BETHLEHEM

The Print Shop (was the Christmas Shop)

When the first pages of my web site were posted, I received an email from someone (I wish that person, if they ever read this, would get back in contact with me) that mentioned that the Christmas shop in the town of Bethlehem was used to hide runaway slaves. If I remember correctly, I was told it was a printing shop and the slaves would spend the night there before moving on to the next station, most likely in Litchfield. Source: email correspondance

Bird Tavern

Bird Tavern on the Green

"...the former Bird Tavern, a white frame house built by Joshua Bird on the northwest corner of the Bethlehem Green. The other, a huge center-chimney colonial, stands on the northeast corner of Hard Hill Road and Route 132. Built around 1737, it too, served as a tavern and was later owned by the Camp family.

Both houses had plenty of room for family and guests, along with hiding places under stairs, in attics or in basements, where an escaped slave could be protected by the home's station master.

Being a station master or conductor on the Underground Railroad was no easy task.  In the years preceding the Civil War, Joshua Bird was "many times routed out at night to go to some station south of Bethlehem to get some runaway slave or to take one or more to the next station north," explains a family history written in 1938:  (Anderson  2000:  1)

Hard Hill Road

-"....and another on Hard Hill Road, where, legend has it, a 9-year-old slave girl named Emily died. Her slave parents left her to obtain necessary freedom documents in order to deliver her to proper care. For whatever reason they never returned. Her ghost is said to linger and to have stopped clocks in the home." (Ruthman 1998: 1A)

-"According to early town records, an escaping slave couple stopped for a safe rest sometime in the ealy 1830's with their 9 year old daughter, Emily. The girl had fallen sick and was cared for by Bethlehem's doctor at the time, possibly Dr. Conant Catlin or Dr. Lyman Catlin. Emily may have suffered from a severe strep infection called quinsy. Legend has it that as Emily lay sick, her parents told her they would return for her after they were free and had the papers to prove it. But they never returned. Possibly they never reached freedom themselves. Emily died in the house on Hard Hill. She was buried in a small plot protected by a flat, unmarked piece of granite, just outside the front door." (Anderson 2000: 1)