African Heritage

Free Black Communities: Bulwarks of Safety Before the Civil War The January 26, 2022 edition of the No./So. Dutchess News / Beacon Free Press contains a version of this article. By Bill Jeffway For persons of color, the 66 years between New York State’s 1799 Gradual Emancipation Act (a promise of the abolition of slavery that was realized in 1827) and the 1865 national abolition of slavery, was a period of great peril. Five years into New York being a “Free State,” in 1832, a well-known Poughkeepsie stagecoach proprietor named Isaac Butler was heading to Virginia to sell horses. He asked a local Black man if he would allow the man’s young son to come along to help. The father said yes. Butler returned to Poughkeepsie, but not with the boy, saying the boy had run away. The young boy’s astute petitioning for justice in Virginia, naming prominent men in Poughkeepsie that he knew of, had the good fortune to be heard by someone who knew Poughkeepsie’s Judge James Emmo. The plot was exposed and reversed, and the boy returned to Poughkeepsie. The need for security was obvious. One of the ways Blacks sought greater security in this period was by coalescing in small, rural communities. This afforded the potential to own property, even if the land was poor, and allowed a proximity that improved communications and safety. Above: An 1845 Poughkeepsie directory (DCHS Collections) lists Isaac Butler. He was a high-profile, longstanding operator of a livery stable and a stage coach service between Poughkeepsie and Connecticut. His 1832 kidnapping of an enslaved Black boy was foiled with the intervention of Poughkeepsie’s Judge James Emott. Court records show that Butler was formally charged, but a ruling in the case has not been located. In 1850, just before his death, Isaac Butler was among the contributors to the fund that successfully bought the freedom of the fugitive slave John Bolding. Bolding had escaped enslavement and moved to Poughkeepsie in 1845, but was identified by someone and returned to the south in 1850. The Black historian A. J. Williams Meyers writes, “Free Africans with their landholdings in rural areas … carved out that ‘social space’ for themselves and family… They created caring, nurturing, and religious communities up and down the Hudson Valley…many of them were mixed communities of African, European, and Native American descent. Because they were caring communities, free of racial strife, interracial couples were attracted to them. In the Hudson Valley [there were] such communities [as] Freemanville and Baxtertown east and west, respectively, in southern Dutchess County… They were steadfast in weakening the molding of a materially dispossessed and dependent African by nurturing a materially affluent African.” In addition to Freemanville and Baxtertown mentioned by Dr. Williams-Meyers, we will also look at Lithgow, Hyde Park’s New Guinea, and the less traditional situation (more central to the village than rural or marginal), Rhinebeck’s Oak Street. Freemanville Freemanville, sometimes called Guinea, and was located in the Town of Beekman near the village of Poughquag, and was named for its free Black founder, Charles Freeman. The Mid-Hudson Antislavery History Project reports, “By 1818 Freeman [then known as “Cesar Freeman”] had purchased 3 acres of land for $312, and this became the nucleus for Freemanville.” An illustration in the 1877 General History of Dutchess County by Philip Smith shows what is meant to be a typical Freemanville house. The house is two stories, has a traditional roofline, clapboard siding, and a high stone foundation suggesting it may have been built into the side of a wall. A sarcastic reference to a Freemanville “palace” from Philip Smith’s 1877 General History of Dutchess County. Often huts or crude houses are described as being built into the side of a hill, which may be indicated here. Despite the apparent personal testimony of Frank Hasbrouck that Henry or Harry Catskill was an Indigenous Person in appearance, the 1870 and 1880 Federal Census indicates he is Black (B). The only other option for race or color was the equally broadly interpreted Mulatto (M). Baxtertown About two miles northwest of the Village of Fishkill you will find Baxtertown Road. You will also find a 2015 historic roadside marker from the Pomeroy Foundation reading, “Site of Zion Pilgrim M.E. Church, Served Baxtertown Community 1848 to 1930s. Evidence suggests [it was a] station on [the] underground railroad.” Beyond this, nothing visible remains of the Baxtertown community. The lawyer and noted local historian Frank Hasbrouck wrote in 1909 that Baxtertown was a hamlet where Blacks, Indigenous Peoples, and multi-racial persons through their intermarriage made up a vibrant community. Like most of these free communities, the land was poor; it was rocky and swampy. Appearing to speak from direct, personal knowledge, and making the point that Native Peoples made up a good part of the hamlet, he describes one resident, Harry Catskill, as entirely Native in appearance, “a well-built, handsome man, with straight hair.” There are newspaper references to Baxtertown as a hamlet into the early 1900s. Baxtertown appears to be named for William Baxter (1805-1875), a White medical doctor who lived in the area. Lithgow In his 1958 book, Blithe Dutchess, Henry Noble MacCracken writes that “Lithgow, near Amenia, became the home of freed Negroes, who found employment on the farms in the area. Others drifted in as seasonal laborers. The Central Baptist Church of Clinton welcomed them.” We have not been able to find the kind of evidence we have found for other communities in census records and maps, but this is likely a factor of the impoverished, transient and seasonal nature of the population. More evidence is likely to be found with further research. New Guinea The New Guinea Community, one to two miles east of the center of the village of Hyde Park, will be the subject of a DCHS program on February 9th at 7 pm via Zoom (see end of article). Census records suggest that the population of persons of color peaked across two specific decades when it grew from around 50 enslaved persons in 1820, to perhaps 100 free persons

