By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Tourism promoters throughout Greater Cincinnati are hoping that the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center opening this summer in downtown Cincinnati will bring visitors to related historic sites.

A group of tour operators from nine states toured several Freedom Trail and Underground Railroad sites in our area Monday. Here, they tour the Cranston Memorial Presbyterian Church in New Richmond. (Glenn Hartong photo)

And even though the $110 million center is not due to open until August, ambassadors of local tourism already are using the museum to highlight their local landmarks to the battle against slavery.

This week, the Warren County Convention and Visitors Bureau, along with tourism representatives from Brown, Clermont and Greene counties, is hosting a three-day "familiarization tour" for 30 organizers of bus tours in nine states. They're showing them around Underground Railroad-related sites in Southwest Ohio, a hotbed for the abolitionist movement during the 1800s.

"We have to give tourists a good product to keep them here for an overnight stay," said Stacy Daniels, group tour manager for the Warren County Convention and Visitors Bureau. "The problem is just educating the buyers, and the buyers are the tour planners. When we get them excited about a tour, they'll bring more people out here."

Tourism is the top industry in Warren County, bringing in $410 million annually for the county that's home to Paramount's Kings Island, The Beach Waterpark, an international tennis tournament and Waynesville, the self-proclaimed antiques capital of the Midwest.

Some tour planners said they would love to use the Freedom Center and other Underground Railroad sites as add-ons to tours of Southwest Ohio. Several mentioned that the tours could be perfect field trips for inner-city youth, combining education about the history of slavery with fun venues such as Paramount's Kings Island or Cincinnati Reds baseball games.

"We can tell our grandchildren about seeing this, tell them that I've been where the slaves were and saw how they escaped up north," said Dannie Gomes of Lemon-T's Travelers in Detroit. "Some black children don't know much about their own history. These tours can bring them here and show them the history."

"Slavery is so often just brushed over in history classes," added Lemonia DeClouette, owner of Lemon-T's Travelers. "There's so much missing in African-American history."

Monday, the bus tour operators visited the Rankin House in Ripley, the home of famed abolitionist John Rankin, who helped 2,000 slaves escape. The Rankin House was where "Eliza," the escaped slave who inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, stayed.

In Moscow, the operators filed into the back yard of the Fee Villa, the former residence of Underground Railroad conductor Thomas Fee Jr. As they peered down a secret entrance where escaped slaves would hide, Clermont County historian Rick Crawford told the mostly African-American crowd about the house next door to the Fee Villa. There, a decoy candle in a window attracted escaped slaves to the home, where slave hunters would re-capture them and sell them back.

The crowd gasped at the barbarity, then appeared relieved when Crawford told them that the slave-hunters were later run out of town.

The group also visited Cranston Memorial Presbyterian Church in New Richmond, which took a strong, early stand against slavery. New Richmond was also home to The Philanthropist, one of the most influential abolitionist newspapers. Promoters of tourism in Clermont County have compiled a list of 33 Underground Railroad or abolitionist sites in the county.

Later, the bus tour operators will visit several Underground Railroad markers in Springboro, the Warren County Historical Society Museum and the Afro-American Museum in Wilberforce, as well as tourist attractions such as the Golden Lamb, Waynesville, Fort Ancient and Paramount's Kings Island.

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E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com