Mayhew Cabin & John Brown's Cave...Nebraska City, Nebraska

DATE:  October 9, 2015

HISTORICAL SITE:  Mayhew Cabin

LOCATION:  2012 4^th Corso, Nebraska City, Otoe Co., Nebraska  68410

MARKER #:  11000013

DEDICATED:  February 11, 2011

Mayhew Cabin   1855  

This cabin, one of Nebraska’s oldest structures, was built in the summer of 1855 as the home of Allen B. Mayhew, his wife, Barbara Ann (Kagy) Mayhew, and their sons, Edward and Henry. John Henry Kagi, Barbara Mayhew’s brother, lived briefly with the Mayhews before joining abolitionist John Brown in Kansas.

In February 1859 Kagi helped Brown lead eleven Missouri slaves to freedom in Iowa via Nebraska City. During the trek Kagi narrowly avoided arrest while at the cabin. He was killed in October 1859 during Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, arsenal to seize weapons for a slave uprising.

Beginning in the 1870’s, stories and recollections about this turbulent era credited the cabin as an Underground Railroad station. Edward Mayhew recalled Kagi once bringing fourteen black persons (possibly escaping slaves) to the cabin for breakfast. When the cabin was moved several feet in the 1930’s due to highway construction, a “cave” allegedly used to hide freedom-seeking slaves, was recreated nearby.

Legends connecting John Brown to the Mayhew cabin made it a popular tourist attraction devoted to the antislavery cause.

MARKER PLACED BY:  Nelson Family Foundation & Nebraska State Historical Society

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS: 

Facts…John Kagi, brother in law to Allen Mayhew, stayed here for a short period in 1855 and moved to Kansas in 1856. He was an abolitionist and became one of John Brown’s most trusted advisors and his “Secretary of War”. In 1858, he was involved in taking 12 slaves in Missouri and heading north. Allen’s son Edward, remembers his uncle bringing 12 “Negros” to the cabin for breakfast.

The cabin was moved in 1937 to keep it from being destroyed by the construction of a new highway and according to the National Park Service, “the owner had a cave built underneath the cabin to “help interpret the Mayhew family’s rumored association with the Underground Railroad”.

I can’t be the only person who has a problem with “stories, recollections and rumors” being put forward as fact? After reading RoadTrippers write up on the Mayhew Cabin, I thought we were going to see a part of the Underground Railroad history.

A cave “allegedly” used to hide freedom-seeking slaves was recreated? I’m sorry, but really, can’t anyone think of a reason stories might be fabricated by a person who wants the place to have more history than it does? Especially when that person is going to be opening the cabin and cave to the public?

Finally I read something that says “despite the folklore, the cabin does have a documented association with the Underground Railroad”.

I read a research paper by James E. Potter titled “John Brown’s Cave and the Underground Railroad in Nebraska”. It was a great paper on the history…or better yet, folklore of the cabin; its occupants and visitors.

And it gave credence to that nagging feeling that both Dirk and I had that yes, Allen Mayhew’s  brother in law lived there a short time and yes, that same brother in law was close to John Brown, and yes, that brother in law died at Harpers Ferry.

For the maybe’s…yes, the brother in law may have brought some fugitive slaves to the cabin once for breakfast and yes, Nebraska seems to have been a route taken by fugitive slaves in trying to get to freedom. Beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be any real proof that any of the other claims made about the Mayhew’s or their cabin or their “cave” are what everyone seems to really want them to be.

As for the National Parks Service’s “documented proof” of the cabin’s association with the Underground Railroad, that association, as far as I can see, is that someone involved in the Underground Railroad lived there for a short period.

Lots of people, including subsequent owners, had plenty of reasons to perpetuate the myth that this cabin and its occupants had major roles in the fugitive slave route. A few times in history, cooler heads have tried to prevail but those statements or articles were moved to the side in favor of the much more colorful history that everyone wanted to be true.

 

I have no idea why the “recollections” of a child living in the cabin right at the time period can be tossed aside when the “recollections” of others having never lived in the area or doing research based on the same faulty information can be accepted as fact.

I have no reason to want the information to be doubted other than that search for the real truth. Like I said from the start, Dirk and I had problems with the “facts” and the information I have found since, has done nothing to clear that doubt up. I did quite a bit of research trying to dispel the nagging doubt that had developed, but just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it so.

Even the application for federal historic designation gives the areas of significance as “social history, recreation/entertainment and folklore” and that it “offers Nebraskans a rare opportunity to examine their role in creating and consuming folklore”.

It is, in the end, a wonderfully preserved old cabin that other than the facts about the brother in law, is just that…an old cabin.

Maybe the letdown was that I had convinced myself of its total authenticity based on the write up on the RoadTrippers website and a review from another visitor. I was disappointed.