Dudley Ladd House of Franklin, New Hampshire -- Underground Railroad

Below is an article published in 1999 by Kathie Helm regarding the Dudley Ladd House of Franklin, New Hampshire.  Dudley Ladd's famliy supported runaway slaves through the Underground Railroad. 


House is Window to State History
"Dudley Ladd Home a Haven for Slaves"
Franklin, NH

By: Kathie Helm
Concord Monitory
January 18, 1999

In the attic of her rambling home, Frances Hildebrand carefully pulls back a disguised door to reveal an ingeniously concealed chamber built around the kitchen chimney.

Not a storage room -- although the 80-year-old used to pack away her cookie tins there - but a secret hiding place believed to have sheltered runaway slaves in the years preceding the Civil War.

"I never get tired of showing this room," says Hildebrand. "Can't you just feel the history, the secrecy?

No one knows how many slaves made their way to freedom in Canada, nor exactly how the black men, women and children attempted the trip. They hid in concealed rooms, under beds, in cellars and old barns waiting for their next escort to transport them along the circuitous route north.

When it was dark they hurried along the lost paths of the Underground Railroad, a network stretched across the northern states. Not a railroad but a journey to freedom - by coach, by wagon, by foot.

Secrecy shrouded their illegal activities and the identities of the abolitionists, men and women who risked jail and stiff fines to help fugitives.

Hildebrand, whose important home is now for sale, has a file of old press clippings handed down from owner to owner that describe the building's historic past.

In 1970, the file was given to her and husband Robert, 78, when they bought what is known as the Dudley Ladd home located on Webster Street in Franklin.

Historians say it is necessary to rely on oral legend passed down from generation to generation and the few records kept by families that contain references to fugitive slaves hiding in their homes to piece together the clandestine system of escape. People who aided slaves rarely kept detailed records or spoke about their plans for fear of being turned in to the authorities.

A 1976 publication by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration documented 41 "stations" on the Underground Railroad; eight were in New Hampshire.

The Dudley Ladd house was not listed in the booklet, but Jim Garvin of the state's Historic Preservation office said New Hampshire has never done a thorough historic survey, beyond the bicentennial publication, to identify Underground Railroad sites.

"We are eager to, and the National Parks Service has asked us and agencies similar to ours, to do just that, but we have not had the staff to go out and visit the sites, collect the data and complete the necessary research," he said. "It's a perennial subject and I often hear about another site that we hadn't heard of."

Garvin has heard about the Dudley Ladd home and its secret chamber but he has not visited the site. But its location, situated just feet from the Northern Railroad, a real railroad that ran through New Hampshire and over to the Vermont border and then up to Canada, was the parallel path many slaves followed to freedom.

"The route was flat because trains could not go up steep inclines at the time so that made it easy for wagons to travel and people to walk," Garvin. "I suspect slaves were directed to follow the railroad and they'd end up in Canada."

Dudley Ladd, a wealthy tinsmith, built the house in 1823 for his new bride, Charlotte Eastman, the daughter of Ebenezer Eastman, founder of Eastman's Village, today West Franklin.
According to what was relayed to reporters in the 1940's by the McFarlands who lived in the house for 64 years, from 1901 to 1965, Ladd's brother would bring the runaways up from Concord or other places farther south. The following day they would be relayed to a refuge in Potter Place, then to a stop in White River Junction, Vt. From there they were taken to the Canadian border.

Dudley Ladd was arrested at one time and charged with aiding fugitive slaves, but was never brought to trial. Raymond McFarland said the charge was dropped officially for lack of evidence, but he suspected that local sentiment against slavery had a lot to do with it. The federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 ordered up fines, jail terms and civil penalties for those who helped the runaways.

While no official action was taken by the State of New Hampshire to offset the acts, there is evidence of an anti-slavery climate as early as 1796. In that year President George Washington wrote to a Joseph Whipple, collector of customs in Portsmouth, to return an escaped female slave unless the action would "incite a mob or riot," according to research collected at the state's Historic Preservation office.

Whipple replied that return would be impossible, public sentiment being too strong against it.

But there also is documentation that Concord residents were ill-disposed toward abolitionists.

In 1835, British abolitionist George Thompson visited Concord to speak against slavery. Hearing of brewing ugliness, he canceled. But a crowd, cheated of Thompson, paraded his effigy, then burned it in front of the State House.

And in 1841, when abolitionist Stephen Foster interrupted church service to speak, the organists drowned him out. He was later allowed to say his piece at the Unitarian Church.

"All over New England there were pockets of abolitionists - intellectuals, the clergy - who were articulate and radically opposed to slavery," Garvin said. "But the average citizen probably viewed abolitionists with hostility - as someone trying to take away his or her legal property. We have a hard time today thinking of slaves as property, but the structure of American law protected the right to buy and sell slaves. This is a big property rights state and so abolitionists were heckled, even beaten."

Alice Shepard, in her book on the history of Franklin, points our the ironic circumstances that Ladd's overnight refuge was located just a few miles away from the birthplace of Daniel Webster, a moving figure in adoption of the Fugitive Slave Act.

In 1858, the Ladds sold their home to John White, who eight years later sold it to Edwin Stone. The McFarlands bought it from Walter Cross in 1901.

The Malcolms, who lived in the house in the years before the Hildebrands bought it, took off plaster that once surrounded the chimney and door so that school children could look at the structure more closely, said Frances Hildebrand.

The Hildebrands have decided to sell their home - a solid structure filled with immense oak beams and thick pine siding. The property is being marketed by Historic Properties in Pembroke.

The couple hopes to find new buyers who will carry on the tradition of leading visitors up the steep wooden stairs - built years after the rope ladder slaves used was no longer necessary - to the secret, windowless chamber for a look back at history.

"This massive chimney kept slaves on their way to freedom warm for a night or so," says Hildebrand, slapping the red-brick chimney. "I was always very proud to live in this house.