Underground Railroad had a local stop
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

A house in Ashburnham is one of three properties that the Massachusetts Historical Commission has nominated to the National Register of Historic Places as additions to the Underground Railroad.

The Whitmore House on Tuckerman Road is part of a multiple property submission that will be considered by the National Park Service for designation, according to the office of William Francis Galvin, the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

The Enoch Whitmore House is a large and distinctive Federal-style dwelling, that was built after 1818, according to the commission's press release.

"The state approached us," said Wendy Feen, who lives with her husband in the house.

The Feens have lived there since 1969.

Records show the Whitemore family owned the house between 1779 and 1905 before selling it when the last family member died. Feen said the house had been part of a large dairy farm.

"Then it was a summer house until we bought it in 1969," she said.

She said while there are no secret rooms in the house, it is clear the Whitmore family supported a fugitive slave family for years.

"The Whitmore property has a solidly documented association with the Underground Railroad in Mas- sachusetts and represents a certain type of rural abolitionist activity," states the release. "Records of the first Boston Vigilance Committee, an organization that operated in 1846 and 1847 and was devoted to assisting fugitives from slavery, document that committee secretary John White Browne sent the Maryland fugitive Josiah Thomas and his family to 'live with Jones & Whittemore' in Ashburnham. Josiah Thomas and his wife stayed in Ashburnham for the remainder of their lives."

The nominations took place during the Sept. 12, meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Commission, a 17-member board chaired by Galvin that considers historic resources eligible for the National Register four times a year.

Also named to the National Register of Historical Places because of their connection with the Underground Railroad are the Drake House in Leominster and Hill-Ross Farm in Northampton.

The Frances H. and Jonathan Drake House is located just west of the town center, according to the release. Largely through Frances Drake, who lived in the house from its construction to her death in 1900, the house is emblematic of abolitionism's reach in relatively remote towns, where abolitionists were less highly organized and black populations were small, the release says.

The Hill-Ross Farm is in the Florence section of Northampton, a village historically associated with the utopian Northampton Association of Education and Industry. The farmhouse was built about 1825 and is the only landmark surviving from the utopian community.

These are three of 10 resources around the Commonwealth approved for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places by the Massachusetts Historical Commission at this meeting, according to a press release from Galvin's office.

There are over 65,000 properties listed in the National Register in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Historical Commission has been administering the National Register of Historic Places program in Massachusetts since 1966.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission is the office of the State Historic Preservation Officer and the State Archaeologist.