On the 181st Anniversary of the conclusion of the inaugural meeting of the New York state antislavery meeting Oct. 22, 1835, which commenced in Utica the day before, the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum inducted four abolitionists. The induction was held in the Peterboro building where the abolitionists met in 1835.
After an afternoon Abolition Symposia with presentations on each of the inductees, the Peterboro Deli on the Green catered a 19th-century antislavery dinner after which the induction ceremonies took place. Forty students, staff, and faculty, including the college president, from Berea College, Berea, Ken., and relatives from Indiana, Ken., took part in the induction of Rev. John Gregg Fee, who founded an unusual college.
Alicestyne Turley, Ph.D., Director of the Carter G. Woodson Center for Interracial Education at Berea, nominated and presented the lecture on Fee and students from the Berea Musical Ensemble performed musical selections.
Relatives from California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia joined Milton C. Sernett, Ph.D., author of Abolition’s Axe, a biography of Beriah Green, in the nomination of Green. Green was the President of the 19th-century Oneida Institute in Whitesboro.
Jan DeAmicis and Mary Hayes Gordon, co-chairwomen of the Oneida County Freedom Trail, were also nominators explaining the importance of Green to the Utica area and dramatizing the Peterboro-Utica connection for the 1835 New York state anti-slavery meeting.
Louise Knight arrived from Illinois to spend time with relatives of Angelina Grimké before presenting the lecture and nomination for Grimké-Weld. Suzanne B. Spring PhD, Colgate University, joined the nomination ceremonies, as well.
Christopher Webber, San Francisco CA, nominated James W. C. Pennington and presented the program on Pennington. Webber, author of a biography on Pennington was joined in the evening induction ceremonies by Jason Land, the student president of the Yale Divinity School and Paul Stewart, co-founder of the Underground Railroad History Project Capital Region in Albany.
After announcements for the Commemoration Ceremonies for the four inductees Oct. 20 through 22, 2017, Max Smith, Co-Chair Peterboro Emancipation Days, closed the evening with a final musical selection.