The purported route of an Underground Railroad tunnel from 793 Main St. to 774 Main St. is highlighted on this 1880 map. Water Street shown on the map is Pine Street today. Although the tunnel has become part of local legend, historical evidence strongly suggests that it never existed. (From the archives of the Aurora Town Historian’s Office). Was There a Secret Tunnel Under East Main Street?

by Robert Lowell Goller Town and Village Historian Copyright 2021 Robert Lowell Goller

ne of the more oft-repeated stories of East Aurora’s role on the Underground Railroad O involves a tunnel under East Main Street. According to the account, enslaved individu- als seeking passage to Canada could avoid detection while in East Aurora by making their way underground from the house at 793 Main St. to the house at 774 Main St.

According to the story, individuals hidden in horse-wagons were brought to the Hoyt family home on the south side of the road. Once inside, they could access a tunnel in the basement and crawl under Main Street to the Bowen house on the north side of the road. The tunnel would have taken the individuals on a diagonal route underneath Main Street in front of what is today Wood Funeral Home. The intriguing nature of the account no doubt has led to its near-legendary status in East Aurora. However, historical evidence over- whelmingly suggests that a secret tunnel never existed under East Main Street. The origin of the story is unclear, but the legend has been mentioned in more than a few local history books, often with the caveat that the existence of the tunnel was “purported” or “supposed.” Rachelle Moyer Francis briefly mentions the legendary story in her 1991 book, Rambles Through Aurora: Pine and East Main Streets. The enslaved individuals “so the story goes, would literally crawl underground under Main Street from the Hoyts to the Bowens,” Francis wrote. “It was supposedly only big enough to crawl through,” Michael Kelly noted of the tunnel in Local Lore, a pictorial series highlighting interesting aspects of East Aurora history. Some locals have suggested that irregularities in the basement walls provide evidence of the tunnel’s existence more than 170 years ago. “There is a bulge and a strange patching job in the basement wall directly under the front door” of 774 Main Street, Francis noted in her research of the local legend. Some have suggested this was once a “priest hole” or “hidey hole” for individuals to make their way from one house to the other. This appears to be the only evidence provided in support of the tunnel claim. However, there’s ample evidence to support the position that the tunnel never existed: —No physical evidence of a circa-1850 tunnel under this section of the street has ever been found. Nothing was found when Main Street was excavated during the New York State Department of Transportation’s reconstruction project between 2008 and 2010. There also are no reports of tunnel evidence from previous Main Street reconstruction projects. A basement-level tunnel under the street would have required, at the very least, semi-sophisticated structural support, and no physical evidence has ever been reported to indicate that something like this existed. A Cultural Resources Survey conducted by the Federal Highway Administration and the New York State Department of Transportation in 2005 found no evidence of a tunnel. Many engineers and experts have suggested that irregularities in the walls of a basement could be the result of many things, including water damage. —Historians across the nation have listed tunnels and secret rooms among the more popular myths associated with the Underground Railroad. “Those tunnels or secret rooms in attics, garrets, cellars or basements? Not many, I’m afraid,” wrote Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Har- vard University professor and executive producer of the PBS documentary, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.” “Most fugitive slaves spirited themselves out of towns under the cover of darkness, not through tunnels, the construction of which would have been huge undertakings and quite costly. And few homes in the North had secret passageways or hidden rooms in which slaves could be concealed.” —In the context of the local Underground Railroad effort, a tunnel under Main Street makes no sense. Although not always recog- nized as such, the Underground Railroad was a sophisticated, well-orchestrated system. Enslaved people were often hidden and trans- ported in wagons to destinations along the route that were strategically planned in advance. In that context, its unlikely that individu- als being inconspicuously transported northbound along what is today Olean Road would be directed to crawl through an under- ground tunnel from the south side to the north side of Main Street, when the wagon could have just as easily dropped off the individu- als on the north side to begin with. The tunnel is only one of several claims of Underground Railroad activity on East Main Street. A number of other houses in this neighborhood have also been cited as stations. However, these claims also lack evidence. In one case, the claim is supported by noth- ing more than the existence of a strange stairway in the house. And at 762 Main St., it was claimed that individuals once hid in under- ground quarters on a rise in the ground toward the rear of the property near East Fillmore Avenue. The claim was made by East Auro- ra Advertiser columnist Sig Spooner, who lived in the house for many years in the mid-1900s, but the origins of the story remain un- clear, and there’s no evidence to support it. This doesn’t mean that the Town of Aurora, with its proximity to the Canadian border, didn’t play an important role on the Under- ground Railroad. Some of the activities, including the political advocacy in the hamlet of Griffins Mills, are very well documented through church and anti-slavery society meeting minutes. However, many local Underground Railroad claims, including hidden rooms in local houses and the secret tunnel under Main Street, remain unverified and unlikely.

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Robert Lowell Goller is the eighth Aurora town and East Aurora village historian since the office was created in 1919. The Historian’s Office is open for research Wednesdays and Thursdays from 1-4 p.m., and by appointment. Vis- it www.townofaurora.com/departments/historian for more information. The Office of the Historian can also be found on Facebook at “Aurora Town Historian” and on Instagram at “auroratownhistorian.”