Gerrit Smith

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life

February 22, 2026 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a singular leader, thinker, and organizer whose fight for women’s emancipation stretched from the 1840s to her death in 1902, a full fifth of America’s history. Yet her legacy is marked by controversy.

In a new biography, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life (Basic Books, 2026) historian Ellen Carol DuBois paints a fresh portrait of this complex woman whose work helped make contemporary feminism possible. [Read more…] about Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Revolutionary Life

Maple Syrup: The Sweet Taste of Freedom

April 4, 2025 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Maple syrup is a familiar staple in many households, with the United States producing 5.86 million gallons last year alone. While its culinary use extends far beyond pancakes and waffles, maple sugar and syrup was once a choice that spoke to deeper personal morality.

From the late 1700s to the Civil War, anti-slavery advocates used maple as a statement about their morality and views on human rights. Choosing to tap or purchase maple products meant one less purchase of cane sugar, an industry supported entirely by enslaved labor. [Read more…] about Maple Syrup: The Sweet Taste of Freedom

Florence Settlement Added to National Underground Railroad Network

November 18, 2024 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

An Oneida County historic landmark has received a big boost to its status nationally, and students and staff at played a role in making it happen.

The National Park Service recently announced that the Florence Settlement of 1848 is one of 14 new landmarks added to their National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. The program is a list of over 800 historical sites, facilities, and programs integral to preserving the legacy of the Underground Railroad and the many individuals who bravely escaped slavery in pursuit of freedom. [Read more…] about Florence Settlement Added to National Underground Railroad Network

Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith: First Lady of Gerrit Smith Estate

July 22, 2024 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Having been born in 1805 into a slave holding family in Chewsville, Maryland, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith was well aware of the inequitable status between black and white persons, and of the horrible physical and mental treatment of enslaved people. Ann’s father William F. Fitzhugh operated a plantation worked by over sixty enslaved persons. [Read more…] about Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith: First Lady of Gerrit Smith Estate

Peterboro’s Dominie: Early Black Adventist John West

November 3, 2023 by Milton Sernett 2 Comments

At least 147 African Americans are buried in the small Peterboro Cemetery in rural Madison County, New York. Among them is John West, whose headstone was toppled by a falling tree during a storm in August 2023. [Read more…] about Peterboro’s Dominie: Early Black Adventist John West

The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier

October 12, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Amy Godine’s new history, The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier (Cornell Univ. Press, 2023) chronicles the history of Black pioneers in New York’s northern wilderness.

From the late 1840s into the 1860s, they migrated to the Adirondacks to build farms and to vote. On their new-worked land, they could meet the $250 property requirement New York’s constitution imposed on Black voters in 1821, and claim the rights of citizenship. [Read more…] about The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier

O.C. Gilbert: Speaker, Musician, Black Community Organizer in Saratoga

August 28, 2023 by Loraine Wies 4 Comments

In a recent article in the Washington Post, author Sydney Trent narrates the story of Stephanie Gilbert, a descendant of Oliver C. Gilbert, and her quest to learn of her ancestor and visit his place of birth and enslavement. The article briefly discusses O.C. Gilbert’s life in Saratoga Springs, NY, from about 1860 to 1876, when he moved to Pennsylvania.

Saratoga Springs offered many opportunities for employment, and it was said that while many of the Southern gentleman brought their slaves with them as they took in the season at The Spa, many of the Black men and women serving them were probably former enslaved people who had run for their freedom. Moreover, while Gilbert’s primary legacy is as a lecturer and musician, his political activism both before and while living in Saratoga Springs places him in the company of many prominent abolitionists, businessmen and politicians who continued the fight for racial equality as Jim Crow laws were becoming commonplace in America. [Read more…] about O.C. Gilbert: Speaker, Musician, Black Community Organizer in Saratoga

The Florence Farming Association

August 1, 2023 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

On this episode of the New York Minute in History podcast, Devin Lander and Lauren Roberts tell the story of the Florence Farming and Lumber Association, a settlement of free African Americans in Florence, Oneida County beginning in 1846. [Read more…] about The Florence Farming Association

New Historical Marker For Willis Hodges & His Adirondack Black Farm Settlement

July 16, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

On Sunday, August 6, a new historical marker will be unveiled at Loon Lake, Franklin County in the Adirondacks, to honor the settlement of Blacksville and its founder, Virginia-born Brooklyn newsman and Black rights activist, Willis Hodges. The public is invited to attend. [Read more…] about New Historical Marker For Willis Hodges & His Adirondack Black Farm Settlement

Black Adirondack Farmers, Escaped Slaves, Civil War Veterans, Remembered at Union Cemetery

July 10, 2022 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Curt Stager’s scholarly demeanor cracked on July 4th when he spread three small plastic baggies of soil on three graves of Black Adirondackers at Union Cemetery on state Route 3 in Vermontville, Franklin County, NY.

Stager didn’t know any of these people personally. They all died in the late 1800s. But in researching their lives, Stager, a Paul Smith’s College biology professor, said he’s become immensely respectful of their fights for freedom for all Americans, on the battlefield, or at home. [Read more…] about Black Adirondack Farmers, Escaped Slaves, Civil War Veterans, Remembered at Union Cemetery

Cazenovia, The Origins of Soccer & The National “Football” Hall of Fame

May 23, 2022 by Milton Sernett Leave a Comment

In 1947 the citizens of Cazenovia in Madison County mounted a campaign to have the proposed hall of fame or shrine honoring American players of “football” located in their community.

