(Peterboro, NY – Nov. 2014) Twenty representatives of vetted Underground Railroad programs and sites in New York State met Nov. 13 to organize a statewide consortium. Organizers traveled from as far north as Ausable Chasm, as far west as Jamestown, and all the way from the eastern tip of Long Island to meet in Peterboro at the Smithfield Community Center, the site of the inaugural meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society in 1835.
Since the development of the Heritage NY Underground Railroad Trail in 2008, conversations and regional meetings have expressed the need for a formal collaboration of projects with similar goals and needs. In 2012 Mary Liz Stewart invited Judy Wellman and Dot Willsey to join her in an effort to unite the sites. In 2013 the trio surveyed representatives of eighty-five Underground Railroad projects to determine the interest in a consortium. The survey confirmed the interest and need for a more formal relationship among Underground Railroad (UGRR) projects, and with that confirmation, an organizing meeting was called in 2014.
Led by Stewart, the twenty UGRR representatives worked attentively and earnestly through Stewart’s carefully crafted agenda in order to reach a document of consensus from which to work “long-distance” in future weeks. The talent and commitment brought to the meeting tables boasted the strength of the 194 year old timbers beneath.
Mary Liz Stewart and her husband Paul Stewart are the co-founders of the Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region, Inc. and co-chairs of the Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence, a documented Underground Railroad site in Albany.Judith Wellman PhD, professor emeritus SUNY Oswego, is the historian and principal investigator of Historical New York Research Associates, the author of the criteria used to determine the authenticity of an Underground Railroad site, and the coordinator of the 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum. Dot Willsey is a Co-Chair of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the President of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro.
For more information: 518-432-4432 and info@undergroundrailroadhistory.org.