`Uncle Tom's Cabin' opens door to public

WASHINGTON -- Over the weekend, the 18th-century door finally creaked open at the place known as Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the first tour group stepped off the hot sidewalk in Bethesda, Md., and into the one room where Josiah Henson lived as a slave.

Inside, tour guide Warren Fleming, talked about how Henson's pre-Civil War book was the basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe's ``Uncle Tom's Cabin." Then Fleming told his own story, about how his great-great-grandfather had been enslaved on a plantation in Montgomery County, Md., and about his pride in guiding the first tours inside Henson's place.

``Uncle Tom is America. This cabin tells us where we were and where we have to go," said Fleming, 53, of Montgomery County's historic preservation committee.

``This is something for our kids. When they're brought up today, they don't know this kind of history, they don't know what it was to be a slave in Maryland."

Over the weekend, more than 1,000 visitors toured the cabin, where Henson lived from 1795 to 1830. Lucia McAnallen, 75, of Silver Spring, Md., said that ``La Cabaña del Tío Tom" was required reading in her school in Bogotá.

``I thought . . . I must come see it," McAnallen said, ``since I'm still alive and with energy."

The cabin and the attached three-bedroom house had always been privately owned.

The 1-acre property, including the cabin, was put on the market last year. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission bought it for $1 million.

The property will be restored, and it might be used as a museum or an African-American history research center, said Gwen Wright, Montgomery County's historic preservation supervisor.

``It kind of gives you an idea that you don't get out of textbooks," said David Johnson, 13, who was with his parents, two siblings, and grandparents. ``This actually gives you an idea of what it was really like."

That insight pleased the teenager's father, David Johnson, 35, of Springfield, Va. ``It's important for children to understand that things for African-Americans haven't always been easy, that there's always been a struggle," he said.

Judy Miller, 49, of Burtonsville, Md., shot digital photos to show students in her history classes at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring.

``They don't understand the concept of slavery," she said. ``They can read about it, but most kids can't believe it ever happened."

The 13- by 17-foot cabin now has hardwood floors and curtains. In Henson's era, the floors were dirt and the ceiling was lower. Over the mantle of a stone fireplace is a drawing of Henson and a poster with an excerpt from ``The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave," published in 1848.

Henson was born a slave on a plantation in Charles County, Md., in 1789, and was sold at auction in Rockville, Md. He went to Isaac Riley's 3,700-acre plantation in Bethesda, now the area around the cabin.

In 1825, Riley asked Henson to take 20 slaves to Kentucky, so creditors could not get to them. Henson's group passed through the free state of Ohio, where people told them they could stay, Henson's book says. But Henson had given Riley his word that he would return. He did. In 1830, Henson escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad.