New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

Underground Railroad

New Sojourner Truth State Park in Kingston Opening This Spring

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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

Beriah Green, Oneida Institute and Education as Liberation

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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

Syracuse Hero Jermain Loguen, Abolition & The Jerry Rescue

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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

The Last Days of John Brown: The Secret Six

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Franklin Benjamin SanbornJohn 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

Black History in Upstate New York Programs Begin August 16th

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Black History Upstate Poster Basulto j 7-21-21The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) will present Black History in Upstate New York programs, created by Colgate University graduate Victoria Basulto, beginning August 16th.

The daily programs will provide a combination of bite-sized informational videos and longer presentations by scholars on historical figures and places that emphasize the crucial role Black Americans have played in the history of Upstate New York. The events will be available on the Hall of Fame’s YouTube channel. [Read more…] about Black History in Upstate New York Programs Begin August 16th

FreeThemWalkers Travel Underground Railroad

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FreeThem Walkers on their 900 mile anti-slavery journey traveling parts of the Underground RailroadMembers of the FreeThemWalk team arrived in Peterboro on Monday, May 31st to tour the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum. The Team started its 900 mile walk in Lynchburg, VA, and plans to finish the walk in Buffalo on June 19th, in time for the Juneteenth Festival.

The FreeThemWalk Team follows many of the Underground Railroad paths of the network that provided aid and safe houses to enslaved peoples heading north to escape slavery in the south. Hundreds of freedom seekers found support and escape in Upstate New York the first half of the 19th Century. [Read more…] about FreeThemWalkers Travel Underground Railroad

Underground Railroad Survey Seeks To Identify Local Collections

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Underground Railroad Consortium of New York StateThe Underground Railroad Consortium of New York State has announced the formation of a new committee, focusing on archives and oral histories with the goal of identifying archival materials related to the Underground Railroad in New York State. [Read more…] about Underground Railroad Survey Seeks To Identify Local Collections

Anna Murray-Douglass: Frederick’s Most Important Ally

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Anna Murray-DouglassI offer the following tribute to Anna Douglass, first wife of Frederick Douglass and mother of their five children, on the anniversary of her death Aug. 4, 1882:

Both Frederick Bailey and Anna Murray were born in rural Maryland in the early 1800s and grew up under harsh racist customs that strictly defined roles for men and women by sex, race and class.

By the time Frederick and Anna met in the 1830s in Baltimore, his owner valued him as a slave who was a skilled caulker. Yet Anna, despite being a free woman skilled as a domestic and cook, was not well paid by her white employers. [Read more…] about Anna Murray-Douglass: Frederick’s Most Important Ally

Commemoration of Slavery’s End in NYS Being Planned

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Underground Railroad Consortium of New York StateThe Underground Railroad Consortium of New York State has announced the formation of a statewide committee to begin planning for the bicentennial of the legal abolition of slavery in New York, which finally took effect on July 4, 1827, following what was called “gradual emancipation” that began nearly 30 years before. [Read more…] about Commemoration of Slavery’s End in NYS Being Planned

#MonumentalWomen Project (Podcast)

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crossroads of rockland historyThe March 2020 episode of “Crossroads of Rockland History” focused on the #MonumentalWomen Project.

Pam Elam (President, Monumental Women) and Meredith Bergmann (Sculptor), appeared to speak about the all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization, created in 2014 with the initial goal of breaking the bronze ceiling and creating the first statue of real women in Central Park’s 166-year history. [Read more…] about #MonumentalWomen Project (Podcast)