In these times, when right-wing extremist groups such as Moms for Liberty are putting heavy pressure on school boards to ban books, censure curriculum and avoid discussion of subjects that cast certain aspects of American history in a less-than-glorious light, educators have to work extra-hard to make such “controversial” information available. Fortunately, the digital age is making research, collation and sharing of historical data more feasible. And there are folks among us who are committed to ensuring that the stories of disenfranchised people get told.
Here in our region, a team of scholars has been burning the midnight oil for more than three years to comb historical records in Ulster County and beyond and create a clearinghouse of information about slavery in our region. Working under the aegis of the Ulster County Truth and Reconciliation Commission, they have reached a point where they’re ready to declare their Bearing Witness website complete enough for public use, and a book based on their discoveries has just been released by Black Dome Press under the same title.
Commission co-chairs Albert Cook and Susan Stessin-Cohn have both made names for themselves in documenting the history of Black residents of Ulster County and of the institution of human slavery in the Hudson Valley. A longtime Social Studies teacher at New Paltz High School and an instructor in the Urban Education Initiative at Vassar College, Cook is a sought-after lecturer as well as a citizen activist. Stessin-Cohn, New Paltz’s town historian, has brought to light the history of the Ulster County Poorhouse and the Black burial ground on Huguenot Street, and is the author of several books including In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley, 1735–1831. Her co-author on that volume, Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini, is the former manager of Collections and Archives at Historic Huguenot Street, and did research and Web development for the Bearing Witness project. Interns Philip White and Sandra Capellaro are also essential team members.
Cook traces the genesis of the Truth and Reconciliation project to the protests in 2020 inspired by the police killing of George Floyd. “I made a speech at Academy Green that caught the ear of the executive director of Radio Kingston, Jimmy Buff. He wanted to do something on Black history and the history of racism in America, so we put together a ten-week program,” he recalls. “Jimmy was in talks with County Executive Pat Ryan, who wanted to do a formal apology for slavery. It was a nice gesture, but not sufficient to address the gravity of the history of slavery. So, I suggested a Truth and Reconciliation project. I had already been working with Susan on a couple of projects together, and Susan had been working by herself for a long time on the issue.”
The team crafted an initial proposal, submitting it in 2021. Radio Kingston supplied the funding for the research, and Ulster County deemed the group an official commission, with an 11-member Advisory Board. And so they set to work, gathering original records from archives far and wide, dating back as far as the 1670s. Many of the early documents were written longhand in unfamiliar, old-fashioned script and needed to be painstakingly transcribed before they could even be of use. Next came categorization, analysis of the content, organization into databases, connecting the dots of family members, writing vignettes about noteworthy individuals. “There were so many different moving parts of this,” Stessin-Cohn says.
Among the sources used were census and tax lists, town birth registers, church and “family bible” records, wills and estate inventories, coroner inquests, arrest and trial records, accounts of financial transactions including the sale of enslaved people, newspaper ads about runaways, manumission documents and more. The website provides links to each of the many databases organized through the project, and all are searchable.
Both Stessin-Cohn and Hurlburt-Biagini are genealogists, and the latter has posted the family trees they constructed on the US Black Heritage Project’s pages on WikiTree. While enslaved people often adopted the surnames of their enslavers, these sometimes provide enough clues to trace relationships through family lines, linking Black communities in one area of the county with another. “One of the most amazing things for me was reading a will from Kingston, in which I recognized some of the last names,” Cook notes. “I was struck by the casual nature of the transaction of property – how numbing of the conscience of a people. It was the complete norm.”
The commission also created StoryMaps showing hundreds of historic buildings and burial grounds throughout the county, in which the website user can click on a particular location and see what the records say about who lived there when, as an enslaver or an enslaved person. Stessin-Cohn points out that, after the incremental elimination of slavery by New York State was finally completed in 1848, the Black population of Ulster County waned as freed people moved elsewhere in search of work. However, both in reading the new book and delving into the website, a pattern clearly emerges of certain locales in Ulster County becoming hubs of Black communities, such as Lapala in the Town of Hurley, Africa Lane in the Town of Marlborough and the area surrounding the Pine Street African Burial Ground in the City of Kingston. Tantalizing ties to the Abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad emerge in these documents for several families residing in Kingston, in particular.
Reading these documents, including the texts of the various laws passed over the centuries in New Netherland and New York allowing the sale, abuse and cruel punishment of enslaved people, is often terrifying, depressing and infuriating. One especially horrific instance in Ulster County actually involved a man being burned at the stake as a penalty for setting a barn on fire. However, there are subtexts to be found that inspire hope and admiration as well. It would not have been necessary for government to come up with so many new penalties for harboring escapees, had there not been many decent humans willing to risk offering such help. And the very fact that some freedmen went on to establish careers as respected artisans and community leaders speaks to their courage, persistence and resilience.
Most such personal stories have been lost to history, but a few precious accounts can be pieced together. When slavery is legal and ubiquitous, Cook notes, “If you’re resistant, you’re likely to be killed. And then historians will kill you again by just forgetting you.” The importance of collecting and preserving these historical records is thus obvious – for reasons of justice and paying down America’s terrible karmic debt, as much as for providing accessible resources for tomorrow’s researchers.
The book and website – the latter meant to evolve and grow as more information is unearthed and catalogued – constitute the “Truth” part of this Truth and Reconciliation process. The “Reconciliation” piece is envisioned as a “symbolic” conference in which known descendants of the enslaved and the enslavers can come together voluntarily to discuss how their family arcs have been shaped by their differing historical roles. There’s a third component as well: “Repair,” meaning “a plan for forward movement” addressing “the persistent racial wealth gap in our country…laying out a case for remedying historical disenfranchisement that might be made actionable by local politicians and community groups.”
That’s an ambitious long-term goal; but in the meantime, a wealth of information is now easily available to anyone interested in Black history in Ulster County. You can visit the Bearing Witness website at https://uctruthandrec.ulstercountyny.gov. The book is out, ISBN #979-8-9856921-8-1, available at $16.95 from Black Dome Press. There will be a free book release event, talk and signing with Susan Stessin-Cohn, Philip White and Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini at 1 p.m. on Saturday, August 3 at the John Vanderlyn Gallery of the Senate House Historic Site at 296 Fair Street in Kingston. Check out the Radio Kingston schedule for a show discussing the project the week before the event.
Join the family! 
