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Ripley's Rankin Home: Pastoral Outlook for Fugitives

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

One of the prominent homes in Ripley, Ohio, is the Rankin House. This house served as a "station" in the Underground Railroad in Ripley. This house is one of the more well-known sites in the lore and legend of the Underground Railroad.

The Rankin House, built in 1828, is located on Liberty Hill. This hill overlooks the Ohio River and Ripley. This vantage point gave it an advantage as a protection for runaway slaves and a view of the river and any approaching bounty hunters. One can view seven bends in the Ohio River from this house! There are one hundred steps from Ripley to this house on the hill. (One can still climb these steps today.) The home was close to the river, its owner was a fierce opponent to slavery. Thus the Rankin home became a stopping point on the Underground Railroad.

Rankin has said: "My house has been the door of freedom to many human beings, but while there was a hazard of life and property, there was much happiness in giving safety to the trembling fugitives. They were all children of God by creation and some of them I believe were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb."

The builder of the home was a pastor, the Rev. John Rankin. Rankin was born in Tennessee in 1793. At some point he became a pastor and preached for several years in Kentucky. In 1822 Rankin and his wife, Jean, moved their growing family across the Ohio River to Ripley in the free state of Ohio and began his 44 year ministry of Ripley's Presbyterian church.

Rankin's first home was located at 220 Front Street. In 1825 he built the famous house that sits on Liberty Hill and stands guard over the river. The Rankin family (which included 13 children) was proud of never having lost a "passenger". Most of the 2,000 escaped slaves who traveled through Ripley stayed with the Rankins.

Rankin learned that one of his brothers in Virginia had acquired a slave. He wrote a series of letters denouncing slavery to the editor of the local paper. These were published as a book (Letters on American Slavery) in 1826. Rankin helped organize the Ripley Anti-Slavery Society as well as teaching, preaching, writing and traveling to inform many people of the evils of slavery and why it must be abolished. The Rankins' work inspired others to rally to the cause. William Lloyd Garrison would found a newspaper for Abolition called The Liberator. (Garrison would later take on one Captain Jonathan Walker as friend and writer for The Liberator; Walker would name a son Lloyd Garrison Walker after the publisher.) Harriet Beecher Stowe heard Rankin's account of a slave who carried her child across the thawing ice of the Ohio River and was saved from the bounty hunters that chased her when the ice broke up. Stowe included this story in her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.