On Wednesday, June 18, at 4 pm, Norman K. Dann PhD continues the eight two hour sessions on the Gerrit Smith Estate with a program on the Underground Railroad in Peterboro. Dann will explain the Underground Railroad and discuss it as a symptom of a corrupt nation whose founding values were not implemented. He describes the origins of slavery, details the lives of the enslaved, and describes the Underground Railroad as a process of achieving freedom via the use of a network of support persons linking the United States slave states to Canada. He will also discuss the risks incurred by the formerly enslaved as they moved north, and the efficacy of the process of escape.
Frederick Douglass printed on the front page of his December 8, 1848 edition of his newspaper The North Star, a quote from his friend and fellow black abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet, “There are yet two places where slaveholders cannot come, Heaven and Peterboro.” Peterboro was a special place for fugitives from enslavement and their guides, as well as for abolitionists working on the Underground Railroad at other locations. Peterboro residents were accustomed to seeing freedom seekers around the hamlet. Indeed, Smith purchased the freedom of enslaved persons, and, in some cases, families stayed in Peterboro after arriving from the South.
The Barn on the estate still has the stables where the horses were kept that drew the carriages north. The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark is on the National Park Service Network to Freedom (the national Underground Railroad system), the New York State Underground Railroad Heritage Trail, and is a partner of the Underground Railroad Consortium of New York State.
The following day, at 6:19 pm on Thursday, June 19, Brian Frey will introduce his new documentary North to Freedom which describes Underground Railroad activities in Upstate New York. And at 9 am on Saturday a panel, including Judith Wellman PhD, will describe researching Underground Railroad sites.
The programs are in Peterboro NY 13134. Dann’s session and the Saturday Underground Railroad panel are at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road. North to Freedom is at the Peterboro United Methodist Church, 5240 Pleasant Valley Road.
The public is invited to partake of one, a few, or all of the free sessions
www.PeterboroNY.org info@gerritsmith.org 315.308.189