Place

Ritchie House

Brick two story building on grassy lawn.
The Historic Ritchie house was a station along the Underground Railroad.

Courtesy photo from Freedoms Frontier National Heritage Area

Quick Facts
Location:
1116 SE Madison St, Topeka, KS 66601
Significance:
Station along underground railroad
John and Mary Ritchie arrived in Topeka in 1855, drawn to the coming fight to ensure Kansas would become a free state. Family tradition states that this small two story stone house served as Ritchie’s Topeka residence from 1856 to 1869. While most of those who had come to Kansas in the mid-1850s came seeking only a better life, others, like John Ritchie and John Brown, came itching for the fight to defeat slavery. John Ritchie rode with the Free State Militia and turned his property into a sanctuary for enslaved men, women, and children fleeing north. Lawrence abolitionist Henry Hyatt recalled two trips to Topeka in a covered wagon in which two fugitive slaves were hiding. He left them at the Ritchie’s at midnight. It is believed that the Ritchies often hid fleeing enslaved people out in the thick underbrush and under rock outcroppings near their spring house, where Mary Ritchie would go to carrying a bucket of food without raising suspicion. In later years Ritchie claimed he had cost slaveholders $100,000 in human beings he helped smuggle to freedom.

Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park

Last updated: July 15, 2023