 Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Abby Kelley Foster will be inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame on October 1st in Seneca Falls and into the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) on Saturday, October 22 at ceremonies to be held at Colgate University, Hamilton NY. Born in Pelham MA January 15, 1811 Kelley was raised a Quaker and became a teacher at the Friends School in Lynn MA in 1829. In 1832, when she lived in Worcester, she was influenced by a speech from radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. She joined the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, and in 1837, she, and others, gathered over six thousand signatures on anti-slavery petitions. The Lynn Female Society named her a delegate to the first national Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in New York City. The following year, at the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, Abby Kelley gave her first speech against slavery with a mob threatening to burn down Pennsylvania Hall.
Abby and fellow radical abolitionist Stephen Foster married in 1845 and bought a farm in Worcester MA. Abby gave birth to their daughter, Alla, in 1847. Kelley faced hostile audiences from within and from outside the abolition movement in her five decades of advocating for immediate abolition of slavery and for advocating leaving churches that did not condemn slavery. At 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 22, Stacey Robertson PhD. will present Abby Kelley Foster: A Radical Voice in the West, the first program in the annual afternoon Upstate Institute Inductee Symposia. Robertson states, “Abby Kelley Foster single handedly transformed the nature of the western antislavery movement in the 1840s. From her first visit in the summer of 1845 she inspired hundreds of abolitionists to reconsider their approach to the movement and embrace a more uncompromising position. Women found her irresistible and she helped to organize dozens of female anti-slavery societies in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. She also convinced several women to join her in the lecturing field, devoting themselves full-time to the movement. No other person impacted western antislavery more than Abby Kelley Foster.” Add Comment  Congressman Paul Tonko joined officials from the National Park Service; Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor; I LOVE NEW YORK; the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; and others today to announce a joint tourism initiative that aims to increase visitation to upstate New York by highlighting historic sites, museums, and tours dedicated to interpreting the story of the Underground Railroad (UGRR). Historically, about eight out of 10 national travelers have included a cultural, arts, heritage or historic activity or event while on a trip of 50 miles or more. This represents a significant contribution to the State’s vital $50 billion a year tourism industry. “The Underground Railroad is one of the greatest stories in our nation’s history, and I am proud of the commitment that Interior and the National Park Service are making to ensure it’s told far and wide,” Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said. “Encouraging people to visit these hallowed sites will not only honor the men and women who risked so much in the name of equality and freedom, but will also drive tourism and help spur local economies in New York.”
As a major part of this collaborative initiative, from September 10th through 15th I LOVE NEW YORK will lead a familiarization tour* of historic sites and museums related to the Underground Railroad and slavery in New York, crossing the state with journalists from six different media outlets and a tour wholesaler, all from the United Kingdom. Many of these sites have received promotional and marketing support from the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor (ECNHC), which has recently been inducted into the National Park Service Network to Freedom Program** in recognition of its important work linking and promoting UGRR sites along the New York State Canal System. New Work on Lucretia Mott to be Presented 08/11/2011
 Lucretia Coffin Mott was one of the most famous and controversial women in nineteenth-century America. Mott was viewed in her time as a dominant figure in the dual struggles for racial and sexual equality. In the first biography of Mott in thirty years, historian Carol Faulkner reveals the motivations of Mott’s activism and interest in peace, temperance, prison reform, religious freedom, and Native American rights. Mott was among the first white Americans to call for an immediate end to slavery. Her long-term collaboration with white and black women in the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society was remarkable. Mott was known as the "moving spirit" of the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. She envisioned women's rights not as a new and separate movement, but rather as an extension of the universal principles of liberty and equality.
