Mary Rankin Typed Biographical Sketch of John Rankin to Lucien V. Rule, [after 1886]

7.

Mr. Rankin in his travels through Ohio and Indiana
in the cause of anti-slavery suffered many indignities
finding the doors of churches, homes and public halls
closed to him, and on the other hand, finding welcome
and generosity from those whose hearts had been touched
by his cause. Mobs were not infrequent experiences and
plots against his life were frustrated. But he was never
kept from an appointment and only once did an audience
"walk out on him" when a mob attacted the bu ilding
where he was speaking. "His body was never bruised by
a stone nor his raiment stained by an offensive missle,"
though stones and eggs and even firebrands hit him with-
out doing any harm. He writes "The Lord preserved me
from all harm". Nor was his house even searched,
though the attempt was made more than once, At one
time the slave hunters were held at bay by Mrs. Rankin
with an ax in her hands, Mr. Rankin and the older boys
being away from home at the time. Refugees were never
kept in the house or about the farm more than an hour
or so because of the danger to the poor fugitives them-
selves, so there was nothing to conceal from any one
with a warrent to search the house. But no warrent was
presented and the sancity of the home was kept inviolate.

Many legends have already grown up in Ripley concern-
ing the house that looks down from its hill top. The
"secret closets" are ordinary storage places under the
caves, and in one of them Mr. Rankin tried to keep bees,
which accounts for the small window at the [strike]west[/strike] north end of
the house. The legend of "the light in the window at
night" probably arose around the candle by which Mr.
Rankin read and wrote. The "underground Railroad "
would not have been underground had its first station
been so conspic[strike]u[/strike]ously designated. Indeed, there was
no need of a light, for the runaway had been following
the North Star, and that star of hope stood above the
little house etched black against the sky line high
above the river.

After leaving Ripley he was for many years in
Kansas, always active and busy supplying needy churches
with little compensation till his ninetieth year, when
an accident and an illness of three years ended a long
eventful life, March 18, 1886. From the church in
Ripley, relays of colored men carried his casket the
long mile to the cemetary. There it lies beside that
of his wife, beneath a simple granite monument bearing
a bronze bust, the only inscription these words -

John Rankin - 1793 - 1886
Jean Lowery, his wife, 1795 - 1878

Freedoms' Heroes.