Footsteps to Freedom 1999: Day Three

Update posted on Tue, Jan 25, 2000, at 1:46:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time.

John Rankin House
Maysville, KY

Ripley is just across the Ohio River from Maysville, Kentucky and the two towns violently and sometimes viciously disagreed over the issue of slavery. Just as Maysville was a major market for the sale of slaves, Ripley became the first center of abolitionism and perhaps the largest single passage point on the Underground Railroad. John Rankin, Presbyterian minister often credited with being the founder of abolitionism in the United States, lived for many years in Ripley with his wife and thirteen children. From his house "in the country", high on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River, Rankin is credited with saving at least two thousand escapees from slavery, using his home as a station along the Underground Railroad and working closely with sixty-four "conductors" in the region, who conspired and connived to sneak those who were seeking freedom through the strongly pro-slave Maysville and Washington areas of Kentucky, across the wide (200 yards) Ohio River, into Ripley and then on to numerous "safe houses" in Ohio as they fled to Canada.

Above, the sign at the entrance to the Rankin House site . . . with bullet holes and shotgun blasts from the last thirty years.

Working, in particular, with ex-slave John Parker, who lived right on the river bank, escapees crossed the river frequently. This was dangerous work: various fugitive slave laws from 1793 required that all law officers help catch escaped slaves and the Constitution itself guaranteed slave property. In addition, Kentucky slaveowners in the late 1830's came to offer a reward of $2,500 cash for the "murder or abduction of John Rankin". No slave was ever caught here, even though the bounty hunters searched the house often for both slaves and John Rankin. Harriet Beecher Stowe, with her husband and father, Henry Ward Beecher, visited Rankin on numerous occasions. Rankin's house allegedly sheltered the woman who inspired Harriet to write about the character of Eliza, whose dangerous night journey across the thawing Ohio River, leaping from one ice patch to the next with her baby in her arms, is movingly described in her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

UPDATE: After returning from our trip, we received an email from a relative of John Rankin who told us some of the real story behind the fictional character of "Eliza" in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and of Rankin's role in her escape.

From left, Hardy Brown, Cheryl Brown, Theresa Henderson, and John Henderson (Wilberforce University President).

The beautiful Ohio River captured everyone's attention.

Navigation

Back to the Front Page...

Address technical questions on the Footsteps to Freedom website to webmaster@rims.k12.ca.us