The village just received an email from someone who appreciates the work and sacrifice of past generations. Please read it. It shows what lasting effects can happen when people work together for the common good.
Hi,
I’m watching a show about the US Civil War, and after research I discovered that your village was important as an Underground Railroad refuge for enslaved persons freeing slavery.
I see so much strife and division this election year, and people tend to forget that people of all colors and backgrounds united to address the wrongs of slavery. The penalties for assisting an enslaved person were imprisonment, confiscation of real property and often death. Many in your village are direct descendants of those brave families, and lost brave young men during the war. Please extend my thanks to them. If it were not for their moral vision, thousands of families would have had a terrible existence post-reconstruction.
We all should be reminded of the unity that we Americans are made of. Despite the political fracas and sensationalism, we are united at our core, and that truly is the American Way.
The Village of Ripley Ohio is one of the places that does not have to be made “great” again. It already is.