A Stop on the Underground Railroad

A panel from the NorthStar Historical Project in the Friends of Harriet Tubman exhibit.

Evergreen Bank in Greenwich, once an Underground Railroad stop.

By Tom Calarco
Today Greenwich, NY rests back in the shadows of the Green Mountains near the Vermont border. A couple traffic lights slow traffic along a Main Street lined with buildings dating from the 19th century.
A few antiques shops, bookstores, retail shops, some banks and churches, a real estate office, the fire station, the library, the chiropractor, and some eateries pretty much sum it up. The village has changed little in the last 150 years, though new street lights with solar panels that overlook the 200-year-old village cemetery greet you as you enter from the western end, perhaps signaling a move towards the 21st. Generally, however, the rural character of the area still brings to mind the paintings of Grandma Moses, who lived in nearby Cambridge.
In its heyday, before the Civil War, when it was known as Union Village, Greenwich was a regional center of abolitionism, a hub on that enigmatic route known as the Underground Railroad. Everyone who lives here knows about it, or least they know of the legends that have been passed down through the years.
It wasn’t until recently, however, with the growing interest in the Underground Railroad spurred by the National Parks Service study of the 1990s, and the emergence of an army of grass roots researchers across the nation, including – yours truly, that verifiable accounts of these activities have become available.
The village dates its involvement in the abolition movement from around 1833 when Dr, Hiram Corliss, a nationally known surgeon, took up the cause. The following year he was elected as president of the Washington County Anti-Slavery Society, the first abolition society in the Adirondack Region. He, along William H. Mowry, son of town entrepreneur William Mowry, and Baptist minister Rev, Nathaniel Colver, led a movement that grew rapidly and spawned its own abolition church, the Orthodox Congregational “Free Church,” also founded by Corliss and Mowry in 1837. Already by that time, fugitive slaves were passing through, and in 1839, a major convention there brought such important abolitionists as Gerrit Smith, Joshua Leavitt, William L. Chaplin, Henry B. Stanton, and Rev. Luther Lee.
A vice-president and active member in the state anti-slavery society, Corliss was elected president in 1842 of one of the most radical anti-slavery associations ever organized, the Eastern New York Anti-Slavery Society (ENYASS), an adjunct of the Liberty Party. Its membership reached from New York City to Essex County, and its leading members included a trio of notorious “slave-stealers,” as they called those who went into the South and led slaves to freedom: Chaplin, and the Revs. Charles T. Torrey, and Abel Brown. It also had its own newspaper, The Tocsin of Liberty, later The Albany Patriot, which some called the nation’s most radical abolitionist newspaper.
Under the direction of Brown, Torrey, and later Chaplin, the newspaper published advertisements and stories about the fugitive slaves it was assisting during its early years. These slaves sometimes were brought out of the South by Torrey or with the help of the New York Committee of Vigilance, one of the nation’s most important Underground Railroad organizations, which had close ties to the ENYASS. Sometimes as documentation has shown, they were sent up the Champlain Canal that passed close by Union Village.
The ENYASS would disband around 1846, after the deaths of Brown and Torrey, but it did not discourage those in Greenwich. Its abolition church continued to grow, and an important abolitionist, Leonard Gibbs, moved to town. He joined the Free Church and took the place of William H. Mowry, who had died prematurely the year before, as Corliss’s most important associate.
The local movement breathed new life in 1850 after the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law, when Quakers from nearby Easton and Quaker Springs, just across the Hudson River, formed the Old Saratoga Anti-Slavery Society. They named Corliss president and Gibbs chair of its vigilance committee when slavecatchers came to apprehend fugitive slave John Salter in 1858. Important in the operation of the Underground Railroad during this decade were Easton’s Esther and Job Wilbur, a number of whose activities were described in a memoir written by their grandson, Oren B. Wilbur.
Of course there is much more to the story of Greenwich and its involvement in the Underground Railroad. Foremost among the events making this rich village heritage available is the conference Steal Away to Freedom, offered by the NorthStar Historical Project founded by Greenwich music teacher Debi Craig. It will hold its third annual Underground Railroad conference on July 31-August 1.
This year is special because in addition to its usual workshops, performances, and bus tour, the Friends of Harriet Ad Hoc Committee’s Underground Railroad exhibit with contributions from researchers around the state is coming to town.
“We are so honored this year to have the exhibit here this year,” said Craig, whose organization is one of the contributors.
The exhibit will open on July 10 at Greenwich High School and will remain through the month until the close of the conference, with the weekend of July 23-25 off for the Harbor Fest in Oswego, NY. The brainchild of George Sands III, who founded the central New York organization in 1999, its goal is to promote economic development through agri-heritage tourism.
“Agriculture is the number one moneymaker in the state and tourism is second,” said George Sands IV, the organization’s spokesman. “Through this exhibit we show how heritage tourism can help your county, your town, and your village. We’re not just talking about the Underground Railroad, we’re talking about an area’s whole heritage, and that’s why we support goods made locally. When people come to town, they have to eat and have to have a place to stay. It’s a great way for communities to revitalize.”
Craig believes the exhibit will be the special attraction her conference needs to increase attendance. The conference has attracted only a modest number its first two years, and has not been well supported by locals.
“People have lost sight of how big it was and how much Greenwich was involved in the Underground Railroad,” said Kathy Sharp Barber, the former village historian. “It’s been written off as an urban legend and that’s just not true.”
Barber is referring to the unconfirmed oral tradition that a tunnel ran under the center of town that connected the homes of Free Church members.
“I think people lost faith in it because they couldn’t find it, and they thought the historians got it wrong.”
She also believes the apathy might be because many people who are now adults were not even alive when segregation existed. As a result, though modern researchers are confirming the large legends of the village’s glorious abolitionist past, the village isn’t paying much attention. But Mayor Chris McCormick believes this is about to change.
“We’re still at the beginning stages of people learning about it, and the conference and the exhibit are a wonderful way of bringing this awareness to people. It’s really something to be valued and be proud of, and I think that soon people are going to be turned on to it.”
Tim Tefft, publisher of the village’s weekly Greenwich Journal, whose family in Greenwich goes back to the days of Underground Railroad, agreed.
“It’s important for people here to become acquainted with this history and the conference is a good opportunity for them to do this,” he said.
Photographer Cliff Oliver Mealy, who moved to Greenwich 14 years ago and started doing village tours four years ago, already is a true believer.
“It’s very important to see the role that a small town can play in the national arena. Proof that our forefathers were brave and independent. Proof that not everything happening is in New York City. In 1837 Union Village thought globally and acted locally. The good that men (and women) do, does live after them. When the country acted badly we acted correctly. We have a lot to be proud of.”
Craig is confident that she can galvanize her community to acknowledge and take an interest in this important part of its history.
“I am thrilled that the community in which I live was at the forefront in supporting the belief that all men and women have the right to be free. Our conference’s goal is to educate not only members of our local community, but anyone interested in American History, and I’m expecting a big turnout this year.”
For a schedule of this year’s Steal Away to Freedom Conference, go to www.stealawaytofreedom.com/schedule.cfm. You also may register online. The fee for the full conference is $65. There also are rates for seniors, students, and children as well as for single events and one day passes.
For more information, call (518) 692-9740.

