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The real reason we were in Ripley was to visit the Rankin house on the hill overlooking the river and Kentucky. John Rankin was a famous abolitionist in the early and middle 1800s, and he is said to have helped at least 2,000 slaves along the Underground Railroad. I didnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t know how much my granddaughter had learned about slavery, abolitionism and such in her elementary and middle school history school classes, but I wanted her to get an up-close introduction to these things if she hadnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t had one already.

Events at the Rankin house played a role in the novel ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œUncle TomÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s Cabin,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� the best-selling American novel of the 1800s. More specifically, a museum guide told of how a slave in Kentucky overheard her master say he was about to sell some slaves. The woman feared she would be separated from her child, so in the night she took her child several miles along the river, falling into the icy water a few times, before she entered the Rankin house through the kitchen door. The Rankins warmed her, dried her clothes, fed her and the baby and took them to the next station on the Underground Railroad.

The story of that night made its way to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who incorporated it into ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œUncle TomÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s Cabin.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

How much of that sank into my granddaughter is something I donÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t know. I told her that if her seventh-grade American history class, assuming she has one, mentions slavery, abolition or ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œUncle TomÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s Cabin,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� maybe she will have a personal connection and recall her visit to the Rankin house and our next stop.

As for me, it got me wanting to read more about that period. The day before our trip, I thought about ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œthe ResistanceÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� during the first Trump administration and how it was a pale imitation of real resistance movements in our history: the Revolutionary War, abolition, the Civil War, suffrage and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. After our visit to the Rankin house, I plan to read ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œUncle TomÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s Cabin.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� I had heard of it in my school years, but I had never read it. Thursday evening, I read about the book and its origin. Now I want to read it for myself so I can understand its place in American history and American literature.

Our next stop was a few miles down the road at Point Pleasant, Ohio, to see the birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant. Again, I didnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t know how much my girl knew about the man who helped save the Union, but she certainly got a history lesson unlike one she would get in a classroom.

Being a 12-year-old girl, my granddaughter could not allow herself to show any interest in anything she saw that day or express any emotion other than boredom (until I let her wear her slippers into a fast food place for lunch), but her facial expressions showed some things she heard and saw did register with her.

Looking back at that day, I would recommend both places for a day trip if you have any interest in that era of history. And do check out the riverfront at Ripley, Ohio, too, if no bar is having a million-dollar raffle that day.