The Underground Railroad Experience at the Black Horse Inn Opens
Two longtime Belmont County entities, one founded in 1993 and one built over two centuries ago, began a new chapter together on November 13 with the grand opening ceremony of The Underground Railroad Experience at the Black Horse Inn in Morristown, Ohio.
Co-founders of the Underground Railroad Museum, Dr. John Mattox and his wife, Rosalind Mattox, started with a simple traveling trunk filled with artifacts that they took into schools and to community gatherings.
During the ceremony, John Mattox Jr., son of John and Rosalind, and board chair of the Underground Railroad Museum, spoke about his father’s vision behind the museum’s founding.
“He understood that history wasn’t something that should be confined to the pages of a book or the walls of a museum, but something that should be shared and discussed, questioned and understood. He believed that stories of those that sought freedom, those who helped them along the way and those who fought for dignity and equality deserve to be told.”
The secret routes and safe houses of the Underground Railroad provided a path to freedom for fugitive slaves escaping to the northern United States and eastern Canada from the late 1700s through the Civil War. The journey was dangerous and filled with uncertainty for anyone traveling it.
The path to bringing the Underground Railroad Experience to its new home at the Black Horse Inn was filled with an uncertainty of its own.
“Nothing about this project was easy,” said Jackie Pugh, the Executive Director of Belmont County Tourism. “There were hurdles, there were setbacks, there were challenges in every direction, plenty of moments when we had to figure out a completely new path forward. But we never stopped believing in what we were building.
“Today is about much more than a restoration of a historic building or the opening of a new museum. It’s about what happens when people come together around a shared vision and refuse to give up on it.”
The story of the Black Horse Inn’s preservation makes the two a natural pair. It was purchased nearly 40 years ago by a group of Morristown residents without a clear plan for the deteriorating structure. After nearly four decades of incremental work and progress, the Black Horse has been restored and has found a new life hosting the museum.
“…historic places are so important,” said Pamela McCort, Morristown Historic Preservation Association officer and member of the group that purchased the Black Horse Inn. “When we can visit a place where Abraham Lincoln stopped or George Washington slept, we feel connected to something greater than ourselves. We connect to that person, that time, that place…
We’re connected because of what the Black Horse represents, and now because of what the Underground Railroad represents. One’s an important historic building and the other is a powerful movement. And together, at this time in history, they are both greater than ever before.”
Although a grand opening can feel like the end of the long and strenuous process of bringing something to life, it’s also a beginning. Even with all of the work that has been completed, plans are already being made to take the Underground Railroad Experience at the Black Horse Inn to the next level. Renovations are continuing on the inn’s second floor, with plans to turn it into an Airbnb, and to develop the adjacent area to the inn into an amphitheater.
Still, the effort put into bringing these two historic entities together shouldn’t be understated, and that’s precisely what the grand opening was about: celebrating that accomplishment.
“When we gathered here for the groundbreaking… we were celebrating the promise of what this place could become,” said Mattox Jr. “Today we see that promise fulfilled.”
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