Supporters at the village, town, county, and state levels joined in the effort to bring the hall of fame to Cazenovia. Assemblyman Wheeler Milmoe who represented Madison County introduced Resolution No. 154 in Albany in support of Cazenovia’s claim to fame. Gov. Thomas Dewey also voiced strong support for the idea. There were other places in the nation politicking for having the “football” hall of fame located in their communities. [Read more…] about Cazenovia, The Origins of Soccer & The National “Football” Hall of Fame

The Destruction of Gerrit Smith’s Mansion

April 21, 2022 by Milton Sernett 3 Comments

Historical 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

Beriah Green, Oneida Institute and Education as Liberation

February 20, 2022 by Milton Sernett Leave a Comment

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

Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Honored With Black Heritage Postal Stamp

January 29, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The United States Postal Service will issued the 45th Black Heritage stamp on January 26th, 2022 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. in honor of Edmonia Lewis, a Black and Native American sculptor who gained international recognition.

Edmonia Lewis was born in 1844 to an Ojibwa/Chippewa woman from Albany and a former enslaved man from Haiti. Both parents died when Wildfire, as she was called, was young. She went to live with her mother’s sisters. In later years her brother Samuel supported her and in 1856 she entered New York Central College. She then went to Oberlin College in Ohio from 1859 to 1863. [Read more…] about Sculptor Edmonia Lewis Honored With Black Heritage Postal Stamp

The Last Days of John Brown: North Elba

September 18, 2021 by John Warren Leave a Comment

One of the familiar attacks on John Brown (and by extension his anti-slavery legacy) involves his failed business ventures and accusations that he was a swindler and a drifter, roaming from place to place – only briefly and uneventfully staying in North Elba, Essex County, NY.

“Over the years before his Kansas escapade Brown had been a drifter, horse thief and swindler,” Columbia University historian John Garraty once wrote. Garraty served as the president of the Society of American Historians and was co-author of the high school history textbook The American Nation (he died in 2007).

A closer look at Brown and the his family, however, reveals an experience typical of many Americans, then and today, and the importance of North Elba in Brown’s plans for a raid into Virginia. [Read more…] about The Last Days of John Brown: North Elba

The Last Days of John Brown: The Secret Six

September 6, 2021 by John Warren Leave a Comment

John Brown has often come down to us as a lone nut, bent on an suicidal mission, but this is far from the truth.

Brown was part of a larger movement to free slaves that grew with passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (which required the return of escaped slaves to their masters with all its potential for torture and death at their hands) and the large Underground Railroad movement.

It’s little understood that Brown was intimate with northern politicians, industrialists, ministers, and folks from all walks of life, including the leading intellectuals of the era – the Transcendentalists. [Read more…] about The Last Days of John Brown: The Secret Six

NY’s Voter Suppression History & John Brown’s Farm

July 15, 2021 by Peter Slocum Leave a Comment

In 2021 we celebrated New York State’s acquisition of John Brown Farm 125 years ago. And it’s good that we did.

But let us also recall a 200th anniversary linked to the John Brown Farm – a connection that has particular importance this year as we witness a voter suppression spree around our country. Two hundred years ago, that was us – our New York ancestors – enacting explicit rules to keep blacks from voting.

John Brown and his family moved to the Adirondacks as part of an effort to counteract New York State-sponsored suppression of voting rights for black men.

We are now seeing a wave of voter suppression efforts in states controlled by Republican legislators fearful of losing their majority power. Well, guess what? That’s exactly what was going on here in good old New York back in the early 1800s. We New Yorkers apparently were leaders in voter suppression. We even put it into the state constitution! That’s more than the states are doing today. [Read more…] about NY’s Voter Suppression History & John Brown’s Farm

Broome County Gravestone Will Honor Freed Slave Emily Russell Hill

July 24, 2019 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

A gravestone for Emily Russell Hill is set to be installed at the Upper Lisle Cemetery, Route 26, in the Town of Triangle, Broome County on Sunday, August 4th, at 12:30 pm. Emily Russell was born enslaved in 1828 in Kentucky, the daughter of Samuel and Harriet (Sims) Russell. [Read more…] about Broome County Gravestone Will Honor Freed Slave Emily Russell Hill

The Underground Railroad Escape of Harriet Powel

July 22, 2019 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark is set to hold a presentation on three African-American women who escaped slavery on the Underground Railroad: Harriet Powel, Harriet Russell, and Harriet Tubman, on Saturday, August 3rd, beginning at 1:15 pm. This event coincides with the Tenth Annual Peterboro Emancipation Days, being held on August 3rd and 4th. [Read more…] about The Underground Railroad Escape of Harriet Powel

Ann Smith of Peterboro Added to Maryland Memorial

June 10, 2019 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith of Peterboro, NY, was inducted into the Circle of Achievement at Memorial Park in Hagerstown MD on Saturday, May 18, 2019. [Read more…] about Ann Smith of Peterboro Added to Maryland Memorial

Gerrit Smith

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