'Timbuctoo' historic marker to be unveiled

Jun. 30—LAKE PLACID — A new "Timbuctoo" historic marker is a small sign with great import.

It changes the narrative about who is remembered and what stories are told by whom in the Adirondacks.

On Saturday, John Brown Lives! (JBL!) will unveil a commemorative marker denoting the presence of African American settlers in the Adirondacks dating back to the late 1840s.

A brief marker dedication ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. on the corner of Old Military and Bear Cub roads in Lake Placid.

The 'Timbuctoo' marker is part of the Pomeroy Foundation's New York State Historic Marker Grant Program intended to help educate the public about local history, encourage pride of place, and promote historic tourism, according to a press release.

"I've always felt that the story of the Timbuctoo settlers was not visible, has not been celebrated often in the region," Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron, chair of Anthropology at SUNY Potsdam and director of the Timbuctoo Archaeology Project, said.

"There are still a lot of people that I know who are still surprised to hear this story. We have other historical markers in that community, one that does commemorate John Brown. I think our desire at John Brown Lives! was to make sure that the Timbuctoo settlers were also remembered on the commemorative landscape, and that was an oversight that we had not had them be a part of that public memory."

INTERSECTION OF VOTING RIGHTS/RACIAL JUSTICE

The blue and gold roadside marker commemorates the Black New York homesteading families who settled in North Elba as part of a voting rights "scheme of justice and benevolence" designed to circumvent an 1846 New York State law requiring Black men to own property, valued at $250, to be eligible to vote.

Declaring if land they (Black men) must have to vote, land they will have, Central New York abolitionist and landowner Gerrit Smith gifted 120,000 acres of Adirondack wilderness to 3,000 grantees hailing from every corner of the state.

"We are very grateful to the Pomeroy Foundation selecting our application among the many they receive from across the country, and to Adirondack Health for giving us permission to install the marker on their property," Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives!, said.

"Passers-by, residents and visitors alike, will see the sign and hopefully be inspired to find out more about this chapter of Adirondack history where voting rights and racial justice meet and still matter today."

OPEN HOUSE

Following the unveiling, the public is invited to an Open House at Heaven Hill Farm where Kruczek-Aaron and her students are in their third week of a dig in the vicinity of Timbuctoo settlers' lots.

Heaven Hill Farm is located at 302 Bear Cub Road.

The Open House will take place from noon to 2 p.m.

Related events include a walk-thru of "Dreaming of Timbuctoo" Exhibition at John Brown Farm State Historic Site by curator Amy Godine, plus a round-table discussion and reception from 2:30 to 4 p.m.

"I'm really excited that the Uihlein Foundation has given us the opportunity to explore what life was like here in the 19th-century," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"It opens the door to better understand the lives of the grantees who settled in the North Elba enclave near Bear Cub Road that came to be called 'Timbuctoo.'

"With each dig, my students and I learn more about the network of Black and White families—the Epps, Hinckleys, Browns, Thompsons, and others—who supported and were closely connected to each other in myriad ways. We look forward to sharing our latest findings."

Archaeological excavation is underway in the backyard of the house at Heaven Hill Farm.

"The property that is owned by Uihlein Foundation, which runs Heaven Hill Farm, includes more than a 1,000 acres of land that incorporates at least four historic farmsteads," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"And a number of those farmsteads have Timbuctoo connections."

The farmhouse is one of the oldest, standing structures in North Elba.

"You wouldn't know it by looking at it because it's been altered a lot by later alterations and renovations by the family," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"The first family that owned this farm was the Hinckleys and that was in the 1840s. They have connections to the Brown family. Their daughter, Abigail Hinckley, married Salmon Brown. They were actually married at the house that is still standing here."

Horatio Hinckley, the patriarch, purchases what is now Heaven Hill Farm.

Eventually, Abigail's brother, Alexis, owns the Brown Farm in the transition after John Brown's widow, Mary, and the family leave for California.

"So there's a lot of Hinckley-Brown connections there," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"Alexis, in his obituary at least, he is known to be an Underground Railroad supporter and abolitionist. He fights in the Civil War. Based on the marriage and his expressed philosophical and political leanings in his obit, my impression is that they had similar ideas and politics to the Browns, maybe not to the extreme. There was some like-mindedness there."

The Horatio Hinckley farm was later purchased by Anna Newman.

"If you believe the papers of the time, they called her eccentric," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"She was a wealthy, White woman, who kind of bucks at the system and runs this farm by herself. Never gets married. One of those. She actually employs Lyman Eppes (Epps) Sr. on the farm. According to the records, Lyman Epps drove the team of oxen on this farm. They were also very influential in their church together. Both Anna Newman and the Eppes family were active in what was known as the White Church, not because of race but because of the color of the church."

The church, formerly located on the corner where the Olympic Training Facility stands, is at the intersection where the marker is located.

"They were both very important to that church, so I imagine, they obviously had similar religious beliefs," Kruczek-Aaron said.

The Uihlein property also encompasses a second farmstead of the Eppes' family.

"So across the street on what used to be the Cornell Experimental Potato Farm, that used to be first owned by Ruth Brown Thompson, so John and Mary's daughter, and her husband, Henry Thompson," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"So again, another activist family household there. They sell their farm to Lyman Epps and his family. They move off their Smith land and move to this much better lot that is across from the street from Heaven Hill Farm."

Kruczek-Aaron hopes to test there in the future.

"We're not quite ready to test there," she said.

"There's some things that I need to do before we go in that direction, but I'm hoping to get in that direction. Then, there's another Timbuctoo connection in that some of the land owned by Uihlein Foundation was owned by Josiah Hasbrouck, Sr., a Timbuctoo grantee. His son ends up buying some of the Heinlein land after he comes back from serving in one of the Black regiments in the Civil War, the 26th. We may in the future run a test there. Josiah Jr. is the one who buys that. But he only lives there for a little bit amount of time, so it's less likely that we will find anything associated with him but we may at lease want to identify some of the house sites there."

There remains many Timbuctoo connections embedded in the land.

"I wrote a proposal, and they gave me permission to dig here for three years," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"Our first season is this season, and we've been focusing more strictly at Heaven Hill Farm, in the backyard of Heaven Hill Farm. But hopefully in the future, we'll be testing in different locations across the landscape. It's really interesting to me that the Anna Newman period, which we're digging in very clearly, it speaks to the landscape, the neighborhood of Timbuctoo, and the network of both Black and White families in this area, who supported each other or collaborated, had similar interests, along this Bear Cub Corridor."

Famed 19th century musician, composer and teacher William Appo also resided along this corridor.

"Appo and his wife, and the Epps family, lived on what is now the Cornell maple sugar property on Bear Cub," Kruczek-Aaron said.

"The manager there is also eager to have us take a look there to see if we can find any of that material culture. So this whole neighborhood has really given us an interesting opportunity to explore the relationships of Timbuctoo."

PANEL DISCUSSION

At the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, Kruczek-Aaron is joined by others inspired by the Timbuctoo story.

Amy Godine, writer and curator of the "Dreaming of Timbuctoo" Exhibition, will lead a walk-thru of the exhibit to set the stage for a round-table discussion including Alice P. Green, Executive Director of the Center for Law and Justice and founder of the Paden Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color in Essex, Ren Davidson Seward, creator of "Spiraling Round the Promise," and Paul Hai, Associate Director of SUNY ESF in Newcomb and Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Wallace Ford of Medgar Evers College of the Timbuctoo Climate Science and Summer Careers Institute.

Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

Twitter@RobinCaudell