In colonial new England, it is said that houses were constructed with secret, hidden rooms. these were used as a place to hide when a village was under attack (from Native Americans).
I have heard of these but never seen one. in any case, would such a room really save your life? marauding Indians usually would burn down houses they attacked-so hiding would not do you much good.
I can’t speak to Colonial America, but we rented a house that formerly belonged to a drug dealer and there was a room cleverly hidden under the washer/dryer. Same basic concept I think.
An example of a real version of the concept would be priest’s holes.
Indians did not burn villages indiscriminately or frequently. Basically, there were two “wars,” The Pequot War of 1636 and King Philip’s War in 1675, with only the latter seeing a significant number of villages burned. Villages were not normally at risk of being burned at other times, since that meant that a huge force of Indians - enough to warrant the word “war” - was marauding and that almost never happened.
If there were such a thing as a hiding room, it most likely would have developed in the last quarter of the 17th century. Even in New England, there simply aren’t many homes of that era remaining so the chance of seeing one is small to begin with.
Would they work? From today’s distance, all we can do is look at the odds. Small Indian attacks were far more numerous than large, coordinated wars. A small attacking party would be looking to maximize resources, so it wouldn’t be doing a house-to-house hunt and it wouldn’t be able to stop and burn down individual houses. If a house appeared empty, then why bother with it? Therefore, the concept of a hiding room would make sense.
Whether they were actually built is a different question. They probably wouldn’t be “rooms” but hideyholes on the English style, just big enough to squeeze into for a short period of time. (Though the circumstances were totally different. Priest holes were normally in large homes and their occupants had to withstand a week-long hunt by trained carpenters.) After the threat of Indian attacks passed, they may very well have been opened and incorporated into the rest of the house for most useful space.
What does that sum to? No positive evidence for, a possibility that it would be a good idea. Not much, really.
My sister used to live on the grounds of an old winery in an old farmhouse (she and her husband were quasi-caretakers). In the middle of the living room floor (covered by a rug) was a trapdoor, leading down into a smallish (5x5x8) space. There were shackles and chains still bolted to the wall.
According to the owners, the hole was part of the “anti” Underground Railroad… escaped slaves that were recaptured would be put there to be hidden from Northern Sympathizers (this was in PA) while arrangements were made to return them to the South. Very much a :eek: revelation.
Panic rooms exist in houses even today–more of a “secured” than a “secret” place, but the same idea. And certainly the concept of secret passages and secret rooms is older than America itself. Did this particular population have them? Absent actually finding some, I’m not sure there’s a way to know, but people have always had someone to be afraid of, and the concept was known, so it seems likely to me.