Press

A little-known narrative of New York's antebellum history, involving several former Troy residents, is the subject of a traveling exhibition -- "Dreaming of Timbuctoo" -- which will be at the New York State Museum October 8, 2003 through Feb. 29, 2004.

The exhibition, curated by a Saratoga resident, chronicles a strategy embraced by black and white abolitionists from Troy to Oswego to Queens to the Adirondacks to secure land and voting rights for black New Yorkers a full decade before the Civil War. As a statewide referendum on the question of equal voting rights for free black men loomed on the horizon in November 1846, the prominent reformer and philanthropist Gerrit Smith of Madison County resolved to give away 120,000 acres of his vast holdings of Adirondack land in Essex and Franklin counties to black men eager to homestead and vote but lacking the means to do either.

The "Smith Land" project suggested a pragmatic response to the state law that required free black men to own $250 worth of taxable property in order to vote. It also actively involved and fired the agrarian ideals of some of the most prominent African-American leaders of the time.

Smith appealed to black allies to help him identify eligible (free, "colored men," non-drinking, able-bodied) grantees. He enlisted prominent African-American activists and fellow abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, Rev. Jermain Loguen of Syracuse and Rev. Henry Highland Garnet of Troy.

The son of a slave who fled with his family of 10 from Maryland in the mid 1820s, Rev. Garnet knew firsthand about the many obstacles that free blacks faced. He was forced to flee New Hampshire when a school he and other black youths were attending was dragged into a swamp one night by a team of oxen driven by a group of anti-integrationists who had been drinking. Garnet eventually graduated from the Oneida Institute in 1839 and became pastor of the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church in Troy. Using his pulpit and other means to argue the benefits of the "Smith Land" project, he mobilized more grantees than anyone else.

Among the grantees was Lyman Eppes of Troy who moved to the area that became known as Timbuctoo, the best known and most enduring of the "Smith land" settlements located in the township of North Elba, near the present day village of Lake Placid. Perhaps the most successful of the black farmers, Eppes left Troy for the Adirondacks in 1849. He raised sheep, cultivated a variety of crops, taught music and may have been the first Adirondack guide to cut a trail through Indian Pass. He helped found a Sabbath school, a town library and a church. His rendition of John Brown's favorite hymn at Brown's funeral won him a warm place in Adirondack history. His son, Lyman Eppes Jr., was the last survivor of Timbuctoo, dying in 1942.

James H. Henderson, a farmer-cobbler from Troy, also moved to Timbuctoo, settling there in 1849. Prior to that he owned a shop in Manhattan, ran a night school and worked for suffrage reform at black political conventions in Schenectady and Troy. The shoemaker "had his sign hanging out (the first and only in the township) and appeared to (run) a good business," according to written accounts. Unfortunately, Henderson froze to death in 1852 and his family then moved back to Troy.

Troy was also the setting for meetings extolling the virtues of land ownership. "Fugitive William Jones" of Troy spoke about the joy of working the land for himself, rather than a slave master. His "eloquent and common sense speech" is quoted in an account of a "meeting of Colored People of Troy," Oct. 28, 1846 in the Albany Patriot, one of several New York anti-slavery newspapers.

Three thousand men, hailing from nearly every county in New York State, signed up for a land grant.
In the end, however, there were fewer than 200 settlers and they found many lots to be unworkable and sometimes under water or on the sides of mountains. Also, the inexperienced, city-based grantees lacked
the means to get them through their first winters. They also were discouraged from moving north by
accounts in the black press of "highhanded games" being played on the grantees by unscrupulous locals. Another disincentive was the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law which put every black in a non-slave state, whether fugitive or free-born, at risk for capture and enslavement. Black New Yorkers fled to Canada or to cities where there was safety in numbers.

Social historian Amy Godine, a Saratoga-based writer currently at work on a book on Timbuctoo, and curator of the exhibition, disagrees with some Adirondack area historians who call Timbuctoo a failure. "We'll never know how many black New Yorkers were able to vote the anti-slavery ticket as a result of getting these grants," said Ms. Godine. "We can imagine what owning land, whether or not it was farmed, meant to impoverished black New Yorkers in 1846. Certainly, our idea of Adirondack history is greatly enriched by the story of Timbuctoo, with its roots in the statewide civil rights struggle and its links to activists like Garnet, Frederick Douglass and John Brown."

"Dreaming of Timbuctoo" is a joint project of a grassroots freedom education organization called John Brown Lives! and the Essex County Historical Society. Both organizations are located in the Adirondacks. The exhibition was produced by Martha Swan, director of John Brown Lives!

Since its 2000 opening at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, Dreaming of Timbuctoo
has toured New York State. It has been on view at the Brooklyn Public Library, Tang Teaching Museum
at Skidmore College, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, Essex County Historical Society, Oswego County Historical Society and other college campuses. In August Dreaming of Timbuctoo was
displayed in the Pan-African Village at the New York State Fair in Syracuse.

The exhibition was funded in part by the New York Council for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, International Paper Foundation, Puffin Foundation, and numerous individuals.

Founded in 1836, the New York State Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. The museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany. Further information is available by calling 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.