Built in 1828 atop a bluff overlooking the Ohio River, this home belonged to Presbyterian minister John Rankin, one of the most active Underground Railroad conductors in the country, who with his wife Jean and their thirteen children helped an estimated 2,000 freedom seekers cross from slaveholding Kentucky into free Ohio over more than four decades. A lit lantern in the window signaled safety to those crossing the river below. In February 1838, an enslaved woman later known as Eliza Harris crossed the partially frozen Ohio River carrying her young child and found refuge at the Rankin home; Rankin later relayed her story to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who used it as the basis for Eliza's famous ice-crossing scene in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Rankin worked closely with John Parker, a formerly enslaved Black entrepreneur whose own house nearby is also preserved, making Ripley one of the most active interracial Underground Railroad networks in the nation.