Friends of Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Exhibit

By Tom Calarco
“To work together to research and document this important story is not about us, but about making sure the complete and true, epic story of the Underground Railroad is told to the people of New York State and America,” says George Sand III, founder of the Friends of Harriet Tubman Ad Hoc Committee, which organized their traveling Underground Railroad exhibit as a means to tell the story of the Underground Railroad and as a device for economic development.
Exhibitors from around New York state have contributed to this collection of artifacts, pictures, articles, and maps that illustrate the latest information developed about the Underground Railroad in New York State.
Among them are the James W. Jones Museum from Elmira; the Oswego County Freedom Trail Commission; the Harriet Tubman Retreat from Buffalo; the Central New York Resource Conservation & Development Project; the Booth Heritage Center/Tioga Underground Research Project from Candor, New York; the Peterboro Area Museum, the Southern Tier Underground Railroad Commission; Sisters In Support from Peekskill, N.Y.; the NorthStar Historical Project from Greenwich, N.Y.; the Underground Railroad Workshop from Albany, N.Y.; and Murphy’s Orchards in Burt, N.Y.
A fruit farm in western New York, Murphy’s Orchards began developing its own Underground Railroad tour ten years ago, and was one of the first sites established on the National Network to Freedom created by National Parks Service.
“We are a working farm that just happened to be an Underground Railroad stop. We believe that to understand the Underground Railroad, you must understand slavery, and that to understand slavery, you must understand farming,” said Carol Murphy. “We started doing our program for children but now we offer it to everyone. We emphasize to children that there is dignity in working and that freedom doesn’t mean you don’t have to work. It was the slaves’ lack of choice that was important.”
Another important contributor to the exhibit is the P.R.I.S.M! Educational Resource Co. (“Preserving our Resources with the Intent to Share among the Many!”) from Long Island.
Growing from a small, privately-held family holding, its collection features leg irons & shackles; “legal” documents of enslavement (i.e., estate & auction listings; wills; “Freedom papers”); first-edition 18th & 19th century pro-slavery & anti-slavery books and pamphlets; newspapers with runaway slave ads; and original pictures, prints & manuscript documents.
“There is so much heritage in New York State,” says committee spokesman, George Sands IV. “And in places like Greenwich that I didn’t know even existed.”
After leaving Greenwich, the exhibit will be traveling to Norwich, for the month of August, and the committee is negotiating with a number of future hosts for the exhibition. Packed with information, often in a kind of Mom and Pop do-it-yourself style, The Friends of Harriet Tubman Ad Hoc Committee Unique New York State Wide Traveling Agri-Heritage Tourism Education Underground Railroad Exhibition is something that lovers of history won’t want to miss. It’s also as good a promotion for developing interest in the Underground Railroad as you’ll find.
For more information about the Harriet Tubman Ad Hoc Committee, go to www.freedomtrail.org/friends/indextubman.htm.

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