Phillips' Folly
Maysville, KY

Phillips' Folly was built in 1831 by the second mayor of Maysville as a place for important town gatherings and social events. The building had a double life.

Maysville, Kentucky, was south of the Ohio River and, therefore, in a slave state. However, being so close to the river, which marked the boundary between slave and free states, it had an important role in slavery and abolition.

Maysville was the home of a major slave market and behind Phillip's Folly was located one of the largest holding pens along the border. Here enslaved people or recaptured fugitives were brought down the Ohio from the East or north from the border states and held before they were "sold south."

Just as Maysville was a hotbed of slavery it was a hotbed of abolition. As we crowded into the damp and rank smelling slave pen knowing we know full well that as claustrophobic and hot as we were, it was nothing like it had been for others who came before. We looked into the tiny opening behind the wall at a "hidey-hole." Here slaves hid silently and in terror until they could make their way through the basement and across the street to the hillside free Black neighborhood. From here many made it to freedom in the north with help from those who defied the law and the majority of their neighbors who supported slavery.

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