Longtime museum moving from library to new location in downtown Warren
The Warren-Trumbull County Public and the Trumbull County Historical Society are celebrating the end of a long era for a local museum exhibit moving to a new location.
In 2025, the Trumbull County Historical Society received a $20,000 grant from the Ohio History Fund for a special project: moving the Sutliff Museum while preserving Warren’s connections to the Underground Railroad history.
The Trumbull County Historical Society has been managing the museum since 2024.
The Sutliff Museum opened in 1971 and commemorates the lives of members of the Sutliff family who were active in the local abolition movement and conductors on the Underground Railroad.
The museum’s collection includes nearly 1,000 Sutliff family letters, offering a window into the life of activists in the nineteenth century.
There’s Phebe Temperance Sutliff, who founded the Warren Branch of the American Association of University of Women, served as the first president of the Warren Branch of the National Urban League and is in the Ohio’s Women Hall of Fame.
Learn about bothers Levi Sutliff and Judge Milton Sutliff, who established the Anti-Slavery Society in Trumbull County.
The Sutliff Museum will move from the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library’s second floor to the Morgan History Center, home of the Trumbull County Historical Society, at 328 Mahoning Ave. NW in downtown Warren.
It’s been over 50 years of local history preservation, and the Sutliff Museum relocation process is set to start on March 21. The Warren-Trumbull County Public Library is closing early that day to accomodate.
According to the historical society, once it’s moved, the Sutliff Museum will undergo a “reinterpretation to focus more deeply on the Underground Railroad and the local Anti-Slavery movement.”
The Morgan History Center is currently closed to the public for construction.
