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by Nancy Stearns Theiss (Author)
Running for 664 miles along Kentucky's border, the Ohio River provided a remarkable opportunity for the enslaved to escape to free soil in Indiana and Ohio. The river beckoned fugitive slave Henry Bibb onto a steamboat at Madison, Indiana, headed to Cincinnati, where he discovered the Underground Railroad. Upriver from Cincinnati, a lantern signal high on a hill from the Rankin House in Ripley, Ohio, stirred others to flee for freedom. These stories and more along the borderland of the Ohio River also served as the setting for Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became an inspiration of human resistance. Author Nancy Theiss, PhD, takes readers on a tour through American history to places of courage and sacrifice.
Author Biography
Nancy Stearns Theiss is a native of Oldham County, where she grew up on the family farm and married her childhood sweetheart. She has degrees in education, biology and environmental studies and has directed several nonprofits. Currently the executive director of the Oldham County Historical Society, she has written history columns for the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Oldham Era and received numerous recognitions for her various endeavors. She is an avid naturalist and historian who believes that knowing your community and the people, places and living things (past and present) around you helps you understand your place in the world.
