"No Strangers Here Today" stage performance about Quakers' role in Underground Railroad February 4, 2009

Susan Banyas’ great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Conard Edwards, kept a diary during the Civil War, a litany of daily life on a farm in southern Ohio. Banyas discovered the historic 1864 journal while doing research on the mining of original sources for creative inspiration.

Elizabeth Edwards’ diary opened up a big story.

Jan. 3, 1864: Arose at 6, a little warmer. Abbie at Edwards, and the girls went to Meeting. I wrote to Willie. No strangers here today….

“No strangers here today” — four cryptic words penned by Edwards throughout the pages of her Civil War diary — meant that no one had sought refuge in the night at her farmhouse, a stop on the Underground Railroad.

At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 4, Banyas brings her great-great-grandmother’s story home to Highland County, where it all began … from the Quaker farmhouse near Leesburg to the stage at Southern State Community College. “No Strangers Here Today” is a story-telling piece, a movement monologue, a tribute to those who chose what was right over what was legal.