You are looking at a tiny opening, maybe three feet wide and two feet high, that peers into a hidden room against a stairwell that served as one of the first stopping points of the northbound path of America’s Underground Railroad.
The Underground Railroad, of course, was the illegal highway that American enslaved people used to escape from the South to the northern states where slavery was forbidden. This particular hiding place got its start in the mid-19th century in Gettysburg’s “Dobbin House,” the oldest building in the town.
Alexander Dobbin, a Presbyterian Minister from Ireland, had the house constructed on his Gettysburg farm in 1776. The stone structure was massive for the rural Pennsylvania farm at the time (see second photo), having seven fireplaces and multiple rooms. Dobbin had 19 children to fill the space up (ten from his first wife, Isabella, who died young, and nine stepchildren his second wife, Mary Agnew, brought into their relationship).
Dobbin started a school at his homestead. In the Civil War the building was used as a hospital by both Union and Confederate soldiers. Nowadays the building is a tavern and restaurant.
Sources: @dobbinhouse.com
