Pioneer settlers of Ripley were predominately Scotch and Irish. Waves of German settlers arrived In the 1840-1850's. The landscape reminded the Germans of their German homeland. Their skills in agriculture, woodworking, and business helped to make the village a vital port on the Ohio River. Ripley had a reputation as a shipping port for the pork industry, second only to Cincinnati! Tobacco has also played a significant role in the history of Ripley.
Ripley, a community rich in history, holds a number of prominent residential and commercial buildings which still exist that were once owned by anti-slavery men and women who worked as conductors on the Underground Railroad. The next two articles will visit these buildings-the Rankin House and the Parker House.
Front Street is probably the most notable section within the historic part of town. It includes four to five long blocks of elegant homes, several of them once owned by the conductors on the Underground Railroad.
The Liberty Monument at the foot of Main Street on the Ohio River. This monument commemorates local antislavery figure Reverend John Rankin, Colonel James Poage (Ripley's founder), Thomas McCague, Thomas Samuel Kirkpatrick, John Parker, U.S. Senator Alexander Campbell, and others outside of Ripley who served the fugitive slaves on connecting routes north at Russellville, Decatur, and Sardinia.
Slaves sought escape to freedom in the North since before the Revolutionary War. Ohio was particularly desirable as a haven. Perhaps the greatest reason was that the Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. Ohio also enjoyed geographical privilege along the Ohio River bordering southern slave states. Escape did become more difficult with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which allowed slaves captured in free territory to be returned to their masters if ownership could be established). But Abolitionists merely devised a variety of ruses to aid escaping slaves and outwit slave hunters seeking bounty. They built secret hiding places in houses, barns, and stores and established an intricate system of alternate routes. They used disguises and led pursuers on fruitless chases using decoys. False information was often fed to eager and unsuspecting slave owners.
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