At 2 p.m. Sunday, August 28, Carol Faulkner Ph.D. will discuss her new biography Lucretia Mott's Heresy: Abolition and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America and sign books at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY. Mott was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005 in the first group to be honored. Protest to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act 08/08/2011
 Oil painting by Bill Edmonston In August 1850 Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass organized a two day convention of abolitionists to protest Congressional debate on the proposed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. 2,000 people attended the meeting in Cazenovia which Ezra Greenleaf Weld captured in the famous daguerreotype image owned by the Madison County Historical Society in Oneida NY. At 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 21, the 151st anniversary of the first day of that Cazenovia Convention, Norman K. Dann Ph.D. and W. Edward Edmonston Ph.D. will present Protest to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
Norm Dann, professor emeritus Morrisville State College, will provide a brief chronology of the events that led to the second of two laws to return escaped slaves, and outline the horrendous intent and the dreadful impact of the law on slaves and free citizens. Dann is the author of Practical Dreamer: Gerrit Smith and the Crusade for Social Reform (2009), a Steward at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, and a founder and member of the Cabinet of Freedom for the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum. Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History 06/28/2011
 The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will present an illustrated lecture by Milton C. Sernett, Ph.D. on Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory and History, on Sunday July 17, 2011 at 2 p.m. at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY 13134. Harriet Tubman was an ardent abolitionist, who contributed to the efforts of the Underground Railroad after escaping from slavery herself. Her reputation as a visionary has led her to remain an icon in American history, and in return her life has oftentimes been studied and written about.
This illustrated lecture tells the story of how a poor and illiterate black woman, once enslaved but self-liberated, became the dominant symbol of the Underground Railroad and an inspiration today for Americans of diverse backgrounds and reform interests. Audiences hear of the exciting findings of the latest research regarding Tubman the historical person, and of the many ways in which her life has been celebrated by writers, artists, and other creative spirits. Dr. Sernett has completed a book on the interplay of myth, memory and history during the years when Tubman was being canonized as an American saint. Dr. Sernett is professor emeritus of African American Studies and History, and taught at Syracuse University for over thirty years. He has published eight books and numerous articles and essays, many of them dealing with American abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, and African American history. He has given presentations on the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism, and Harriet Tubman on many occasions for the Scholar’s program of the New York Council for the Humanities. Dr. Sernett has also served as a consultant to numerous organizations interested in documenting local and regional history pertaining to the Underground Railroad and Abolitionism.  Say Cheese! 05/18/2011
 In 1928 the New York Holstein-Fresian Association erected a monument on Oxbow Road in the Town of Smithfield in Madison County NY to commemorate the Kriemhild Herd established in 1869 by Gerrit Smith Miller of Peterboro. June 6, 2010 the Stewards of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, the Madison County Holstein Association, and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Madison County celebrated this Holstein heritage with archives, pedigree, and collections sharing, a picnic, and a program by Milton C. Sernett PhD. Dr. Sernett, professor emeritus Syracuse University, researched the importation of the first registered Holstein-Fresians by the Miller family of Peterboro, prepared a PowerPoint presentation and wrote a book Cradle of the Breed: Gerrit Smith Miller & The Kriemhild Herd for the occasion.
In follow-up to the success of the 2010 event, Dr. Sernett, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Dutch Girl Cheese, the Gerrit Smith Estate, and the Madison County Holstein Association are planning another Holstein Heritage day on Sunday, June 5, 2011 from 2 – 5 p.m. at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY 13134. This year Sernett will give an illustrated talk at 3 p.m. based upon his new book Say Cheese: The Story of the Era When New York State Cheese was King." The book outlines the era when New York had thousands of cheese factories. In 1936 the National Cheese Institute erected a monument north of Rome NY in honor of Jesse Williams’ establishment of the first cheese factory in NYS. Sernett also describes the 1400 pound cheddar that Oswego dairyman Col. Thomas S. Meacham created for President Andrew Jackson. It took 48 horses to transport the cheese to the canal system to get to Washington D.C.  During Black History Month volunteers at an Underground Railroad site and at an antislavery hall in Peterboro will finalize plans for 2011 programs that help to tell the story of African American freedom seeking in 19thCentury America.
