Lynn building may have ties to Underground Railroad

LYNN – The John Chase house does not surrender its secrets easily – especially when it comes to the corner room – reachable only by ladder – with its walls covered with mysterious graffiti.Quotes from Dante?s “Inferno” and John Milton?s “Paradise Lost” cover the plaster walls in brown script along with a painted skull and crossbones and a reference to an address, “149 Salem St.”?What does it all mean? It?s very vague,” said 7 Franklin St. owner Edward Hayden.The Lynn native and Topsfield resident has practiced law in the Chase building since 1992. Hayden bought the downtown property in 2010 from the late Nicholas Curuby, a fellow attorney and former city solicitor who died in 2011.?Nick told me when he sold it, ?There?s a secret room,?” Hayden said.Hayden has always admired the building?s stately staircases and brick fireplaces, but he had never seen the building?s more remote parts, much less climbed through the trapdoor leading up to the room.Hayden first climbed into the room in 2012 and he was stunned by what he saw after he stepped off a ladder onto the dust floorboards: Someone had painted a skull in broad brush strokes below the words, “All hope abandon ye who enter here.”He drew on his legal training to begin researching the building?s history, pinning down its construction date to 1822 and learning – partly through research by private investigator and building tenant Joe Murphy – that Chase was a prominent Lynn Quaker.?That family was very active in Abolition activities,” Hayden said.That connection drew Hayden and Murphy closer to the possibility that Chase?s house – and the mystery room in particular – had been a way-stop for slaves escaping to freedom along the Underground Railroad.?It makes sense – Quakers were in the anti-slavery movement – I think you can link it,” Murphy said.Lynn Museum board member and amateur historian Kathie Gerecke said local histories indicate five Lynn homes – some of them on Boston Street and Nahant Street known as “escape alley” – were local stops on the Underground Railroad – a network of sympathetic people and safe houses providing escape routes for slaves between 1830 and 1860.She said the properties reportedly have been torn down but said other buildings could have also been way-stops.?Just the fact that Lynn was very heavy in the Abolitionist Movement means I wouldn?t find it surprising there are a lot of older homes that were maybe part of the Underground Railroad,” she said.Hayden admits he has no confirmation the Chase house was a stop on the Underground Railroad, but the possibility fascinates him, in part because the big red brick building keeps surrendering bits and pieces of its history. Electricians working in a crawl space a month ago found an old bonnet, a small metal pitcher and a ladle-like wooden object.Rummaging through the same part of the building on Tuesday, Hayden found a newspaper from 1875. He has no reason to believe his building is haunted, but he said its penchant for revealing history means the Chase house?s past is never very far away from the present.?Sometimes, it?s hard to concentrate,” he said.