By Jim Knippenberg
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Author Ann Hagedorn overlooks Ripley, Ohio and the Ohio River from the Rankin House state memorial. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

RIPLEY, Ohio - A study in culture shock: Ann Hagedorn, investigative reporter at the New York Daily News and seven years a New Yorker, packs her bags and leaves the city that never sleeps (pop. 8 million) for Ripley, Ohio (pop. 1,700).

"I had a New York anxiety attack driving out Route 52. My cell phone stopped working 30 miles before I got here. I thought I'd last three days."

That was 21/2 years ago.

Hagedorn, a Dayton native, is author of Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad, a painstakingly researched account of the role Ripley and its citizens played as conductors on the Underground Railroad from the 1820s and the end of the Civil War.

To write the book, she moved to Ripley and rented a mid-1800s shotgun house on the river because she decided to practice what she was preaching to journalism students at Columbia University: "I told them, `Go where your story is.' And here I was in New York, writing a book on people in an Ohio River town. So I moved here and wrote while overlooking the river and hills of Kentucky."

As we talk Hagedorn is in the middle of a walking tour of Ripley and standing at the foot of the dilapidated stone steps that lead up a seriously steep hill to the former home of John Rankin, once the leader of Ripley's very large and active Underground Railroad community.

Look at the entrance to this path winding up the hill with the overhanging trees. It's straight out of a storybook, like looking into an enchanted forest. Imagine how that would have looked to a runaway slave after a lifetime of captivity.

"I was drawn to the people in the book because as a reporter I had covered crime for years. And I loved it. When I started at the San Jose Mercury News I was just incredulous. I couldn't believe they actually paid me for doing something I loved.

"But after years on the crime, grime and slime beat, I really wanted to write about people with good values, people who did something bigger than themselves. People here were on the front line of the war against slavery simply because they wanted to do the right thing."

This one was the home of Nathaniel Collins and it's in the process of being restored. Collins was a carpenter who made coffins in the back and he'd sometimes hide runaways in them.

"This whole movement is so incredible to me because today we live in a goal-driven society. We do A, B and C and expect X, Y and Z to happen. These people did A, B and C not knowing what would happen. Or even if anything would. They were just committed to the right thing."

See that house? There's a cage in the backyard with two live bears. No, really, come see. The guy who owns the house just loves bears. I heard he used to walk them along the banks of the river, but I haven't seen that.

Beyond the River never would have happened if Hagedorn had not gone to lunch with her agent back in 1999. She was toying with topics for a book to follow Wild Ride: The Rise and Tragic Fall of Calumet Farm, Inc., and Ransom: The Untold Story of International Kidnapping, and told her agent how much she wanted to do the railroad but, as a journalist and not an historian, she felt unqualified.

"My agent told me to do what was in my heart. She told me to go back in time and use my investigative reporting skills digging out court records, newspapers, personal papers, whatever I could find."

See how all these alleys run perpendicular to the river, right off Front Street? A fleeing slave would cross the river and disappear down an alley. The homes along the alley were owned by abolitionists so they could duck in any one of them if necessary. That was all planned from the city's very beginning. I find that amazing.

"Early on in my research, while still in New York, I kept seeing references to Rankin and Ripley. That's when I decided to focus on Ripley and let the smaller story tell the larger story, and that's the fight to end the horror of slavery."

ABOUT THE BOOK

Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad By Ann Hagedorn Simon & Schuster; $25 333 pages, including index

I think of this town as if I'm entering the pages of a novel. It's so rich in history. You realize that all the original structures owned by the people in my book are still standing. Like this white colonial. It was the home of Alexander Campbell, believed to be the first abolitionist in Ohio. He came here in 1804 from Kentucky.

One of Hagedorn's goals in telling her story was to shatter myths: "There are so many. One goal at the outset was to bust the myth that whites got involved so they could shed responsibility for slavery. I found they got involved because they saw it was terribly wrong.

"Another myth is that the railroad was an East Coast movement. It wasn't. Right here was the front line, the war before the war.

"And we all know the myth of the slave as a passive victim. No, there was no passivity. You understand that when you understand the risks and the hardships they endured to escape. That's not passivity."

Stand at the end of this alley and look up the hill. See how it's a straight shot from the river to the Rankin house? I love this view because the house looks absolutely surreal, so tiny, sitting up there on its hilltop.

"One very difficult thing for me was the material I had to leave out. Many descendants of the original families are still here, and they have wonderful stories passed down through the generations. But I couldn't use a lot of them because I wrote the book according to the rule of three - everything had to be verified by three sources or I didn't use it. Leaving those stories out really hurt."

What doesn't hurt, she says, is living in Ripley. Although she hates talking about herself - "I'm single and my eternal curiosity makes me feel ageless, so I never tell it" - she does admit that she'll stay in Ripley. "I have an apartment in Chicago because I teach at Northwestern, but I think I'll always stay here. Ripley and its people have captured me."

This is the McCague house. He was a pork packer and so wealthy he was able to loan the federal government money in the panic of 1837. His wealth depended on trade with the South, but he still elected to hide slaves in this very house. That took courage.

Moving here was the right decision, Hagedorn says, because as she met and networked with descendants, they started to trust her with their treasures - old pictures, journals, crumbling, yellowed newspapers that even the local library didn't have.

"My only problem is food. The restaurants here are good, but they close early and I usually don't eat until 10 or 11. In New York I'd just call out. Here I have to cook. Big problem."

Right here, we're about halfway up to the Rankin house. When I was writing, I'd walk the streets everyday and come up here on most of them. The hill didn't have trees in Rankin's day because they cut them all down and sold the timber to finance his activities. Not having trees also made it easier for people in the house to hear a posse coming up the hill.

"Writing this book has been life-changing for me - so strengthening. It has given me a firmer sense of what's important in life.

"And I learned things. I learned that the Underground Railroad was really about choices - the choice of slaves to escape, the choice of a free black to risk helping them and losing his or her freedom, the choice of white people to believe in racial equality enough to risk life and livelihood to help.

"There's a lot to be learned from people who made those incredible choices."

E-mail jknippenberg@enquirer.com