{"id":631,"slug":"todd-house-iowa","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Todd House had rifles in the cellar and cannons in the haymow. Reverend John Todd's 1853 parsonage in Tabor, Iowa, looked like a minister's home in a Congregational colony founded to escape malaria on the Missouri bottoms — but Tabor was the nearest fully antislavery town to bleeding Kansas, and the parsonage was the arsenal. John Brown hid two hundred Sharps rifles, ammunition, sabers, and clothing in the cellar; a brass cannon sat in the haymow and a second on wheels in the wagon shed.","Tabor was, by the historians' account, the headquarters of the northern Kansas forces — the arms depot for men going down to the free-state fight and the hospital for the wounded coming back. Brown used the town as his secret base through 1856-57; after defending Lawrence he came east through Tabor, and the arms he'd cached in Todd's cellar went east with him — the same rifles that would be carried into Harpers Ferry in 1859.","The Todd family sheltered freedom seekers as a matter of course — the house is one of only four documented Underground Railroad stations left in Iowa, and the whole town is a Network to Freedom district. A former congressman bought it in the 1960s and sold it at cost to the Tabor Historical Society — the parsonage where the war's weapons were stored now run by the town that stored them.","The Todd House is the archive's arsenal file — the Iowa parsonage whose cellar held the Sharps rifles bound for Harpers Ferry, in the town that was John Brown's secret headquarters and the Underground Railroad's Kansas gateway."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Todd House is the archive's haymow file — the 1853 Tabor parsonage where John Brown cached two hundred Sharps rifles and two cannons, one of Iowa's four surviving documented Underground Railroad stations, in the town that armed Bleeding Kansas.","A parsonage that held cannons keeps its cellar — the file's suggestion being that the Todd House's hold is the arsenal: the rifles under the minister's floor that would fire at Harpers Ferry, in the colony built on a hill to escape the malaria bottoms."]}],"name":"Todd House","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_SITE","type_label":"Historic Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD_HISTORY","AFRICAN_AMERICAN_HISTORY","HISTORIC_SITE","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites"],"desc":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","full_desc":"A historic site in Tabor, Iowa, a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing, Todd House is filed here for what the record attaches to it. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. It sits in the archive under dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 3 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Access is restricted, and the file says so plainly.","address":"705 Park St.","city":"Tabor","county":"Fremont","state":"Iowa","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":40.894941,"lon":-95.673618,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"RESTRICTED","access_notes":"NPS public listing access field: No. This is a listing snapshot; current arrangements still require confirmation.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 02IA02, source row 24. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":62.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.35,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. Sources including 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01' carry the record. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Todd House is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. Sources including 'NPS Network to Freedom listing' carry the record. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"The house’s history is documented. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'NPS Network to Freedom listing'. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest. The claim holds its place in the ledger.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access is restricted; check with the managing agency or landowner before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Underground Railroad","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","incoming_value":"The Tabor house—where John Brown drilled his men.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"public_access","existing_value":"RESTRICTED","incoming_value":"PUBLIC","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"historic_designation","existing_value":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","incoming_value":"NPS Network to Freedom","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 02IA02, source row 24. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","incoming_value":"UGRR enrichment wave 3; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Todd House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_House","desc":"Topics referred to by the same term","extract":"Todd House or Todd Farm or Todd Farmhouse or variations may refer to:\n\nTodd House (Plantersville, Alabama), listed on the NRHP in Alabama\nCharles S. Todd House, Tucson, AZ, listed on the NRHP in Arizona\nOrrin Todd House, Hamden, CT, listed on the NRHP in Connecticut\nTodd House (Tabor, Iowa), listed on the NRHP in Iowa\nTodd-Montgomery Houses, Danville, KY, listed on the NRHP in Kentucky\nRobert Todd Summer Home, Frankfort, KY, listed on the NRHP in Kentucky\nMary Todd Lincoln House, Lexington, KY, listed on the NRHP in Kentucky\nWilliam Lytle Todd House, Lexington, KY, listed on the NRHP in Kentucky\nPorter–Todd House, Louisville, KY, listed on the NRHP in Kentucky\nCharles and Letitia Shelby Todd","img":null,"score":89},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":3,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}