NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (KOLN) – A piece of Underground Railroad history is reopening on Juneteenth after severe flooding forced it to close seven years ago.

The Mayhew Cabin offered shelter to people escaping slavery before the Civil War. Visitors can now walk through the same doors they did.

Family history connects to cabin

Darryl Hogan, president of the Mayhew Cabin Foundation, shares how his family escaped slavery in 1859.

“There was a slaveholder who held my third great-grandmother and a few other of the escaped slaves who had passed away, and they were going to be sold as property,” Hogan said from Canada. “So it was almost, in either a death sentence or a worse imprisonment than they had already had.”

The Mayhew family and abolitionist John Brown offered strangers a chance for freedom.

“En route, one of the enslaved people was pregnant and gave birth. So they are affectionately known as the 12 who passed through here,” said Doug Kreifels, board treasurer.

Cabin’s history dates to 1855

The Mayhew Cabin is one of Nebraska’s oldest structures, built in 1855 as the home of Allen B. Mayhew and his wife Barbara Ann. Barbara’s brother, John Kagi, lived there briefly as well.

Kagi helped abolitionist John Brown lead the enslaved people from Missouri to the cabin, as they escaped to Canada.

Flood damage closed site for seven years

Kreifels grew up learning about the cabin’s history.

“I remember when I went through that cabin and that cave and what an impact it had on me,” he said.

A flood in 2019 closed the site for seven years.

“And not only did it reach… as high as this overfill. I mean, it came up over the bank and flooded into the museum as well and caused some damage there,” Kreifels said.

Community effort restores cabin

The Mayhew Cabin Foundation restructured its board and used community grants to recruit Butch Bovier, a historical craftsman.

“Collectively, I think we bring a lot of skill sets together and goodwill,” said Robert Nelson, vice president of the board.

“They bring their dreams to me and I make them happen,” Bovier said.

Bovier helped restore the cabin.

“And that was kind of neat because what we did 20 years ago held up very well. In fact, it held up a lot better than we thought,” he said.

The team worked on the cottonwood logs.

“The logs are this wide, you don’t replace it because that much is bad. So we used a modern product to do some of that. In some cases, we just scraped it smooth,” Bovier said.

The team partially restored John Brown’s Cave. The cabin was moved to its current location in the 1930s from its original site. The owner at the time dug a tunnel-like system that leads to the ravine.

“It’s a tool that we use to help educate everyone who might have an interest in understanding what it might have been like for an enslaved person seeking freedom,” Kreifels said.

Volunteers make reopening possible

The Mayhew Cabin and John Brown’s Cave would not be able to open without the hard work of volunteers. For months, volunteers cleaned up the site and helped Bovier fix the cabin logs, cave and roof. One of them is Jason Hein, who moved to Nebraska City from California. Hein was looking for an opportunity to volunteer in the community and stumbled upon a Facebook post asking for extra hands to help at the Mayhew Cabin. His workplace Burr Farms donated machinery and services toward the efforts.

“You know, we don’t want things falling off the map. We want it to be there for future generations,” Hein said.

“And since that weekend, I’ve been out here Saturdays and Sundays every week. If there isn’t a whole bunch of hands trying to get something done, it’s not going to get done,” he said.

Volunteers have been preparing to reopen the site for more than three months.

“So, I mean, we’ve just literally been here, you know, cutting down trees or trimming trees and then people kind of walking by and seeing and asking, hey, what are you up to?” Nelson said.

The cabin will reopen on Juneteenth.

“And, it was just a matter of this is something that we need to do as a community. Let’s just do it and, make the world a little bit better place,” Hogan said.

Lane Trail and ‘Bloody Kansas’

The Mayhew Cabin was part of the Lane Trail on the Underground Railroad. At the time, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was formed and pro-slavery and abolitionists fought to sway the public toward their beliefs, giving it the nickname “Bloody Kansas.” Abolitionists in southeast Nebraska aided these efforts and helped slaves escape on the Lane Trail.

“It’s an incredible building, but it’s kind of the launch. It was seen as the southern terminus of the Army of the North marching into Kansas, but then also kind of the beginning of the Underground Railroad,” Nelson said.

Nelson, a former Omaha World Herald journalist, researched the Lane Trail extensively. He grew up in Falls City, Nebraska and found out his family has a history of aiding abolitionists.

“The successful fight to stop (slavery), based in Nebraska, or by the people who are involved with this Underground Railroad, is the reason the South secedes. They can’t expand anymore. You know, putting up the wall of Kansas really is what starts the Civil War. So that idea that’s that that’s the Civil War before the Civil War, and Nebraska played a big part of it. I think is a story that’s lost,” Nelson said.

Work remains on the site. The nonprofit wants to repair the museum building and other historic buildings on the property.

Juneteenth event details

A Juneteenth event starts at 7 p.m. Friday at the Mayhew Cabin in Nebraska City. People will have the opportunity to hear speeches from Butch Bovier, Robert Nelson and Darryl Hogan. The event is open to the public and free. There is outdoor seating, but people are welcome to bring lawn chairs. Live music will be provided by West Street Wranglers.

Refreshments will be served at the Hidden Falls Cave Event Center. The Mayhew Cabin is located at 2012 4th Corso in Nebraska City. Questions can be directed to Doug Kreifels at (402) 209-4060.

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For more than two years, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen did not make or take a single call on his cellphone while on the clock as the state’s chief executive — at least none that there is any record of, according to his office’s top attorney.

After the Flatwater Free Press filed a public records request for call logs from Pillen’s cellphone dating back to September 2023, the governor’s general counsel said no such records exist.

“Governor Pillen does not have a state-issued mobile phone,” the lawyer, Michael J. Donley, said in an email earlier this month — more than four months after Flatwater filed the request.

The revelation marks Pillen’s latest step to shield his communications from public view. He broke with more than 30 years of gubernatorial practice by not releasing a public schedule in March 2023, just two months into his first term. And in August of that year, his office refused to release four of his emails in response to a public records request, citing “executive privilege” — a justification that does not exist in Nebraska’s public records laws.

“I don’t email, I don’t text,” the first-term Republican governor said in response to criticism from Democratic lawmakers over his refusal to release the emails. “Texting when it’s for anything other than logistics, I don’t do.”

His decision not to carry a state-owned cellphone makes him the first governor in at least 20 years not to do so — and, advocates say, amounts to an attempt to circumvent state law.