All Stories | Discover Indiana

Before you, stands one of Clark County’s historic African American churches, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal. In the 19th Century, numerous African American churches were established to serve the spiritual needs of people fleeing the South in…

Taylor High School

You are standing near an old red brick building. This is what remains of Taylor High School, a remnant of the age of racial segregation in Clark County. According to the paper “Taylor High: A History Lost but Not Forgotten” in 1872, Jeffersonville,…

The Dinnings

You are standing before the site of one of the homes inhabited by George and Mollie Dinning and their children. One winter night, a mob forced Mollie Dinning and her children to abandon their farm in Simpson County, Kentucky, ill-clad and robbed of…

The 1871 Lynching of Three Black Men in Clark County

At Charlestown Cemetery in Clark County the mutilated bodies of three lynched men are buried. On a Saturday in November of 1871, the family of Cyrus Park, a white farmer who lived near Henryville, Indiana, was murdered. Using the Parks' own axe, the…

Obediah Buckner

The Jeffersonville Township Public Library occupies the space that was once Jeffersonville’s train railroad switch yard. In 1854, Obediah Buckner visited the ticket office of the Jeffersonville Railroad, once located near here, expecting to purchase…

York

You are standing next to the Lewis and Clark Handshake statue by sculptor Carol Grende. The sculpture and the annual Handshake Festival at Falls of the Ohio State Park celebrate the moment when Lewis and Clark began their famous expedition in the…

Guinea Bottom: The Earliest Black Settlement in Jeffersonville Township

Falls of the Ohio State Park’s George Rogers Clark Homesite in Clarksville, Indiana is located near what was Guinea Bottom, an early Black settlement established for the convenience of the wealthy, powerful, white Clark County residents who came to…

Hougland Packing Company

In the mid-twentieth century, Hougland Packing Company was one of the largest manufacturing companies in Franklin, Indiana. From 1922 to 1953, this plant canned a variety of produce morning, noon, and night making it an agricultural and…

Living as Migrant Workers

While canning factories employed many people from Johnson County during the harvest season, they also relied on migrant workers to fulfill their labor needs. Migrant workers were people from outside the county who were brought in by the companies to…

Rider Canning Company

In 1930, Kenneth Rider and William Switzer, the owners of the Hoosier Canning Company, opened a factory on the east side of Trafalgar, near the Big Four railroad tracks. A fire on December 22, 1930 caused substantial damage, but the factory was…

Polk's Canning Company

What started as a home business in Greenwood, IN, became one of the largest canning factories in the Midwest. Millions of cans of tomatoes, peas, and other vegetables were once processed here at Polk’s Canning Company. The Polk family were early…

Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site

Though we cannot be sure exactly where Eliza Harris and her child ended up in Canada, we may have one clue. Levi Coffin wrote in his book that he and his wife, Catharine, visited Canada West in the Windsor and Chatham area east of Detroit, Michigan…

Facer Park - Freedom Coming

Regardless of the exact route that Eliza Harris and her child traveled on their journey to escape slavery, there is evidence that they made it to Canada. There are several possibilities to how that happened. If Eliza continued through Indiana then…

Cabin of Jimmy and Rachel Silliven

Much of what we know today about the experiences of enslaved peoples on the Underground Railroad comes to us through oral testimonies given after the fact or passed down through the generations. One testimony describes Eliza traveling through…

The Greenville Settlement – Union Literary Institute and James Clemens Home

Free Blacks and formerly enslaved Africans living in northern states like Indiana and Ohio were instrumental in providing support for freedom seekers along with white Americans. Though their history is not as well recorded, there are individuals and…

Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historic Site

The historic home of Quaker couple Levi and Catharine Coffin in Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana was connected on the Underground Railroad. The Coffins moved to Newport in 1826 from North Carolina. Growing up in a staunch anti-slavery family and…

Eliza Came Through Here

The importance of Eliza as a cultural figure can be seen in the variety of stories that exist telling of her journey through different places. Some say that Eliza did not go towards Cincinnati, but further north of Ripley, Ohio into Fayette County.…

"Eliza's House": Home of John Van Zandt

Eliza Harris, the Black woman who sought freedom with her child in 1838, journeyed north from the Rankin house. The further she traveled, the closer safety may have seemed. But the reality was that the Underground Railroad was threatened continually…

Red Oak Presbyterian Church and Rev. James Gilliland

John Rankin, whose home Eliza Norris first sheltered in after escaping slavery in Kentucky and entering Ohio, was a Presbyterian minister. Presbyterians were split over the role of slavery in the nation with some supporting slavery and others…

John Rankin House

We know that it was at the home of Presbyterian minister John Rankin that Eliza Harris had her first moment of safety after escaping from slavery. It had not been an easy journey for Eliza leaving in winter February 1838 from Dover, Kentucky with…

Courthouse Square and Mechanics’ Row Historic District