Social and Religious Movements in Central New York

Central New York communities that flourished with canal-related development and rail connections throughout the 19th century also became hotbeds for religious and social movements of the early 1800s as the area’s population rapidly grew.

Religious freedom granted by the United States Bill of Rights combined with rapid societal and technological changes experienced by Americans living through western expansion fueled an American spiritual movement that was exemplified in the newly opened frontier of New York.

Between 1825 and 1835, Charles Grandison Finney — a Presbyterian minister who embraced the emotional expression of faith that appealed to those living on the American frontier and the concept of self-improvement and freewill — hosted large-scale conversions and religious revivals throughout Upstate New York. The recently opened Erie Canal allowed for traveling preachers, including Finney, to easily reach new audiences in the state’s interior.

Rochester’s boom-town atmosphere drew Finney to the town in 1830. While there, he preached six times a week and attracted thousands of individuals from the surrounding areas during his winter Great Revivals, large-scale social and religious events that included mass conversions.

Religious fervor in central and western New York was so pronounced during the “Second Great Awakening” of the 1830s and 1840s that the area was referred to as the “Burned Over District,” a reference to the spiritual fire embodied by the various groups and the speed in which the movement engulfed the area.

The Protestant Revival Movement shifted focus from congregations that relied on educated religious leaders to interpret religious texts to a populist approach that put salvation into the hands of the masses, exemplified in large-scale camp and revival meetings, mass conversions, and renewed interests in personal interpretations of Christian religious texts.

Throughout Western New York, more than 300 new congregations were created by 1845. New American religions that were formed in the Finger Lakes during this time including the Church of Latter Day Saints — started by Joseph Smith, Jr. after he reportedly found golden plates inscribed by God in a field outside Palmyra (Wayne County) and published their inscriptions in 1830 as the Book of Mormon — and Spiritualism, brought to prominence by the Fox Sisters of Hydesville (Arcadia, Wayne County) during the late 1840s.

Utopian communities based on the communal principles of French thinker Francois Marie Charles Fourier appeared at Sodus Bay (Wayne County) and Skaneateles (Onondaga County) during the 1840s, but these — like the approximately 300 other Fourier Utopias that were established during this time — were short-lived.

The Second Great Awakening helped foster the idea of perceived moral imperatives and institutions’ role in bettering society by supporting secular reform movements, including the antislavery movement. Transportation and economic links provided by the Erie Canal to major East Coast cities and the Great Lakes connected the region to abolition hot spots and the teachings of leading antislavery advocates.

Syracuse earned the reputation as the great central depot of the Underground Railroad prior to the Civil War. The city’s urban atmosphere and proximity to the Canada – United States border made it a major gateway to freedom. Construction of the Erie Canal and salt production in the early 1800s brought workers — including free and fugitive African Americans — into the Syracuse area, creating integrated workplaces and communities.

Traveling ministers active during the Second Great Awakening and Quakers moving into Western New York preached equality and the importance of social reform that reiterated abolitionist themes of independence and equality. These themes were personified in Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen.

Rev. Loguen, the “Underground Railroad King,” arrived in Syracuse in 1841 and began publicizing his connection to the Underground Railroad network of safe houses that provided aid and accommodations for enslaved individuals seeking freedom in northern states or Canada. Loguen also took part in the “Jerry Rescue,” a local protest against the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.

On October 1, 1851, during the antislavery Liberty Party’s New York State political convention in Syracuse, federal agents arrested William “Jerry” Henry, a local barrel maker under the recently passed Fugitive Slave Law.

Thousands of outraged Syracuse residents and Liberty Party members stormed the building where the police detained Henry, helping him escape custody.

A few days later, supporters helped him cross Lake Ontario into Canada to ensure his freedom. This daring act became national news as a hard-fought and dramatic triumph of Syracuse’s abolitionist community.

Rochester also had a prominent abolitionist community supported by an active African American population.

The Western New York Anti-Slavery Society was founded in Rochester and welcomed men and women of African and European descent as members, which was unique at the time of its 1832 founding.

Amy and Isaac Post, two of the co-founders of the antislavery society, operated an active Underground Railroad Station out of their Rochester home and hosted abolitionist meetings.

Frederick Douglass came to the city in 1847, influenced by the Posts and local abolitionist Austin Steward. Douglass started his North Star newspaper while living in the city and gave his notable “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech on July 5, 1852, in downtown Rochester.

Individuals in smaller villages and the more rural areas of the Finger Lakes were active in the abolitionist cause and Underground Railroad activity as well. Sherwood, a hamlet near Scipio in Cayuga County, was founded by a group of Quakers that settled near the Cayuga Indian Reservation during the 1790s as a response to the Treaty of Canandaigua.

Sherwood’s residents, which included African Americans, Quakers, and other reform-minded families, remained dedicated to the fight for equality for more than a century. Many were heavily involved in the Underground Railroad during the early 19th century and then turned their attention towards women’s suffrage.

Quaker meetinghouses in Farmington (Ontario County) and other rural settlements often hosted nationally known abolitionist speakers and helped enslaved individuals move north through the Underground Railroad.

Elmira became an important stop on the trail to freedom that led enslaved individuals to Canada. Elmira resident Jervis Langdon, Mark Twain’s father-in-law, was an active supporter of Underground Railroad activities and befriended Frederick Douglass after the latter’s escape to freedom in 1838.

John W. Jones escaped enslavement and arrived in Elmira via the Underground Railroad in 1844. Over the course of the next two decades, he aided more than 800 freedom seekers on their journey to Canada. Jones was named sexton of the Woodlawn Cemetery in 1859 and was charged with burying the Confederate dead from Elmira Prison Camp. He oversaw almost 3,000 Confederate burials during the war.

