Digging For Clues Of Fugitive SlavesBy John Christoffersen Associated Press Writer

WESTON (AP) — Up a steep narrow road in a remote part of this small town sits an old ice house with only the four stone walls still standing. A tunnel runs from the ice house more than 20 feet and suddenly ends, but the mystery surrounding it has lingered for generations.

Legend has it that the property was a stop on the Underground Railroad, a secret informal network of safe houses used by fugitive slaves in their quest for freedom in the 1800s. A team of archaeological experts from Central Connecticut State University spent several days this month at the site digging for clues.

Experts don’t expect to know for months whether the property was a stop for slaves because they need to sift through artifacts found in the dirt and walls and conduct more research of the area and historical documents. But their findings, which include ceramics stuffed in the wall, a bone-handled knife, nails, and animal bones, left them intrigued.

“It’s just curious why we’re finding these household goods in the tunnel,’’ said Jerry Sawyer, an adjunct instructor at Central. “Certainly it has that potential. But we cannot say definitively that it is.’’

Warren Perry, an anthropology professor at Central who specializes in the African Diaspora, said some of the artifacts were found near the doorway. Such items might have been used to bless the house as part of an African spiritual practice known as minkisi, he said.

“They would do it in the doorways because that’s where the spirits pass through,’’ Perry said. “Each of these items by themselves are significant for African spiritual practices, especially when they’re associated together. And they’re right where they should be by the doorway.’’

The project is the latest in a growing national effort to document sites on the Underground Railroad. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a $110 million museum in Cincinnati, opened last year.

“It is something that has been growing in intensity over the past decade,’’ said Robert Forbes, associate director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. “Every new confirmed site gives us new data that expands our understanding of what remains really a very shadowy chapter in American history.’’

Forbes urged caution, saying some suspected sites may be no more than folklore and romance. He said he would like to see letters or other documents tying the property owner to the antislavery movement.

“There are a lot of root cellars and basements and cupboards that have been imaginatively converted into hiding places,’’ Forbes said.

Nationwide, there are potentially thousands of stops on the Underground Railroad, including some in Connecticut, said Diane Miller, national coordinator of the Network to Freedom Program of the National Park Service. There is academic resistance to the effort, with some dismissing the accounts of underground railroad sites as mostly mythology, but oral traditions can provide clues that lead to descendants and documentary evidence, she said.

“We would love to see these sites nominated to the Network to Freedom,’’ Miller said. “I’m sure there are valid sites in Connecticut.’’

Weston, a wealthy mostly white town in Fairfield County with a population of about 10,000, was divided over slavery in the 19th Century, local historians said. The town was not known as a center for abolitionists, but the ice house on Ladder Hill Road is less than a mile from a colony of black residents in the 19th Century known as Little Egypt.

No one is quite sure where the legend has come from, but many local residents have heard it for decades.

“It really is the lore on Ladder Hill Road since before my time,’’ said Mary Ann Barr, a Weston historian who has lived on the same street as the ice house since the 1950s and heard the account from families who lived on the street since the 1920s.

Barr is researching other ice houses and root cellars, but so far none have tunnels. She is also looking into the Bulkley family that owned the property, but all she knows is they were farmers.

Ellen Strauss, an attorney who owns the property and requested the dig, hopes to have the site designated a historic landmark if it is a confirmed stop on the underground railroad. Strauss noted that the tunnel heads toward an adjacent house with a black chimney, the traditional mark of British Tories who were willing to free slaves if they fought for the Crown.

“When I was a kid we used to crawl in there,’’ Strauss said. “I’m very excited about it. I have every expectation that they’re going to find evidence to prove the oral history we’ve all heard over the years.’’

Last week, college students spent the week crawling around the dirt with a mason’s trowel, brushes, and other tools. A groundhog sat in the corner of the tunnel.

“We have a little friend,’’ said Chris Douyard, one of the student diggers. “He’s pretty much afraid of us. You hear him once in a while poke his head out.’’

Researchers remain curious, too. Sawyer, who tells his students “the truth is in the ground,’’ was intrigued by pieces of pottery that were shoved into the wall of the ice house.

“That’s not a smoking gun, but it’s a curiosity,’’ Sawyer said. “People that passed through underground railroad sites often leave a mark to let someone know they were there.’’