Journey to Freedom: Uncovering the Grayson Sisters' Escape from Nebraska Territory - Hardcoverby Gail Shaffer Blankenau (Author) In late November of 1858 two enslaved Black women Celia Grayson, age twenty two, and Eliza Grayson, age twenty escaped the Stephen F. Nuckolls household in southeastern Nebraska. John Williamson, a man of African American and Cherokee descent from Iowa, guided them through the dark to the Missouri River, where they boarded a skiff and crossed the icy waters, heading for their first stop on the Underground Railroad at