Twinsburgbulletin.com - The Word: Learning the fate of a potential historic location

After the publication of my article on April 10 about Twinsburg resident Nick Wing, who is trying to find a connection between the Corbett farmhouse in Twinsburg and the Underground Railroad, a Twinsburg resident, Kim Malusky, sent me an e-mail stating why she believes there is a connection between one of her childhood homes and the famous trail of safe houses that helped escaped slaves find freedom in the North.

Malusky's memory involved a farmhouse on Chestnut Hill Farm located on Ravenna Road. Malusky said that when she was a child, she lived with her parents at Chestnut Hill Farm in the house behind her grandparent's farmhouse. While the house she lived in did not have any structural curiosities, the farmhouse had a hidden room made of sandstone in the basement.

Her grandparents told her this room was used to harbor runaway slaves.

"Great!" I thought. "Thanks to four walls of sandstone, I have rock-solid evidence that the Underground Railroad ran through Twinsburg."

But after the initial excitement subsided, questions began to take its place.

The biggest: Was Malusky's information right?

After a phone interview with her, it soon became evident that finding the answer to my question was not going to be easy.

Malusky said she had not lived on the Ravenna Road property for decades, and the farmhouse was put on the market by the current owner, who purchased the farmhouse in the 1980s. I felt my evidence beginning to crumble.

It all came tumbling down when I called the current owner of the property, Keri DiMichele, who said that even though she knew about Malusky's claim about the room, she'd had the room demolished 20 years ago to save the house from its bad foundation.

DiMichele said all that remains of the room is a single wall made of sandstone.

"It is unfortunate," DiMichele said.

But what is even more unfortunate -- even a "tragedy," Wing said -- is that no one ever pursued designation for the farmhouse as an Underground Railroad site before the room was destroyed.

Now that the room is gone, it is going to be harder to find out what the room was used for, Wing said.

But that hasn't stopped him with meeting with Malusky to try to make a connection with the Underground Railroad and the house.

If the right information is found, the National Park Services can still grant Underground Railroad site designation to the house, Wing said.

But finding the right information is the hard part.

I agree with Wing and the former resident of the farmhouse that the destruction of the room was unfortunate. But if the Chestnut Hill farmhouse's potential of being an Underground Railroad site is forgotten, like most memories, then that would be the real tragedy.

E-mail: aclayton@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3172