, and was a major station on the Underground Railroad. It was also a final destination; a place where those escaping slavery found a place to rest, work, and make a life for themselves.

The Benjamin Lundy House and Free Labor Store sit at the center of that story.

Lundy was a community leader and abolitionist. He was also an early proponent of the free produce movement; a boycott against goods produced by slave labor. In 1820, he moved to the house in Mount Pleasant that now bears his name and began publishing his abolitionist newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation.

But the story of the 1812 Benjamin Lundy House doesn't end there.

By1848 local Quakers has opened free labor store—a place that sold only goods that were produced and brought to market by free labor and refused to profit from the exploitation of enslaved persons—in the house's 1815 annex.

At a time when the practice of slavery produced or had a hand in an incredible range of goods, this was no small feat or statement. People who adamantly opposed slavery were drawn to free labor stores to engage in socially conscious commerce.

The store closed in the late 1850s or early '60s. Today, the structure is crumbling from the inside out as years of benign neglect and water damage have taken their toll. But thanks to Ohio History Connection (OHC), that’s about to change.

The organization acquired the house in late 2015 and plans a full restoration to bring the structure back to life with the ultimate goal of opening it to the public as a place to learn about the town’s anti-slavery history and experience the story of an abolitionist hard at work.