Originally published June 2017
We often get asked if The Lamson House was part of The Underground Railroad. The answer to that is no. The house was built many years after the end of The Civil War, so there is no possibility that it could have been used to hide slaves traveling from The South to Canada. But, that does not mean that The Lamson House does not have other secrets.
We also occasionally get asked if it is true that there is a secret tunnel in the basement. For a long time we were not sure about that. There is no opening to a tunnel there now. But thanks to a member of The Bedford Lions Club who was familiar with The Lamson House many years ago, we are now able to confirm that it does appear that, yes, there is a possible secret tunnel in the basement.
The gentleman who spoke to us about it said that he had been in the tunnel as a teenager and that it lead to the sewers under Bedford, which could be then followed into Downtown Bedford. He told us where the tunnel entrance would be located and we were able to drill a small hole through the wall and use a small camera to confirm that there is an opening behind the wall. The excavation that would be required to open up that tunnel again would not be something we would do anytime soon, but it is fun to know that there is a small mystery in our basement.
The fact that this tunnel exists brings up all new questions, mostly along the lines of “Why?” While we have no proof, I suspect that we are looking at a rum running tunnel. Prohibition lasted in the US from 1920 to 1933. At that time, The Lamson House would have been on the edges of Bedford. Many of the homes that now exist between our house and Rockside Road did not get built until after the mid-1930s. It is not a far reach to imagine that alcohol would have been smuggled into Bedford on trains coming from relatively nearby Canada. The alcohol could be then moved into the sewers under Bedford and taken to The Lamson House through the tunnel, where it could be loaded onto wagons without too many prying eyes to watch.
Again, we have no proof that this is what the tunnel was used for, but it certainly makes sense.