By all accounts, Alexander and Elizabeth enjoyed a happy married life. Through the ensuing years, the couple continued to entertain, and participate in prominent civic events.

Again, according to local legend, Alexander was a fervent abolitionist during the years before the Civil War and, with hundreds of wooded acres around the home and scant populace, Hannah could certainly have operated a sanctuary for fleeing slaves heading toward Canada for years, without detection. Popular stories portray a rainy evening when a group of slaves, concealed in the Hannah cellar waiting for exactly the right time to make their getaway, accidentally tripped over an oil lamp and set the room ablaze. Instantly enveloped in smoke and flames, and unable to flee, many of the occupants allegedly died in minutes from smoke inhalation and burns.

As the story goes, the deceased slaves were hastily and temporarily buried by Hannah’s servants in the dirt of the cellar floor, in an attempt to cover up the incident so the stop on the Underground Railroad would not be discovered. Hiding slaves was not an activity that would have been kept in official records or talked about openly at the time so there is no way to verify the story, absolutely. However, the story has been passed down from one family generation to the next. Also, though not categorically proven, current-day neighbors report the discovery of partially collapsed tunnels whose trajectory would indicate an association with the Hannah property… which, if ever verified, would perhaps lend some credence to the Underground Railroad stories.