One such stop along the Underground Railroad was the farm of Jonathan and Ann Thomas who were active abolitionists and offered their home as shelter for run-aways from 1805 to about 1830.

In 1838, the property was sold to Dr. Bartholomew Fussell, a Quaker who grew up in Chester County but moved to Baltimore to study medicine. In Baltimore, Fussell opened a Sabbath School for African American students, teaching as many as 90 students at a time. When he returned to Chester County, his farm was used as a secret hospital for exhausted, injured, or ailing slaves escaping through northeastern Maryland into Pennsylvania. Historians estimate some 2,000 run-aways visited there, including some of Fussell’s former pupils from the Sabbath School.

In her account of the farm’s history, local historian Estelle Cremers noted that there was a four-foot entrance hole in the earth at the property, which many believed led to an underground passageway used by fugitives. “Local teenagers found they could crawl through it into a chamber not more than seven feet in height. The first chamber led to a second that measured about 10-feet long by six-feet wide.” The opening was intentionally destroyed in the late 1960s when neighbors became concerned about its safety.

But the Thomas house still stands and is a part of the Bryn Coed Farms tract. The house and the lot on which it stands is under contract; the buyer plans to undertake an extensive renovation.