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Abolition

The Destruction of Gerrit Smith’s Mansion

April 21, 2022 by Milton Sernett 3 Comments

SmithMansionFTT copyHistorical research using old newspapers fascinates but also frustrates me. Had you read the March 5th, 1936 edition of The Cazenovia Republican you would have learned that the historic Gerrit Smith mansion in Peterboro, New York, burned to the ground two days earlier. [Read more…] about The Destruction of Gerrit Smith’s Mansion

Filed Under: History, Western NY Tagged With: Abolition, Agricultural History, Architecture, Fires, Gerrit Smith Estate, Madison County, Peterboro, Smithfield, womens history

New Netherland: Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York

March 23, 2022 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

ben franklins world podcastIn this episode of the Ben Franklin’s World Podcast, Andrea Mosterman, an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Orleans and author of Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York (Cornell Univ. Press, 2021), joins us to explore what life was like in New Netherland and early New York, especially for the enslaved people who did much of the work to build this Dutch, and later English, colony. [Read more…] about New Netherland: Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York

Filed Under: Books, Capital-Saratoga, Hudson Valley - Catskills, New York City Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, Colonialism, New Amsterdam, New Netherland, New York City, NYC, Podcasts, Political History, Slavery

Documents Reveal Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery

March 15, 2022 by Alan J. Singer 1 Comment

Sojourner TruthIn February 2022, the New York State Archives announced that archivists had uncovered court records detailing the 1828 legal battle by Sojourner Truth to secure her enslaved son Peter’s freedom. According to archivist Jim Folts, this case was the first time in United States history that a Black woman successfully sued a White man for a family member’s freedom.

After passage of the New York State Gradual Emancipation Act in 1799, some slaveholders illegally sold enslaved Africans to Southern planters for the expanding cotton industry. When Sojourner Truth, then known as Isabella Van Wagenen, escaped from enslavement in 1826, her former “owner,” John J. Dumont of New Paltz, Ulster County, NY, sold her five-year old son Peter to Eleazer Gedney who planned to take the boy with him to England.

When this plan fell through, Eleazer Gedney sold Peter to his brother, Solomon Gedney, who resold Peter to their sister’s husband, a man named Fowler, who was a wealthy Alabama planter. [Read more…] about Documents Reveal Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Abolition, Archives, Black History, Legal History, New Paltz, New York State Archives, Political History, Slavery, Sojouner Truth, Ulster County, womens history

New Sojourner Truth State Park in Kingston Opening This Spring

March 4, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Sojourner Truth State ParkGovernor Hochul has announced that a new State Park to open to the public later this spring in Kingston, Ulster County, NY will be named for 19th century African American abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth.

Covering more than 500 acres and a mile of Hudson River shoreline, this park was once an industrial site for production of cement, quarry stone, and ice harvesting. Sojourner Truth State Park will be first new State Park since 2019. [Read more…] about New Sojourner Truth State Park in Kingston Opening This Spring

Filed Under: History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, Nature, Recreation Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, empire state trail, Kingston, OPRHP, Political History, Scenic Hudson, Slavery, Sojouner Truth, State Parks, Ulster County, Underground Railroad, womens history

Peterboro’s National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum

March 1, 2022 by Milton Sernett 1 Comment

National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum/Smithfield Community Center. Photo taken by Milton SernettMembers of the Cabinet of Freedom of the National Abolition Hall of Fame (NAHOF) went to the Great New York Fair for several years to introduce the public to a unique museum that occupies the second floor of the Smithfield Community Center in Peterboro, New York.

On one of these occasions, NAHOF occupied a booth in the Center of Progress building. Hundreds of fair-goers went by the NAHOF location. Some who stopped to hear about NAHOF would ask, “Where is Peterboro?” NAHOF hosts explained that Peterboro is a small hamlet in the heart of Madison County. Few who passed by stayed long enough to hear about what the Museum had to offer. NAHOF representatives began wearing t-shirts that carried the words “Where is Peterboro?” on the front and on the back were the words “North of Pleasant Valley, South of Clockville, East of Fenner, West of Salem.” [Read more…] about Peterboro’s National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum

Filed Under: History, Western NY Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, National Abolition Hall of Fame, Peterboro

Lydia Sherman’s Recollections of Saratoga County’s Abolitionist Movement

February 24, 2022 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Edmund J. Sherman homestead in Hadley, 1856 Geils MapHoused in the Saratoga County Historian’s Office is the African American History Index, begun in the early 2000s by former county historian Kristina Saddlemire and continued by longtime volunteer Jane Meader Nye.

