Congressional Pilgrimage Visits Historic Peterboro

A Congressional Pilgrimage organized by the Faith and Politics Institute made its first stop at heritage sites in Peterboro NY. Congress Members Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) and Tom Reed (R-NY) joined the Faith and Politics Institute (FPI) to host a first-ever pilgrimage exploring the confluence of two significant freedom movements with deep roots in New York State: the abolition movement and women’s suffrage. The 2018 American Experience Pilgrimage took place July 20 through July 22, with the group visiting Auburn, Peterboro, Seneca Falls, Canandaigua and Rochester.

In Auburn and Peterboro on July 20, the group visited the National Abolition Hall of Fame an Museum, the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the Harriet Tubman Estate and Seward House. In Seneca Falls and Canandaigua on July 21, the group toured the Women’s Rights National Historical Park on the anniversary of the first Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls in 1848. And in Rochester on July 22, participants visited the Susan B. Anthony Museum Carriage House and participated in a wreath-laying ceremony honoring Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. (The Gazette 42-16 34th Ave., Long Island City, N.Y 8-1-18)

Among the Pilgrimage visitors in Peterboro along with Representative Maloney were David Blight PhD (Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University), Deborah L. Hughes (President & CEO of the Susan B. Anthony Museum and House in Rochester NY) Kate Clifford Larson (author of Harriet Tubman; Bound for the Promised Land, and Joan Mooney, President and CEO of the Faith and Politics Institute in Washington D.C.)

Photo of Carolyn Mooney (President of the Faith and Politics Institute, Washington D.C.) on left, David Blight PhD, (Yale University), center, and Deborah L. Hughes (Susan B. Anthony Museum and House) gather in Gerrit Smith’s Land Office at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark as Smith biographer Norman K. Dann PhD explains Smith’s reform activities, provided.