FEATURES

Photographs Courtesy the Kentucky Department of Travel

During the Civil War era, the Ohio River marked the border between slavery and freedom, so it’s no surprise that our riverbanks and hillsides are dotted with stops on the Underground Railroad. These sites set in sharp relief the states’ past roles with regard to slavery. To visit the most important points on the road to freedom in the Ohio Valley, set aside a couple of days and take the Freedom Trail Underground Railroad tour, based out of Mason County, Kentucky, which includes stops in Maysville, Ripley, and Old Washington. It affords you the chance to look back at what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

The National Underground Railroad Museum
Opened in 1995—nine years before the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati—The National Underground Railroad Museum was originally the home of Jonathan A. Bierbower, a carriage maker. Along with his wife, Lucetta, Bierbower was active on the Underground Railroad in the mid-1800s; his home was a documented “safe house,” the lower level serving as a hiding place for runaway slaves. Today, the space holds artifacts of the Bierbower family’s antebellum accomplishments (above, left), including records of their sons’ participation in the Civil War as well as narratives from slaves who acted as conductors on the Underground Railroad. Completed around 1847, the home is a few blocks from Maysville’s earliest settlement of freed slaves, which included residences, churches, and lodges.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Slavery to Freedom Museum
According to local lore, Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Colonel Marshall Key’s home in Washington, Kentucky, in 1833, the guest of Key’s daughter, Elizabeth, who was one of her students at Cincinnati’s Western Female Institute. It’s believed that while she was here, she witnessed a slave auction for the first time on the lawn of the Washington courthouse. The impression it left was so great that she incorporated the scene into her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Harriet Beecher Stowe Slavery to Freedom Museum uses the old Key home to document Beecher Stowe’s life and her visit to Washington. The place is packed with memorabilia, period furniture, and displays on slave and pre-Civil War life in the area (above, right).

The Ulysses S. Grant Homestead and Schoolhouse
Living in Georgetown, Ohio, from the age of 1 until he left for West Point in 1839, Ulysses S. Grant’s boyhood home made it onto the National Registry of Historic Places in 1976. The homestead, five blocks from the rural one-room schoolhouse where the general attended grade school, was the base of operation for Grant’s father’s tanning business. Though the future president worked alongside his father from the age of 6 until he was 13, he found the trade distasteful. Concerned, his father arranged for that appointment to West Point, which eventually led Grant to the White House. The home features family heirlooms, including Grant’s book collection, while the little schoolhouse on South Water Street focuses on Grant’s reading, writing, and ’rithmetic years.

The Rankin House
In the forward of his 1826 book, Letters on Slavery, Rev. John Rankin says that he was trying to convince his brother, Thomas, of the evils of the practice: “Let all the friends of justice and suffering humanity, do what little they can, in their several circles, and according to their various stations, capacities and opportunities...and purge our nation from the abominations of slavery.” Though he urged others to do what little they could, Rankin’s abolitionist work could by no means be seen as a small contribution. Most of the 2,000 slaves who traveled through Ripley to freedom were helped in some way by Rankin and his wife, Jean. At his home in Ripley, Ohio, visitors can climb the “stairway to liberty,” a replica of a set of stairs runaway slaves used to
get to Rankin’s property from Fourth Street (the runaways climbed a path from the riverbank to reach the stairs). Rankin could shelter as many as 12 fugitives at a time.

The Parker House
Ex-slave John Parker turned his knack for inventing into a way to help slaves escape from Kentucky. After buying his freedom, Parker moved to Ripley in 1849, working in his own foundry, the Phoenix Foundry and Machine Company (he received patents for soil pulverizing and tobacco presses in the 1880s). But he also traveled into Kentucky to conduct fugitive slaves on their journey north. Parker’s story had been lost until W.W. Norton published his autobiography, His Promised Land, in 1996. In 1993, the John P. Parker Historical Society was founded, and the group purchased the Parker House in 1995. The restored dwelling, which landed on the National Historic Landmark registry in 1997, houses articles, letters, and other documents that recount the life of the inventor and industrialist.

The National Underground Railroad Museum
38 W. Fourth St., Maysville, (606) 564-4413, www.bierbower.org. Open Sat 10 am–3 pm or by appointment.

Harriet Beecher Stowe Slavery to Freedom Museum
2124 Old Main St., Old Washington, (606) 759-7411. Open most Sat noon–4 pm, Sun 1–4 pm.

The Ulysses S. Grant Homestead and Schoolhouse
219 E. Grant Ave. and 508 S. Water St., Georgetown. (937) 378-3087. Open Wed–Sun noon–5 pm.

The Rankin House
6152 Rankin Rd., Ripley, (937) 392-1627. Open Wed–Sat 10 am–5 pm, Sun noon–5 pm.

The Parker House
330 N. Front St., Ripley, (937) 392-4188, johnparkerhouse.org. Open Fri & Sat 11 am–5 pm, May–first week of Oct only

Originally published in the August 2010 issue.