Enslavement & Freedom in the Genesee Valley
Seeking Freedom Goals
The Seeking Freedom initiative is centered around four buildings in the Historic Village:
- Towar Land Office
- Quaker Meeting House
- Livingston-Backus House
- Nathaniel Rochester House
At the conclusion of this three-year project (2027), each building will:
- Display interpretive panels telling the story of its historical relation to slavery in New York State
- Host non-costumed interpreters for engagement and questions
- Be included in a walking tour, to be led daily
- Have an updated audio tour available both onsite and online
- Include educational opportunities for K-12 students in line with New York State Curriculum Standards
Toward Freedom & Fairness Walking Tour
Beginning at the Tollhouse and visiting the Towar Land Office, Quaker Meeting House, Livingston-Backus House, and Nathaniel Rochester House, join this 45-minute – 1 hour guided walking tour to:
- Interact with the stories of real individuals in Western New York using primary source accounts, building an understanding of how we learn and know about the past, and engage in critical thinking related to history.
- Make connections between the past and the present and forge personal connections to the stories that we share.
- Become familiar with the current terminology and language used to talk about enslavement in the United States.
- Consider the connection between enslavement in the 19th-century and our lives today.
Seeking Freedom Resources
The following resources are provided for your continued learning about the fight toward freedom and fairness in the Genesee Valley. This is not a comprehensive list – if you have resource recommendations, email them to info@gcv.org.
The asterisk (*) denotes a primary source.
Electronic Sources
*Jacobs, Harriet, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself. (Boston: 1861)
*James, Rev. Thomas, The Life of Rev. Thomas James, by Himself (Rochester, 1886).
*Rights of Man [newspaper] (Rochester, NY) 1834
*Stewart, Austin, Twenty-two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman, (Rochester: 1856)
Wellman, Judith, Marjory Allen Perez and Charles Lenhart, et.al. “Uncovering the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism and African American Life in Wayne County, New York, 1820-1860.”
Print Sources
Dann, Norman K., Practical Dreamer: Gerrit Smith and the Crusade for Social Reform, Hamilton, NY: Log Cabin Books, 2009.
Grover, Kathryn, Make a Way Somehow: African-American Life in a Northern Community, 1790-1965. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. 1994.
Hewitt, Nancy. Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1992.
Jacobs, John Swanson, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024
New-York Historical Society, Ira Berlin and Leslie Harris, eds. Slavery in New York. New York: The New Press. 2005.
O’Keefe, Rose. Frederick and Anna Douglass in Rochester, New York: Their Home Was Open to All, Charleston, SC: The History Press. 2013.
Perez, Marjory Allen, Final Stop, Freedom! The Underground Railroad Experience in Wayne County, New York. Herons Bend Productions, 2017.
Perez, Marjory Allen, Freedom: A Shared Sacrifice! New York’s African American Civil War Soldiers, Herons Bend Productions, 2018.
Local Resources & Places to Visit
Rochester Public Library’s Archive of Black History & Culture
1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse: The 1816 Farmington Quaker Meetinghouse Museum preserves and interprets the 1816 Meetinghouse as a national site of conscience and a cornerstone of historic movements for equal rights, social justice, and peace, including rights for Native Americans, African Americans, and women, encouraging visitors to explore equality, justice and peace in their own lives.
Our Local History: “Our mission is to support and empower students, teachers, and communities with the tools to engage with and own their local history of civil rights through inquiry, equity, and civic action.”
Learn more about Frederick Douglass via these Visit Rochester recommendations.
How We Know What We Know
GCV&M is committed to sound scholarship rooted in evidence. How we know what we know is the essential element of history, and questioning (or affirming) the validity of the evidence is part of ever-changing interpretation and reinterpretation. When we know our sources, we can better connect people to “why” an historical event happened, and what it could mean for us today.
Historians use the following types of evidence (or “sources) to draw conclusions about and interpret the past:
- Primary source: An artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, photograph, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time being studied.
- Secondary source: A book, article, or other source that provides information, but does not constitute direct, first-hand evidence. Secondary sources interpret and analyze primary sources, and may contain pictures, quotes, or graphics of primary sources. For historical research, these sources are generally scholarly books or peer-reviewed articles.
- Oral tradition: Oral tradition is a form of human communication in which knowledge, art, ideas, and culture are shared, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another and includes speech, song, storytelling, folktales, ballads, chants, prose, or poetry.