Stewards for the Gerrit Smith Estate (GSE) are planning programs about the role that Gerrit Smith and his home played in Underground Railroad operations. The season opens Saturday, March 5 at 3 p.m. for the annual birthday party and lecture for Gerrit Smith, an adamant foe of slavery. Smith’s estate was designated a National Historic Landmark (NHL) in 2001 by the Secretary of the Interior because it was “found to possess national significance in the history of the United States.” The goal of the Smithfield Community Association, the governing board of the estate, is to preserve the remaining buildings of that estate in which the historical stories can be told of the courageous African Americans who took great risks to flee from slavery and the courageous persons who took risks to help fugitives flee. Celebrating Gerrit Smith's Birthday 02/21/2011
 Stewards for the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark begin the 2011 program season with the annual lecture and party for Gerrit Smith at 3 p.m. Saturday, March 5, 2011 at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY. Norman K. Dann Ph. D., professor emeritus Morrisville State College, will present Gerrit Smith’s Beginnings as an Abolitionist and describe abolition stages through which Smith developed into a radical abolitionist. Sharing his decade of research and writings on Smith, Dann will explain the efforts of the American Colonization Society (ACS) which was founded in 1817 to return freed blacks to Liberia, a small country on the west coast of Africa. Smith contributed to the ACS in 1817, but by 1834 he no longer supported the ACS. Dann is a member of the Peterboro Civil War Weekend Committee, a steward for the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark (GSENHL), and a member of the Cabinet of Freedom for the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF). Dann has two publications on Peterboro history, with two more in process. When We Get to Heaven: Runaway Slaves on the Road to Peterboro (2008) and Practical Dreamer: Gerrit Smith and the Crusade for Social Reform (2009) are published by Log Cabin Books and will be available at the program. Directly following Dann’s presentation, Sonya Lydford will share the history and culture of Liberia through her own personal experience. Lydford, a steward for the GSENHL and a volunteer for Peterboro Civil War Weekend, and her husband Robert have adopted four children from Liberia, and are awaiting three more to add to their family of thirteen. Sonya and her family will share sights, sounds, and tastes of current day Liberia. The program will end with a birthday cake commemorating the birth of Gerrit Smith March 6, 1797. The public is encouraged to attend. Admission is $2. Free for Stewards and Students. For more information contact www.sca-peterboro.org, Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, 4543 Peterboro Road, Peterboro NY 13134-0006, mail@sca-peterboro.org, 315-684-3262. Chain Broken to Open Historic Site 10/26/2010
 This past weekend, the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum and the Smithfield Community Association hosted a three-day event in Peterboro, NY commemorating the 175th Anniversary of the Inaugural Meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society. Over the course of the festivities, two leaders of the American abolitionist movement, Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld, were inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame. Ribbon cutting ceremonies also celebrated the selection of two sites in Peterboro, the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the Smithfield Community Center, as New York State Heritage New York Underground Railroad Trail Sites.
Other commemorative events included a dramatic re-creation of the Utica Riots and the Inaugural Meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, written and directed by Hugh C. Humphreys; the annual dinner of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, which preceded the induction ceremonies of Tappan and Weld and included a keynote address by Dr. Milton C. Sernett, professor emeritus of History at Syracuse University and a noted authority on the antislavery movement in upstate New York, and a ribbon cutting ceremony that included Civil War Reenactors and members of the Smithfield Community Association dressed in full period dress, and speeches by local and state officials and politicians. The Saturday afternoon lecture by Milton C. Sernett, “North Star Shining: New York State’s Freedom Trail – An Illustrated Journey along the Underground Railroad,” was presented as a Speaker in the Humanities event underwritten by the New York Council for the Humanities. Dr. Sernett’s lecture, which included a PowerPoint presentation of photographs and illustrations, summarized the historiography of the Underground Railroad from early works like William Stills’ The Underground Rail Road (1872) and Wilbur Henry Siebert’s 1898 study, The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom, to recent works like Fergus M. Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan (2006). The heart of Dr. Sernett’s presentation outlined the efforts of a small number of professional and local historians to reconstruct the history of the Underground Railroad in upstate New York, and bring to light the efforts of the many heroic New York State citizens who conducted runaway slaves north to Canada and freedom. | WelcomeYou've found the official blog for Madison County Tourism, We are located in the heart of Central New York State just minutes from Syracuse and Utica. Stop back often and visit us soon!    Blog RollErie Canalway National Heritage Corridor CategoriesAll ArchivesFebruary 2012 |
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