State History

This article was written by Richard L. Williams, Town of Kirkland and Village of Clinton Historian.

This article honors the tragic story of slavery in America and will discuss slavery in Clinton and Kirkland in the antebellum period.

            The new 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 by 1827 although many free blacks lived here prior to that period.

            Upstate New York was a hotbed for the abolitionist movement which 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, and 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. By the way Smith graduated from Hamilton as valedictorian of the Class of 1818.

            The Gridley family came to Clinton in the 1790s, and many 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 also got caught up in 1837 in the abolitionist movement 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 as we have copies of 1851 petitions from 58 Kirkland men and 66 females 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 which urged a ban in 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 who later was an emancipated slave. “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 “know 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 tells the story also of blacks 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.

            The Bristol family on Bristol Road had James Lewis who had come to the family as a runaway slave and was hidden by the family.

            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 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 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 wife Wealthy. They were free blacks who had real estate valued at $900.00 and personal property valued at $100.00. Other blacks in that census were Ella Benton who lived with the Williams Saunders family and Elizabeth Robbins, age 16, who was a domestic 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 black burials. 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 floor boards, it must have sheltered runaways. 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 those records.

            Prof. DeAmicis headed the Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission and produced a brochure with its findings. The brochure says that “evidence suggests that fugitives were sheltered in Kirkland and Clinton.”

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