Underground Railroad site in Falls City recognized by National Park Service
A barn behind the home of David and Ann Dorrington served as a temporary refuge for dozens of escaping slaves
BY: PAUL HAMMEL, The Nebraska Examiner wrote:LINCOLN — There was a terrifying annual chore for Robert Nelson during his growing-up years in Falls City. Just before Memorial Day, he and a cousin had to scrub clean a massive, stone mausoleum built by his great-great-great-great-grandparents, David and Ann Dorrington. Their resting places were in crypts, down a set of deep stairs where stink bugs, dust and mold had accumulated. Robert Nelson Falls City native Robert Nelson researched the history of a local couple who sheltered escaping slaves during the “bleeding Kansas” period prior to the Civil War. (Courtesy of Robert Nelson)
“It was spooky,” Nelson said. “The smell was probably mold and mildew, but if you’re a kid, you think it’s the corpses.” But curiosity eventually got the best of the former columnist for the Omaha World-Herald, now a freelance writer based in Virginia. His grandmother had spoken of famed abolitionist John Brown staying with the Dorringtons in the period around 1856-59. But he wanted to know more about these people who built such an imposing structure, with its stained-glass windows and church-like pulpit.