Samuel Lyman was on the board of managers of the Rose Temperance Society, and an active and well-known abolitionist in Rose.  

Samuel’s barn is said to have been the first framed structure in town raised without the use of liquor (referred to as a cold water raising), as well as said to have been a safe house on the underground railroad.  

In Alfred Seelye Roe’s 1893 book Rose Neighborhood Sketches, Mr. Roe claims that the barn of Samuel Lyman was the first framed structure in town raised without the use of liquor.  According to page 108 of Roe’s Rose Neighborhood Sketches the following incident was provided to him by Charles Lyman.

“Samuel Lyman always braved public opinion when it conflicted with his sense of right and duty, and in the year 1830, being engaged in building a small barn, and having then recently read Dr. Lyman Beecher’s “Six Sermons on Temperance,” he felt that it would be wrong for him to furnish liquor at the raising…”  This “Cold Water Raising” was the first in town.

On page 325 of Rose Neighborhood Sketches, Mr. Roe mentions the barn of Samuel Lyman again, this time also adding the connection to the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad, “The barn of Samuel Lyman, the first framed structure raised in town without the use of liquor, became the fit harboring place of escaped bondman, and by Lyman and his neighbors he was helped on to Canada.”  In various newspaper articles mentioning the Samuel Lyman family, Samuel’s reputation and barn are often mentioned.  Such as in the article about Mrs. Eleanor Lyman’s birthday printed in the Post Standard on the morning of September 12, 1911 which states “It is said that Samuel Lyman's barn concealed more runaway slaves than any other building in the town. He was currently reported to be a "station man" on the "underground" railway for the escape of slaves to Canada.”