The best known in the northern quarter of the State was the free black
community started by John Brown and Garrison at North Elba often referred
to at the time as Timbucto, or a variant of that spelling. Russell Banks
bestseller, "Cloudsplitter," is a fictional account based losely on the
historical record

Wayne Miller
Plattsburgh State U.

On Wed, 3 Mar 1999, Daniel H. Weiskotten wrote:

>         Someone noted that most of the traffic here seemed to be about Upstate NY
> - the Slavery topic seems to have indicated that that is one avenue not
> well traveled by upstaters.
>         In 19th century census records for rural areas it is quite common to find
> a few families noted as Black or Mulatto but they seem to be ignored or
> otherwise neglected in community histories and records (bias or low
> economic class).  Are there any studies or sources for the African
> Experience in the first decades of the 19th century (and later) in Upstate
> NY?  Has anyone attempted this topic?
>         David Corbin's little booklet "The Black Minority in Early New York"
> (NYSED, 1975, 45 pp) is excellent, but stops short of the 19th century.
>
>         Dan W.
>
> See the 1850 Cazenovia Anti-Slavery Convention daguerreotype, with
> Frederick Douglass, Gerritt Smith, and others:
>
> http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~weiskott/douglass.html
>
>
> or other illustrations of a particular spot in Upstate NY:
>
> http://www.erols.com/weiskotten/illustrations&maps.html
>

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Wayne L. Miller                         Special Collections Librarian
Feinberg Library                        2 Draper Avenue
518-564-5206                            Plattsburgh, NY 12901
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        "I wonder what will happen today!"  -Maggie Muggins-
"Not even God can change history...which is why he tolerates historians."
                                        -Voltaire
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