FALLS CITY – The barn replica, a mysterious door and the prospect of future discoveries sparked discussion at a ribbon cutting of the Underground Railroad Museum at Falls City Saturday.

There have been discoveries at every step for the museum, which is housed at the Collection Museum founded by Susan Sipple and Darlene Hoemann in 2020.

Sipple: “When we first opened the Collection Museum we didn’t even know that this was the site of the Dorrington House and Barn.”

Journalist Robert Nelson and cousin David Kentopp are Dorrington descendants who were aware from childhood that their three-time great grandfather David had the mail contract out of Kansas and his wife Ann had cared for freedom seekers hidden in the barn.  When the Collection Museum put the property under a non-profit, it opened the way for a National Parks Service designation.

The National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom says the house and barn built in 1857 were used to move freedom seekers out of Kansas to Nebraska City and then into Iowa.

It has been a journey of discovery since Nelson was eight years old.

Nelson: “Because of the stories we heard growing up here, we wanted to dig into them and see if they held up with primary source evidence against what’s known nationally. It’s kind of been an obsessive dig for getting a story that has sort of been lost in legend, particularly Topeka and Tabor, Iowa, of the Lane Trail into Kansas and the western line of the Underground Railroad on that same path out of Kansas.”

 

The original house at 1601 Stone St. was replaced by a two-story brick structure in the early 1880s.

Cole Kirkendall of Bob Backman’s Home Improvements found the mysterious door between the west wall of the 1881 Dorrington block building and a 1928 addition that housed Wing’s Shoe and Key Shop.

The small black-walnut door was likely made prior to the Civil War and was not exposed to the outdoors, leading to speculation that it might be the very door that led from the Dorrington house to an enclosed wooden staircase leading down to the mail barn.

Kirkendall: “We cut through here and here and finally here, where we found the door.”

Sipple, envisions historical markers along the Lane Trail in southeast Nebraska, and says discoveries are still being made.

Nelson said discoveries ahead could help fill in the gaps for the Underground Railroad from Topeka, Kan., to Tabor, Iowa, especially with indicators that Nemaha City and Peru were important segments.

Nelson: “I think we’re 10 percent in and that’s the fun of it. You heard us debating exactly what was the position of the barn. There should be a picture of the Dorrington barn somewhere lost.”

 

Dort Goodman, a volunteer at the Albany Museum in Sabetha, Kan., says abolitionist John  Brown stayed at the Waggoner and Most Home. She helped design the new Falls City museum.

Goodman: “I think it’s important. I think our history is where we foundationally build the next generation and if we don’t remember the bad and the good, then I think we lose something as we go forward.”

Nelson: “I hope what we’re doing is proving up the story. If you read the letters from 1856, 1857, 1858, 1859, the original sources nationally are talking about these events in Kansas, the Lane Trail, the army of the North going into Kansas and they are talking nationally about the westernmost line of the Underground Railroad how that was used to destabilize slavery and kind of, in part, bring about the Civil War. That’s a history that is lost to the people of Falls City.”

 

He expects new discoveries as newspapers come on line and people take a new look at historic photographs they come across.

Nelson: “And  hopefully we get the evidence to support each spot, where they stopped – particularly John Brown and the 12 and where they stopped – so that we can an interactive map online that people can follow the trail from Topeka to Tabor. And Falls City would kind of be the central point of that. That’s what is so wonderful here. The town buy in to the story. This can be part of a pretty significant regional trail, a national historic trail.”