Mayhew Cabin

About this property

The Mayhew Cabin (officially Mayhew Cabin & Historic Village, also known as John Brown's Cave), in Nebraska City, Nebraska, is one of only two Underground Railroad sites in Nebraska officially recognized by the National Park Service. It is included among the sites of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The Mayhew Cabin was built in 1855 by Allen and Barbara (Kagi) Mayhew, who had moved to Nebraska in 1854. Mrs. Mayhew's younger brother John Henry Kagi came to stay with the Mayhews in 1855. Kagi had earned a law degree and had strong anti-slavery views. By 1856, he had moved to Kansas Territory and became an ally of the abolitionist John Brown. Kagi became Brown's most trusted advisor and his "Secretary of War". Brown believed that slavery would not end without bloodshed. Brown had for years been formulating a plan that he was convinced would end slavery forever – a raid on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. This effort was supposed to arm slaves who would in turn hold an armed uprising against their masters. Once free, they would form a community where they could live peacefully. But, before he moved forward with that plan, Brown, Kagi, and the rest of Brown's followers were dealing with anti-slavery efforts in "Bleeding Kansas". By December 1858, they were at Bain's Fort, having freed an anti-slavery friend from captivity. At the behest of a slave named Jim Daniels, on December 20, 1858, Brown and a group of his men, including Kagi, rode into Vernon County, Missouri from Kansas with the intention of taking Daniels and other slaves from their masters and taking them all the way to Canada to freedom. When they neared their destination they split into two groups. Brown's group set off to free the Daniels family first. Daniels, his pregnant wife, and their two children were owned by the James Lawrence estate and were at the home of Lawrence's son-in-law, Harvey Hicklin, and his wife. At gunpoint, the Daniels family was taken, along with another male slave named Sam Harper. Brown's group then went to the home of Isaac Larue and at gunpoint took several slaves consisting of Sam Harper's mother, little sisters, little brother, and an unrelated male slave. Simultaneously, the group led by Kagi and Colonel Whipple (Aaron Dwight Stevens) raided the home of David Cruise and took a slave named Jane, with Whipple killing Cruise in the process. The two groups met and headed for Kansas with their eleven fugitives. For weeks, the escaping slaves were hidden, receiving aid at various locations in northeast Kansas. Mrs. Daniels gave birth to a son, who was named after John Brown.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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