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When I lived in the NE corner of Baltimore City - late ‘80’s to early 2000’s in my circa 1925 bungalow, a house that to me at the time was “old”, the stone house next door to me I learned had been built sometime in the early 1830’s, IIRC the earliest deed for the property and house was dated 1832. I became friends with the young couple who purchased it a few years after I bought my house.

They told me that while doing some renovations and clean up, they discovered, in the still dirt floored basement, that part of the one of the basement walls had been partially covered in plywood and insulation. When they removed it because it looked decayed and somewhat moldy, they found a tunnel, now partially collapsed so there was no way to tell how far back it went but it went pretty far before the collapsed section when I saw it. But the whole thing looked a bit too unstable for any of us to venture too far in. The direction of the tunnel appeared to go back and then slightly up toward the hillside behind the property before the collapse.

It could have been used for “cold” storage or might have connected to a similarly aged house up the hill on the next street over but for what reason that might have been or if it was is unknown.

The husband who was in the construction and renovation business thought the tunnel was built sometime after the house given how the stone wall of the basement surrounding the tunnel entrance looked as if it had been removed at a later date, chiseled out with some of the stones reused in the tunnel entrance but that the construction of the tunnel looked fairly old as well given the wood timbers used for shoring did not appear to be machine cut.

In his opinion it seemed a bit large to be for cold storage but was still certainly possible especially since the house was probably sitting on a farm, perhaps a substantial sized farm back then. It was also “possible” although unlikely that it had some connection to the underground railroad given that Baltimore was one of the last stops before crossing the Mason Dixon line into Pennsylvania.

When the couple bought the house it was in pretty bad shape but they did a great job of restoring it, restoring the original wood planked floors, moldings, etc. in keeping with the house’s history while also modernizing the kitchen and bathroom, plumbing, electrical, HVAC.

It was a charming house but one drawback to living in such an old house as my friend told me – no closets!

It was probably a rather large home for the time when it was built for a simple farmstead, certainly not a manor house or mansion or “plantation” house but bigger than a mere simple farmstead house yet still a very small house by today’s standards.

The original house, minus the latter back addition where the “modern” kitchen was, had a parlor or dining room and another room and upstairs had three bedrooms, although unlike modern houses they were not separated by a hallway but all ran together with only doorways separating them from each other. The upstairs and only bathroom in the house was a much latter addition probably added in the late 18th to early 19th century and obviously took space from one of the original bedrooms that was now not much larger than a walk in closet in some houses today but big enough for a cosy nursery when they had their baby.

FWIW, when I was digging to put in a vegetable and herb garden in my back yard, I found several old bottles, a few complete but most sadly broken that dated to the late 1800’s to early 1900’s – old beer bottles, a whiskey bottle and a couple of what appeared to be patent medicine bottles and some broken pottery and dishware. Since they all dated earlier than my house and the house on the other side of me, both built around 1925, I can only presume it was a rubbish pit from the old stone house.

And in back of my detached garage when I worked to remove vines and undergrowth and dug to plant some shade plants, I found the remains of what was probably a smoke house complete with charred animal bones and a few very old rusted knives and tools. Not sure how old they were though.

My neighbor in the old stone house also found some interesting things when she dug to plant a garden – a couple of old horseshoes, a partially complete leather bridle, a couple of lenghts of metal chain, some broken glassware and dishware that appeared to be mid-19th century and the most interesting finds of all, several pieces of what looked to be a very old but incomplete revolver.