Auburn was home to William H. Seward, a prominent New York politician and abolitionist who served as a two-term governor of New York (1839–1842), New York State Senator (1849–1861), and US Secretary of State under President Abraham Lincoln and President Andrew Johnson (1861–1869). Seward was active in the Underground Railroad and often hosted nationally recognized antislavery crusaders during his time in the city of Auburn.

In 1859, Seward sold a small piece of land to Harriet Tubman, who he had come to know through their Underground Railroad associations. Harriet Tubman traveled north from a Maryland Plantation to escape enslavement in 1849 and, over the next 10 years, made 13 additional trips into Maryland to help other enslaved African Americans navigate the Underground Railroad to freedom in northern states or Canada.

Tubman moved her elderly parents, who she had helped flee to Ontario, Canada, in 1858, to the Cayuga County property and continued guiding enslaved African Americans north to Canada until the Civil War. After the war, she returned to Auburn to care for them and other aging African Americans and shifted her focus toward supporting other reform movements.

In 1896, Tubman purchased 25 additional acres in Auburn to create the Home for the Aged and Indigent Negroes, which included a hospital, pig farm, apple orchard, and vegetable garden. Tubman lived in Auburn until her death in 1913, spending the last few years of her life as a resident of the home she created.

Many reformers interested in ending slavery were also interested in gaining rights for women. The Posts, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and other antislavery advocates strongly supported women’s rights.

Finger Lakes residences were in the unique position to see a matriarchal culture firsthand in Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) communities found throughout central New York. Haudenosaunee Nations allowed women to hold leadership positions in clans, deferred to female elders on decisions of war, and acknowledge women’s rights to property. Nineteenth-century residents of the Haudenosaunee homelands in New York would have regular opportunities to interact with nation members and witness a model for equal rights between the sexes.

Seneca Falls, which grew as a commercial center as a result of the Cayuga-Seneca Canal and mills that were powered by the village’s namesake waterfall, became a center for abolitionists, Quakers, and other social reformers during the mid-19th century.

Seneca Falls resident Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Thomas and Mary Anne M’Clintock of Waterloo, and Lucretia Mott — a Philadelphia women’s rights advocate with a national reputation — organized the first Women’s Rights Convention.

Stanton and Mott had personal connections with the Haudenosaunee Nations, with Stanton growing up in Central New York and personal relationships with members of the Oneida and Onondaga Nations and Mott visiting the Cattaraugus Community during her travels prior to the convention.

The convention, which was the first of its kind organized by women, was held in Seneca Falls on July 19–20, 1848, and produced a signed Declaration of Sentiments outlining the need for moral, economic, and political equality for women. The event was succeeded by a follow-up convention in Rochester two weeks later (August 2, 1848).

The Declaration of Sentiments and national conventions spurred the national conversation about women’s rights and inspired the actions of other socially progressive women in Central New York. Seneca Falls resident Amelia Bloomer attended the 1848 Convention and founded the Lily, a bi-weekly newspaper dedicated to women that included messages of temperance, suffrage, and dress reform — the movement away from traditional, restrictive corsets and dresses for women. She also served as the assistant postmaster for Seneca Falls, using her office as a center for the community’s progressive movements during the early 1850s.

In 1852, Syracuse hosted the third National Women’s Rights Convention, inspiring even more women to enthusiastically join the cause. Susan B. Anthony, an active abolitionist from Rochester, attended the 1852 convention.

After the Civil War, she shifted her political focus towards women’s suffrage. Her Rochester home became the headquarters of the Equal Rights Association and the scene of her arrest after illegally casting a ballot in the 1872 presidential election.

Matilda Joslyn Gage, a Fayetteville (Onondaga County) resident, was known for assisting the Underground Railroad during the 1840s and 1850s and supporting Native nations’ treaty rights, but the 1852 Syracuse convention marked the beginning of her public support of women’s rights and suffrage.

Gage, who was honorarily adopted into the Mohawk Nation’s Wolf Clan, brought her reverence for Haudenosaunee culture and its equality between the sexes to the numerous positions she held in the National Women’s Suffrage Association, founded in 1869; she ultimately provided leadership for the organization for more than 20 years.

Institutions of higher learning that taught humanities and progressive ideals embodied in the region’s social movements quickly appeared throughout the Finger Lakes. Geneva Academy was officially chartered as Geneva College in 1825.

The college’s name changed to Hobart Free College in 1852 to honor the school’s founder Bishop Hobart and is now known as Hobart College. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree when she graduated from Geneva College’s medical school in 1849.

New-York Central College, Mcgrawsville, was established by antislavery Baptists as the first institution founded to accept all students, regardless of gender or race. The integrated, coeducational college also employed African American faculty during its 12-year existence (1849–1860). Founded in 1855, Elmira College became one of the earliest colleges for women that granted degrees that were equivalent to those given to men.

Illustrations, from above:  Lithograph of a ca. 1829 religious camp meeting by Alexander Rider; “The Hill Cumorah” by C. C. A. Christensen showing Mormon church founder Joseph Smith receiving golden plates from the angel Moroni at the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, NY; the Jerry Rescue Monument in Syracuse, NY; Seward House Museum in Auburn, NY; and Elizabeth Cady Stanton sitting on the porch of Gerrit and Ann Smith’s house in Peterboro, Madison County, NY.

This essay is drawn from the National Park Service’s Finger Lakes National Heritage Area Feasibility Study. You can read about the study and the Finger Lakes National Heritage Area here.