Riding that Underground Railroad...

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

This past weekend I went to the Underground Railroad museum in Cincinnati...not a transit museum, but a homage one of the first big organized civil disobediences in US history....

http://www.freedomcenter.org/

...this excellent museum has piqued my interest in this long-ago human rights/resistance movement, so I will be making some road trips to nearby sites...my first trip is to the Levi Coffin House in rural Indiana...an important focal point in the escape routes from the Ohio river....

http://www.waynet.org/nonprofit/coffin.htm

...later trips will be to the abolitionist hotbed of Ripley, Ohio, right on the Ohio River across from Kentucky....this was the supposed site of climax chapter in Uncle Toms Cabin, where a slave escapes via crossing the river on ice floes...

So...looking to the past for inspiration for today.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Underground Railroad stations in WI

Yep, Wisconsin. There's a house in Janesville that kept runaways. They used a stained glass window to signal when it was safe to come from the stable to the house, where there was a secret stair to a hidden place in the attic.

The next stop on the railroad was in Milton WI, where there is an old building, the first build of cement. There's a tunnel leading to a cabin. Sometimes, the runaways had to hide in the tunnel.

Discovered these in 1964, and they are still there.

BTW, do you know the song "Follow the Drinking Gourd"? I'm sure the museum talked of it.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

2. The house in Milton is on the NPS Underground Railroad intinerary

...and yes, that song and its meaning was explained.

Im pretty much a "Mr. Know-it-All" when it comes to history, but this museum taught me a lot I did not know......

[mark414]

3. my hometown had quite a few houses (in WI)

there's even this old theater that used to be a brewery

there was an underground cooler that they extended underground far across town, even under a river