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Jason Emerson

About Jason Emerson

Jason Emerson is an independent historian from Cazenovia. He is the author or editor of seven books about Abraham Lincoln and his family members and is currently at work with a co-author on a book about little-known stories from Cazenovia’s history. View his website here.

Plymouth Freeman: American Revolution Veteran, Former Slave

February 24, 2019 by Jason Emerson 3 Comments

Flag of the 3rd Connecticut Regiment during the Revolutionary War In his 1891 memoir, Rev. W.W. Crane recalled growing up in the town of Nelson, on a farm three miles east of the village of Cazenovia, New York. He attended school at Jackson’s Corners, a half-mile east, where he “fell in” with an African American boy he called “black Jerry.”

Crane remembered Jerry, “though very meek and innocent, was so taunted, on account of his color, that he went to the brook and tried to wash off the black, and while his tears fell like rain drops on the water, he pushed his hand to the bottom and brought the sand and tried to scour off the black.” The two became intimate friends, and Crane learned that Jerry’s father had a been a soldier in the Revolutionary War and General George Washington’s cook. [Read more…] about Plymouth Freeman: American Revolution Veteran, Former Slave

Filed Under: History Tagged With: African American History, American Revolution, AmRev, Black History, Cazenovia, George Washington, Slavery

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