The Mayhew Cabin Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The Mayhew Cabin with John Brown’s Cave Museum interprets the history of Nebraska’s Underground Railroad. The Mayhew Cabin Foundation’s Board of Directors are as follows:
Board of Directors
Darryl Hogan, President
Darryl is a sixth-generation descendant of Sam and Jane Harper, a couple who were once enslaved in Missouri but found their way to freedom in 1859 with the assistance of abolitionist John Brown. Darryl has had several public speaking opportunities related to the history of Sam and Jane’s journey to freedom. As the principal subject for the North is Freedom photo exhibition, he was first asked to speak at the Canadian Embassy to the US in Washington, DC when the installation was premiered to coincide with the opening of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in 2016. Subsequent engagements included the US Embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Art Windsor Essex and Constitution Hall in Topeka, KS. Darryl has also been interviewed by several media outlets and podcasts.
Darryl is a past Vice President of the Amherstburg Freedom Museum board and a current Director of the Mayhew Cabin Foundation. In his professional life, Darryl is a Technical Architect for a large technology company.
Robert Nelson, Vice President
Amid his 30-year journalism career in Texas, Phoenix, Omaha, and Washington, D.C., Bob has often steered from current events to investigate lost history. One such tangent led to a recent piece, “The Fever-Heated and Blood-Hot Abolitionists of Falls City,” for History Nebraska magazine as well as a successful nomination of the “Site of the Dorrington House and Barn” in Falls City to the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. With the designation, the Dorrington site in Falls City becomes the second location of confirmed Underground Railroad activity in Nebraska in the 760-member Network to Freedom. The first, of course, is Mayhew Cabin.
Nelson currently is under contract as a media consultant for the National Park Service as he works on his third book. In his spare time, he continues to expand his research on the Western Line of the Underground Railroad through Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa along a path previously used by free-state settlers and militia intent on circumventing a Missouri-River blockade of Kansas Territory by pro-slavery Border Ruffians.
Nelson and a growing number of scholars and town leaders between Topeka and Iowa City hope their work will one day result in the creation of the Army of the North National Historic Trail from Iowa City, through Tabor, Falls City, Nebraska City and Holton, to Topeka’s Constitution Hall, which served as a headquarters and supply depot for efforts to assist freedom seekers on their journey to Canada.
Anita Robarge, Secretary
Anita’s interest in history began in high school, when she took an AP History class. Anita graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a BA in English. While in college, she enjoyed how literature both records and reflects our history. After graduation, Anita worked in retail management, and later, as a Legal Secretary where she handled conservatorships, divorces, discrimination, guardian ad litems, adoptions, etc. She started working for the City of Omaha in 2007, first in Permits and Inspections, then Police Records, and for the last 10 years, as a Secretary for the Omaha Fire Department.
Anita visited the Mayhew cabin several times while growing up in Nebraska, and later traveled to Harper’s Ferry and experienced the site of John Brown’s last stand. She has also been to Jamestown, Virginia, where the first English settlement was established, and Williamsburg, Virginia, where the Revolutionary War started. In addition, she has visited the Gettysburg battlegrounds, George Washington’s Mt. Vernon, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and most of the museums in Washington, D.C. Anita collects history books, the majority of which are about the Civil and Revolutionary Wars.
Douglas J. Kreifels, Treasurer
Doug began his undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. His second year there was spent studying abroad in Chimbote and Lima, Peru as a participant in Notre Dame’s Latin American Program of Experiential Learning. While there he lived and worked among some of that country’s poorest residents under the direction and guidance of the Holy Cross Missionaries. That deep and immersive experience went on to shape his outlook on life and led to the development of a strong commitment to social justice involving the issues of poverty, racism, and marginalization. Doug later earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a Political Science Major from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He went on to spend two years working with Boston Public Housing residents in the area of employment preparation and job training services.
While his early education and work experiences took him out of state, Doug is a proud Nebraska native who was born and raised in Nebraska City, NE. Doug has fond memories of visiting the Mayhew Cabin and John Brown’s Cave as a child, and again as an adult with his wife and two children upon their return to Nebraska City in 1989.
Over the span of his 32-year career with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, Doug worked closely within the Child and Adult Protective Services systems throughout southeast Nebraska, and for two additional years in the private sector with the foster care program. Doug currently serves as Executive Director of the Nebraska City Center for Children and Families.
Doug is married to wife Frances, and together they enjoy visiting their two grown children, Jessica in Colorado and Nicholas and his wife Erin in New York.
Dr. David H. Van Winkle, At Large
David became a board member in July of 2019. David obtained his PhD in biology in 2001 and was a plant pathologist with the USDA in Lincoln, Nebraska and Fargo, North Dakota until 2007. Due to an unexpected life-changing event in late 2006, he redirected his career into business analytics working for various private companies including Gallup, NRC Health, Streck, Inc., and GeneDx. After 17 years, David left the corporate business realm in 2023 for a job with the US Postal Service, taking pride in doing his part to ensure every address in the country is able to send and receive mail nearly every day of the year..
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With all of that said, the Mayhew Cabin Museum is not about those pictured above. It is about the people you will learn about by visiting the history pages on this website or by visiting the museum, namely Allen and Barbara Mayhew, John Henri Kagi, John Brown, and The Twelve.
It is also about YOU because history belongs to each and every one of us.
If you can, please donate to the Foundation to help preserve this history. Thank you for your support!
The Mayhew Cabin Foundation would like to recognize the time, energy, and expertise of David Van Winkle in building this website.