- Oral history: Oral history is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving, and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events. Oral history is both the oldest type of historical inquiry, predating the written word, and one of the most modern, initiated with tape recorders in the 1940s and now using 21st –century digital technologies.
While it’s true that not all sources are accurate, and that all sources are created from a specific point of view, there is also bias built into source prioritization. Historians have long prioritized the written word, which was largely written by those with privilege and access to education and literacy. The oral history and traditions of Hodinöšyö ni and Black individuals and communities, for example, have been and continue to be overlooked because written sources have been unfairly elevated as the only way to determine the historical “truth.”
Today, incorporating oral histories and traditions into our understanding of history allows us to build a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the past, and through partnership with historically marginalized communities, museums are beginning to treat these important, valuable, and valid sources with the same respect as written sources. Our commitment to representation requires us to learn about and uplift history and stories using a variety of evidence or sources.
Towar Land Office
Originally located in the town of Lyons in Wayne County, this building was used by Henry Towar, a land agent who sold small parcels of land to farmers colonizing the Genesee Country.
In 1805, Tower visited Captain William Helm to inquire about renting enslaved labor to develop the village of Alloway along the Canandaigua Outlet. Helm had forcibly brought over 100 enslaved people to New York from Virginia after selling his plantation to pay off gambling debts and escape his tarnished reputation.
Austin Steward was one of Helm’s enslaved men. Towar rented Steward’s labor from Helm in 1805; Steward remained in Towar’s employ for 7 years, until 1812. After returning to Helm, Steward courageously freed himself with the help of Darius and Otis Comstock, started a successful business, led the Wilberforce Colony in present-day Ontario, and authored Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman.
Quaker Meeting House
The Quakers started arriving in the Genesee Valley around 1803, and by 1816 they had established the Farmington Quakers, one of the most prominent groups in the Genesee Valley. This location, the 1816 Farmington Meeting House, is preserved as a museum which you can still visit today.
Isaac and Amy Post and other prominent Quakers in the mid-19th-century worked alongside Black and white abolitionists toward freedom and fairness for all people in Western New York. The Quakers, or “Friends,” were not all of one mind, but many participated in the Underground Railroad and supported Frederick Douglass, Austin Steward, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Trouth, and others.
Genesee Country Village & Museum’s Quaker Meeting House was originally in Wheatland, NY, about four miles from the Museum. It was active from the time it was built in 1854 until 1873.
Livingston-Backus House
Built in 1827, the year the Gradual Emancipation Act freed all people enslaved in New York State, the Livingston-Backus House tells the story of three prominent Rochester families and their views on slavery and abolition: the Backuses, the Fitzhughs, and the Smiths.
The house was originally located in the Corn Hill neighborhood of Rochester, not far from Frederick Douglass’ printing press and the site of Harriet Jacobs’s Anti-Slavery Reading Room.
While living in this house, Rebecca Backus, wife of Frederick Backus and the daughter of William Fitzhugh, an enslaver, and her brother-in-law, Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist, exchanged letters about slavery and freedom. Their exchange highlights the spectrum of positions and responses to the institution of enslavement, including pro-slavery, colonialism, neutrality, emancipation, and abolition, and reflects the impact civic and social life had on families in the 19th-century.
Nathaniel Rochester House
In 1810, Col. Nathaniel Rochester left his comfortable circumstances in Hagerstown, MD, to move north to this house on 155 acres in Dansville, which he had bought on his first trip to the Genesee Country in September 1800.
At least ten of the people who accompanied Nathaniel Rochester on this journey were individuals he enslaved. Rochester was a businessman, soldier, and politician who profited from the labor and sale of enslaved people for most of his life, and for as long as it was legal in New York.
Little is known about the majority of the people that Rochester enslaved throughout his lifetime. Two enslaved children who lived in this house were a 16-year-old boy named Benjamin, and a 14-year-old girl named Casandra. In 1811, Rochester manumitted – or freed – them, but further indentured Casandra until she was 18 years old. During this time, Casandra was not paid, but Rochester received financial support from the state. It is unknown what happened to Benjamin after he was freed.
The Toward Freedom & Fairness tour, as well as exhibit material in each of the listed buildings, is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library. Any views, findings, or recommendations expressed in this exhibit do not necessarily represent those of these funders.