This collection includes documents related to people of African descent who were either residents of the county or famous visitors such as Frederick Douglass, and stories of Abolitionists who offered assistance to enslaved people seeking freedom. [Read more…] about Lydia Sherman’s Recollections of Saratoga County’s Abolitionist Movement

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, Capital-Saratoga, History Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, Boston, Hadley, Lake Luzerne, Liberty Party, Massachusetts, Saratoga County, Saratoga County History Center, Saratoga County History Roundtable, Saratoga Springs, Slavery, Warren County, womens history

Beriah Green, Oneida Institute and Education as Liberation

February 20, 2022 by Milton Sernett Leave a Comment

Daguerreotype of Beriah Green, courtesy of John Baker, a descendant.In his classic The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the famous activist, sociologist, and historian W. E. B. Du Bois, tells of how Alexander Crummell told Du Bois that he had experienced “three years of perfect equality” under the tutelage of Rev. Beriah Green when a student at Oneida Institute in Upstate New York.

Crummell, along with Henry Highland Garnet and Thomas Sidney, found an educational haven at Green’s school. They had been admitted to the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, but outraged whites used teams of oxen to drag the academy building away. Crummell and his friends then journeyed to Whitesboro, New York, and enrolled in Green’s school. Du Bois said of Green that “only [a] crank and an abolitionist” would have dared to accept students of color such as Crummell at a time when African Americans were excluded from opportunities for higher education. [Read more…] about Beriah Green, Oneida Institute and Education as Liberation

Filed Under: History, Western NY Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, Education, Gerrit Smith Estate, Henry Highland Garnet, Oneida County, Underground Railroad, Utica, Whitesboro

Syracuse Hero Jermain Loguen, Abolition & The Jerry Rescue

February 13, 2022 by Bruce Dearstyne 4 Comments

During Black History Month, it is useful to recall well-known Black Americans and also some not-so-well known. Jermain Loguen (1813-1872) fits a category of those who deserve more recognition and attention.

Born into slavery in Tennessee, he escaped to Canada (where slavery was outlawed) in 1834 and moved to Rochester in 1837 and then to Syracuse in 1841.  He became a teacher and then a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.  An eloquent speaker, he used his sermons and public presentations to advocate abolition and resistance to slaveholders and to urge enslaved people to escape. Loguen had an apartment in his Syracuse home for freedom seekers and identified himself as  “Underground Railroad Agent.”  Loguen assisted more than 1,500 enslaved Black people to freedom, earning the informal title “King of the Underground Railroad” in Syracuse. [Read more…] about Syracuse Hero Jermain Loguen, Abolition & The Jerry Rescue

Filed Under: History, Western NY Tagged With: Abolition, Black History, Canada, Crime and Justice, Jermain Loguen, Legal History, Mexico NY, Onondaga County, Political History, Slavery, Syracuse, Underground Railroad

Whose Fourth of July?

February 9, 2022 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

ben_franklins_worldOn July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech to an anti-slavery society and he famously asked “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Martha S. Jones, the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Christopher Bonner, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland help us explore Douglass’ thoughtful question within the context of Early America: What did the Fourth of July mean for African Americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? [Read more…] about Whose Fourth of July?

Filed Under: History, Western NY Tagged With: Abolition, Fourth of July, Frederick Douglass, Podcasts, Political History, Slavery

Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List

February 6, 2022 by Alan J. Singer 2 Comments

United States CapitolAccording to a Washington Post report in the early years of the American republic over 1,700 Congressional representatives, Senators and Congressmen owned enslaved people. Despite a very clear conflict of interest they voted on the laws governing the country and the enslaved population. Some Representatives served in Congress long after slavery was finally abolished in New York State.

Five of the first seven U.S. Presidents were definitely slaveholders and at least five other later Presidents had family connections to slavery. Five of the Supreme Court Justices who ruled that African Americans had no citizenship rights under the Constitution in the 1857 Dred Scott decision were slaveholders. [Read more…] about Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List

Filed Under: History Tagged With: Aaron Burr, Abolition, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Van Buren, New York City, Political History, Rufus King, Slavery

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