By Bill Jeffway. A version of this article appears in the July 14, 2021 issue of the Northern/Southern Dutchess News / Beacon Free Press. There was never a more pivotal moment in our country’s history than the moment when the renowned escaped slave, abolitionist, author, publisher and speaker Frederick Douglass galvanized an audience of several thousand people for two hours in Poughkeepsie in August of 1858. There was never a more profound question before our country than the question raised by Frederick Douglass that day. On the one hand, slavery was in decline in the country and the world. New York State had abolished slavery in 1827. Thousands were gathered that beautiful summer day, Monday, August 2, 1858, in the shady woods on the western slope of College Hill known as College Grove, to recognize the August 1, 1834 abolition of slavery by Great Britain, affecting the British West Indies. Celebrations were delayed by a day to avoid competing with Sunday Church services. Read Douglass’ full speech right: On the other hand, 4 million men, women and children remained enslaved in the US south. Debates over the slave status of new states and territories, such as Kansas, had the potential to see slavery expand in the US. Harsher laws, such as the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, created greater penalties for those in free states, like New York, who did not actively aid in the return of “runaway” slaves. The abolitionist speaker, author, and publisher, Frederick Douglass spoke to a crowd of several thousand at Poughkeepsie’s College Hill in August 1858, injecting himself into the national conversation about slavery. Public speeches became milestones in the national dialogue. In his Poughkeepsie speech, Douglass quoted from the famous speech given two months earlier by the Republican US Senate candidate from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln gave the speech in June of 1858 upon accepting the nomination of his party to run for the US Senate. Lincoln warned that the US would become all free, or all slave, but would not remain divided. Frederick Douglass was not shy about his support for Lincoln, and his contempt for Lincoln’s opponent in the Senate race, Steven A. Douglas. (Frederick Douglass made jokes about the similarities in their names). Like a relay race, a few weeks later in the fourth of the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates in September of 1858, Stephen Douglas confronted Lincoln with Frederick Douglass’s Poughkeepsie words, saying it revealed Lincoln as a supporter of “negro equality and negro citizenship.” Lincoln lost the election November 2. But many believe that the performance of the Republican party in general, and the national attention Lincoln received in 1858 in instances such as Douglass’s speech in Poughkeepsie, allowed for Lincoln to win the US Presidency in 1860. Depiction of the fourth Lincoln/Douglas debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates for the US Senate seat in Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, standing, and Stephen A. Douglas seated to his left. Mural by Robert Moot, Illinois State Capitol. Like a relay race, a few weeks later in the fourth of the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates in September of 1858, Stephen Douglas confronted Lincoln with Frederick Douglass’s Poughkeepsie words, saying it revealed Lincoln as a supporter of “negro equality and negro citizenship.” Lincoln lost the election November 2. But many believe that the performance of the Republican party in general, and the national attention Lincoln received in 1858 in instances such as Douglass’s speech in Poughkeepsie, allowed for Lincoln to win the US Presidency in 1860. The United States did not see slavery legally abolished until January 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. Full abolition was not realized until the June 19, 1865 freeing of slaves in Texas, recently created as the national holiday, Juneteenth. It was the adoption in 1870 of the 15th US Constitutional Amendment that finally guaranteed citizenship to Persons of Color. The day of the speech was reported to be bright, sunny, bustling, and noisy with music and cheers. People came from up and down the Hudson River valley. The sunrise was greeted with the firing of 24 guns. Each gathered in their respective Churches to pay respects at 8 am, church bells rang as steamships approached the docks from north and south, and extra trains and train cars carried people to Poughkeepsie station. A procession of men, women, and children started at the location of the AME Zion Church (then on Catharine Street) and marched to the docks to welcome Douglass, who arrived by steamboat. Everyone parted to make way for his carriage as he headed to College Grove, the western slope  of College Hill that remains wooded today at North Clinton Street. The group dedicated to illuminating the local history and contributions of Africans and their descendants, Celebrating the African Spirit, is hosting a monumental tribute to Douglass’s 1858 speech on Sunday, August 1 at the College Hill hilltop pavilion. The actor, Paul Oakley Stovall, after portraying George Washington in the first national tour of Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin Manuel-Miranda, became fascinated by Frederick Douglass. He has travelled around the country, and recently to Ireland, to study Douglass. Stovall will return to the original site where Douglass spoke in 1858, although the exact location of the performance will be the more accommodating hilltop pavilion, not the grove. Stovall will recite portions of that speech for approximately 30 minutes. The event will open with a rousing procession by Souls United of Hudson Valley, an interfaith gospel choir, and the Center for Creative Education’s Percussion Orchestra of Kingston, a multicultural youth ensemble.