A 200-Year-Old House Concealed a Historic Secret-a Hidden Passageway on the Underground Railroad

"New York City was a hotbed for abolitionist advocacy in the years leading up to the Civil War. Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, called for the end of slavery from the pulpit of his Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Frederick Douglass wrote in his memoir of befriending a sailor named Stuart on the New York City streets in the aftermath of his own escape from bondage. And Sojourner Truth lived on Canal Street from 1829 to 1843."

"New York's role in the network of safe houses dubbed the "Underground Railroad" is no less sprawling, albeit spotty in the contemporary historical record. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner lamented in 2015's Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad: "...the story of the underground railroad in New York is like a jigsaw puzzle, many of whose pieces have been irretrievably lost, or a gripping detective story where the evidence is murky and incomplete.""

The Merchant's House Museum, a 19th-century New York City home occupied by the Tredwell family for nearly 100 years, contains a hidden passage that served as part of the Underground Railroad. The secret passage was intentionally built by the home's builder and earlier owner, Joseph Brewster, an ardent abolitionist. New York City served as a major center of abolitionist activity before the Civil War, with figures such as Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth active in the city. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner described New York's Underground Railroad history as fragmentary and incomplete. The newly discovered passageway is threatened by a neighboring development.

Read at Biography