FRYEBURG, Maine — “Hey, you kids!” yelled the constable. “C’mon! Get out of there, now!”
That’s what Bob Hatch, 76, of Fryeburg recalls hearing as a boy when he and his young friends in the mid-1950s were exploring a granite-walled tunnel he says ran from the cellar of the Gov. John Dana home under Main Street to the 1805-built house across the street, known as the Smith House.
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(1) comment
Tom - this is really nice work. Appreciate the huge amount of work that you went to to put this piece together.
If you haven't done so, read "Never Caught" the story of Oney Judge. Oney was the personal slave of Washington and Martha Custis, shuttled between Philly and Mt. Vernon to avoid the PA law that manumitted slaves kept in the Commonwealth for two long. Her children were kept in Virginia.
She got word that she would be given to Martha's sister, which would have assured she would never see her family, and ran off to Portsmouth NH. She was later recognized by a NH Senator's daughter in the street there.
Washington tried to get her back. She was a dower slave, and George had a fiduciary duty to protect his wife's property, but it was difficult for him politically. He had signed the Fugitive Slave Act, but would pay for exercising his rights under it in abolitionist New England. Ultimately, he sent the Attorney General of the new Nation to attempt to beguile Oney to return to bondage.
She demurred.
To avoid later capture, she retreated into the hinderlands, living out her life as a fugitive launderwoman in poverty. Her grave, unlike Limbo's, is not known.
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