OSWEGO COUNTY

NEW

YORK

In the nineteenth century, the City of Oswego was one of the largest (if not the largest) U.S. ports of trade with Canada. Beginningabout 1835, people throughout Oswego County, both black and white, formed anti-slavery societies, signed abolitionist petitions (almost twenty of them between 1835 and 1850), and organized themselves into networks to help self-emancipated slaves reach safety north of the border. In 1851, Jerry Henry became the most famous fugitive to go through Oswego County, but as early as the 1830s, small groups of people in Gilbert's Mills, Hannibal, Mexico, Fulton, Pulaski, and Oswego were channeling fugitives through Oswego and other points along Lake Ontario into Canada. Some of these escaping African Americans chose to settle on the U.S. side of the border. By 1855, Oswego County had a blackpopulation of more than 300 people.

This website is a collection of stories and primary sources (including pictures, newspaper articles, letters, and diaries) about the underground railway in Oswego County. It is a work in progress, so please check this site regularly. If you wish to add information, to ask a question, or to learn more about this site, please email wellman@oswego.edu

This website contains only a small sampling of the kinds of information that we have discovered about the underground railroad in Oswego County. For more details, see the two volume notebooks of primary sources located in the Oswego County Historian's Office, the Oswego County Historical Society, the Snow Memorial Library in Pulaski, the Ainsworth Library in Sandy Creek, the Fulton Public Library, Penfield Library at SUNY Oswego. the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in the African-American Studies Department at Syracuse University, and the downtown branch of the Onondaga County Public Library.

Copyright for all original materials produced as part of the Oswego County Freedom Trail Project remain with the authors or with the Oswego CountyFreedom Trail Project.

This site is sponsored by the Underground Railway Project of Oswego County. Funding has been provided by the National Park Service and the State University of New York. Cooperating agencies include Women's Rights National Historical Park, the History Department at SUNY Oswego, the Heritage Foundation of Oswego, the Oswego County Historical Society, the H. Lee White Marine Museum, the Oswego County Clerk's Office, and the Oswego County Legislature.