Clinton Scene, Stories From Our History: Black History Here

by Richard L. Williams, Town and Village Historian

The Spectator
The Spectator

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Photo Courtesy of WBET

Richard L. Williams is the former mayor of Clinton (1987–97) and Village Trustee (1976–87). He has been a member of the Clinton Historical Society since 1968 and has served as the editor of its newsletter since 2000. He was named the official historian of both the Village of Clinton and Town of Kirkland in 2000. He also was a contributing columnist for the Clinton Courier from 1975–2015 and now writes weekly columns for the Waterville Times. He has written or edited 12 books on local history. Throughout the semester, Williams will provide readers with brief historical stories of the College and the local community. This week he writes on the history of slavery and the abolition movement in Clinton and Kirkland.

The US Constitution in 1787 banned slave imports after 1808 and the 3/5ths Compromise counted 3 blacks out of 5 for representation in the Congress. In New York State slavery was made illegal in 1827, although many free black Americans lived here prior to that period.

Upstate New York was a hotbed for the abolitionist movement that split many churches and families. Locally, at the Stone Presbyterian Church, two ministers in the 1830s resigned over the slavery and abolition issue. Some wanted immediate abolition while others were for gradual emancipation.

In the Town of Kirkland, sentiment against slavery caused petitions to be sent to Congress and the NYS Legislature. In 1835 a petition to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia was signed by these Clinton men: Elisha Lee, James Gridley, Elias Ellinwood, Wayne Gridley, Orlando Ellinwood, Hiram H. Kellogg, and Benjamin W. Dwight, among others. These were prominent men of early Clinton families. For example, Rev. H.H. Kellogg graduated from Hamilton College and operated the “Young Ladies Domestic Seminary” at the corner of Mulberry and Kellogg streets between 1833 and 1844 and again from 1848 to 1850. He left Clinton in 1844 to become the first president of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, a college started by abolitionists. Kellogg was a schoolmate and constant friend of Abolitionist Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, New York. Smith graduated from Hamilton as valedictorian of the Class of 1818.

The Gridley family came to Clinton in the 1790s and owned homes on Fountain Street. The Ellinwoods arrived early too, and most settled on Brimfield Street as they had come from Brimfield, Massachusetts. Benjamin W. Dwight graduated from Hamilton College and Yale Theological Seminary and spent his career as a minister and as an educator. He founded Dwight’s Rural High School at Norton Avenue and Elm Streets in 1857 and stayed until 1863. He also conducted a similar school in New York City. His distinguished family includes Rev. Timothy Dwight, who was president of Yale University.

Hamilton College students were also caught up in the abolitionist movement in 1837 and sent petitions to Congress to abolish slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. They also asked that the internal and coastal slave trade be ended. Women as well as students took part in these petitions; we have copies of 1851 petitions from 58 Kirkland men and 66 women against the annexation of Texas. Rev. Kellogg and Delia Avery were among the signers.

The extension of slavery to the new western territories was the subject of an 1854 petition that urged a ban on slavery in Nebraska. Gaius Butler, Augustus Fake, Lester Barker, and H.H. Kellogg were among the signers. What about slave owners in Kirkland? Yes, there were slaves here. Nathaniel Griffin of Bristol Road had a house slave or two. One was named Peter Bush and was later emancipated. “Old Kate” was another emancipated slave of Griffin’s.

Nathaniel’s son Ebenezer Griffin was a lawyer and Clinton postmaster with an office on East Park Row. In 1818 Ebenezer certified to Paris Town Clerk Thomas Steel that: “Jack a negro boy now owned by me is according to the best information in my possession 13 years old or thereabouts.” Jack was a slave. In 1821, prominent Clinton men such as Rev. Asahel S. Norton, Rev. Edward Robinson, and Jesse Curtis certified in a document to the Town Clerk Steele that one Cesar Hander was a black man and that they “[knew] him to be honest, faithful, and trustworthy that he has for 8 years past been in the employ of Hamilton College and that all this time been known and considered as free according to the tenor of a certificate in the year 1808 from his former master.” Hander was now a free man here, but was formerly a slave.

Census data also tells the story of African-Americans here prior to the Civil War. Montgomery County covered all of this area in the 1790 census. It reported “41 free negroes, 588 slaves, and 24,210 free whites.” The 1830 Kirkland census listed six males and six females as free “colored” and in 1835, 20 “colored” were entitled to vote in Kirkland. James Lewis, a runaway slave, was hidden and protected by the Bristol family on Bristol Road.

The Old White Meeting House in the park was the first major church in Clinton, and it had a “Negro Pew on the east side of the church.” Possible fugitive slaves also were here according to research by retired Utica College Professor Jan De Amicis. He has scanned census records for places of birth and found in the 1850 census for Kirkland that Charles Chandler and his family of six all were born in Tennessee. Similarly, Henry Howard and his wife were born in Maryland, but his three children were born in New York. DeAmicis counted these men as black fugitive slaves.

The 1860 census showed that Howard and family were still here. James and Cynthia Lewis were recorded as living with George Bristol. It listed wife Cynthia Lewis as “reads, writes” and James as laborer. Also in the 1860 census we find Edward Dennison, a farmer, and his wife Wealthy. They were free African-Americans who had real estate valued at $900.00 and personal property valued at $100.00. Other African-Americans in that census were Ella Benton, who lived with the Williams Saunders family, and Elizabeth Robbins, age 16, who was a domestic worker in the Wicks Seaman family. Seaman was superintendent at the Clark Mills Cotton Mills.

St. Mary’s Church baptized four members of the black Sternburg family in the 1850s. Their sponsors had Irish names. Clinton cemeteries have burials of African-Americans. Sunset Hill has William Williams who served as a cook in the Union Army in the Civil War, received a federal pension, and died in 1926. The Old Burying Ground has Henry Howard, mentioned above, who was in the Rhode Island Regiment, but settled here after the War.

Did Kirkland citizens harbor fugitive slaves escaping slavery? This is difficult to prove. Many think that if their house has a false attic or small closet under the floorboards, it must have sheltered runaways in the past. Prof. DeAmicis, after much research, cannot document what Kirkland homes were refuges for runaways, but he has a list of possibilities. Documenting homes which held runaways is almost impossible, as no one kept such records. Prof. DeAmicis headed the Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission and produced a brochure with its findings. The brochure states “evidence suggests that fugitives were sheltered in Kirkland and Clinton.”

Yes, slavery did exist on a very small scale in Kirkland despite many residents joining the abolitionist movement. A few free black Americans and some fugitive slaves also lived here in the first half of the 19th century. As with many villages, opinion split over how to end slavery, and unfortunately it required a tragic civil war to settle the issue.

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