Quaker abolitionists Levi and Catharine Coffin moved to Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana in 1826 and built this Federal-style brick home in 1839 at the junction of three converging Underground Railroad routes from the Ohio River. Over their twenty years there, the Coffins are estimated to have helped as many as 2,000 freedom seekers, hiding people in a small upstairs compartment and drawing water from a concealed indoor well to avoid suspicious trips outside. A slave catcher reportedly dubbed Levi the President of the Underground Railroad and the house Grand Central Station, nicknames that stuck. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who knew the Coffins after their later move to Cincinnati, is widely believed to have modeled the Quaker couple in Uncle Tom's Cabin partly on them.