Friday morning we started our adventures in Cincinnati visiting the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. Best known for penning Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe spent her 20s and 30s in Cincinnati. This house bears witness to generations joining their voices for truth in the nation's struggle toward freedom and humanity for all. The history of this house is witnessed in two different time periods 100 years apart: First, 1840 when abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe lived in Cincinnati as a young teacher and mother preparing to write the blockbuster antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and then Secondly in 1940 when African-American proprietor Irene Bacon managed the house as the Edgemont Inn--a boarding house and tavern listed in the Green Book, a book that was “the bible of black travel during Jim Crow", enabling black travelers to find lodgings, businesses, and gas stations that would serve them along the road. It was little known outside the African American community.
The home is beautiful and stoic, sitting on a hill that overlooks the neighborhood.
The rooms have been restored wth original pieces and era-specific furnishings.
The famous Harriett Beecher Stowe
References to Uncle Tom's Cabin are throughout the home
We then traveled to the little town of Point Pleasant to see the birthplace of U.S.Grant, the 18th president of the United States, serving from 1869 to 1877. We had a wonderful docent who had this as his summer job from his University studies. He was excellent and shared a lot of facts. This humble birthplace stands nestled along the Ohio River. The three-room house where Grant was born in 1822, was built as a one-room cottage in 1817 and rented by his parents in 1821, when this part of the state was nothing more than uninhabited countryside. In 1823, the family moved to Georgetown, Ohio, where five siblings were born: Simpson, Clara, Orvil, Jennie, and Mary.
Photos and memorabilia are abundant in this small home. It was a pleasure looking at all!
The area around the Grant birthplace has been designated as the U.S. Grant Historic District. It includes the birthplace, a memorial park, the bridge, caretaker house and garage, and the church a couple of blocks away from the house.
The U.S. Grant Memorial Park
Point Pleasant U.S. Grant Church
We traveled to Ripley, Ohio to take a tour of the Underground Railroad brick home of Rev. John Rankin and his family which was a beacon for people escaping slavery and crossing the Ohio River. The Rankins would put a light in the front window overlooking the river and village of Ripley. Freedom seekers knew to look for this light and to head up the hill to the home.
There, Rankin, his wife, Jean, and their 13 children would hide them under the floor of the family barn in a secret compartment. Then Rankin family members, often the teenage sons, would take them to meet the next “conductor” or to the next “station.”
Over 40 years, the family helped more than 2,000 people. Their story of a young freedom seeker who, while carrying her infant, crossed the Ohio River on ice floes to reach the Rankin home became an experience of the main character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Rankins knew the Stowe family and likely shared this story with them.
The light in the front window overlooking the Ohio River
Is it possible that the hinges on this porch floor was to hide runaway slaves?
Interior of the John Rankin House
The Ohio River was not dammed as it is today which allowed for the uneven freezing during the harsh winters. Thus the true story that was told and then incorporated by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Our final drive for the day was to Louisa, Kentucky. Mary Anne spent many weekends in Louisa with her Dad, visiting her Grandma Rose, Aunt Ivory, Aunt Opal and other family members. Grandma Rose died when Mary Anne was 12 and thus it was her last trip there. So some 63 years later we were on a quest to find the graves in a country cemetery with very little to no GPS help!
Our Granddaughters Jordan and Mary drove over from Louisville to be with us for the evening with dinner and then help with the cemetery search the next morning. We found an extremely delicious Mexican cuisine dinner restaurant. The owner and Chef is from Southern California so we had authentic Mexican cuisine at Gabriel's Yoro Loco! He came to the table and talked with us for some time.
Our search for the cemetery went really smoothly. There is a gravel road that we believe used to be just a driveway but now has three houses on it. Inquiring, we found that the cow pasture between the road end and the cemetery belonged to the first house residents. She gave us permission to open the gate and gross to the cemetery. Avoiding the cow pats as we walked and watching the cows walk away from where we were going, we came to the rusted cemetery gate.
Walking across the cow pasture to the cemetery
The rusted gate to go into the pasture to get to the rusted gate of the cemetery entrance
The Rose Family
Grandpa and Grandma Rose
Grandma Mary Rose
Aunt Ivory Rose Thompson
Louisa Main Street Part with Grandma, Jordan and Mary
Noah Thompson - Louisa's very own 2022 American Idol Winner!
Our beautiful Granddaughters join us in Louisa, Kentucky
Our stop on Saturday after leaving Louisa was in Nelsonville, Ohio at the cemetery where Mary Anne Dad is buried. After a little help from the internet and discovering the second and smaller section 9 of the cemetery, we found his and his wife's burial. It has been many years since we were there!
And then continuing on to our reservation in Hocking Hills State Park in Logan. Ohio
Complete photo album by clicking here
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