Jarm Logue was born to a slave woman named Cherry, in Davidson County, Tennessee, and her owner, a white man named David Logue. At age 21, he successfully escaped bondage on his second attempt with the help of his mother, stealing his master's horse and following the Underground Railroad north, finally crossing into Canada. Jarm Logue added an "n" to the end of his last name, learned to read, worked various jobs in Canada and New York, studied at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York, and opened schools for black children in Utica and Syracuse, New York. Loguen settled in Syracuse, where his house became a major depot on the Underground Railroad. Loguen was involved in rescuing William Henry, a cooper and a former slave. On October 1, 1851, Henry, known as "Jerry", was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Law. The anti-slavery Liberty Party was holding its state convention in the city, and when word of the arrest spread, several hundred abolitionists broke into the city jail and freed Jerry. The event came to be widely known as the Jerry Rescue. Loguen became an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and took the middle name Wesley after John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement. He held various church posts and was appointed bishop in 1868. Loguen became a popular abolitionist speaker and authored an autobiography, The Rev. J. W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman, a Narrative of Real Life. The wife of his former master, Sarah Logue, wrote Loguen demanding $1000 compensation. Loguen wrote a scathing reply which was published in The Liberator.
Family
Loguen married Caroline Storum, who was born near Jamestown, New York. She was biracial, from a free and educated abolitionist family. Jermain and Carolina had six children. Their daughter, Amelia, married Lewis Henry Douglass, oldest son of the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, in 1869. Amelia and Lewis followed in their parents' footsteps, passionate for justice and education for the enslaved and newly freed. Another daughter, Sarah Loguen Fraser, became one of the first African-American women to become a licensed medical practitioner, and later became the first female doctor in the Dominican Republic.
