Exploring the Adirondack’s History: Conversations with the Past — A Black History Month Virtual Event

Lost and Found in Adirondack Memory: An Update from the Timbuctoo Archaeology Project

Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron and Timbuctoo Archaeology Project (Photo credit: Paul Miller)

Glens Falls Chapman Museum presents a virtual event featuring SUNY Potsdam archaeologist Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron. Dr. Kruczek-Aaron will share a behind-the-scenes look at the archaeological research project featured in the documentary Searching for Timbuctoo (dir. Paul Miller).

Professor Kruczek-Aaron is the Chair of SUNY Potsdam’s Archaeology Department. She will highlight the stories and experiences of the Black families who came to the Adirondacks to establish a 19th-century farming settlement known as Timbuctoo.

The history of Timbuctoo.

Timbuctoo was a mid-19th-century farming community of African-American homesteaders in the remote town of North Elba, New York, near today's Lake Placid village (which did not exist then), in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York.

Gerrit Smith, the richest man in New York State in the mid-19th century and one of the wealthiest in the country, was committed to political reform and, above all, to the elimination of slavery. Smith gifted 120,000 acres of Adirondack land to 3,000 Black New Yorkers. Frederick Douglass and most leading Black abolitionists endorsed Smith's plan to seek suffrage for formerly enslaved people. John Brown, the antislavery reformer, was such a proponent that he moved his family to Timbuctoo, a new Black Adirondack settlement in the woods, in 1849.

Aerial view of John Brown Farm in the area that was once known as Timbuctoo (photo credit: Paul Miller)

The project drew black families from urban areas where they had previously held jobs as cooks, barbers, and domestic workers. For most, farming untouched land proved to be a massive challenge they were unprepared for. Some of the obstacles settlers faced were cutting down evergreens, clearing rocks, and securing money to pay taxes on the land.

Although Smith's donation was exalted by Brown, Frederick Douglass, and Willis A. Hodges, many settlers found the situation to be more than they could handle and moved away shortly after arriving. By 1855, the well-intentioned experiment was over, for the most part.

Attend this informative virtual event to learn more about the discoveries made, lessons learned, and questions that remain in the decades-long search for sites associated with this community, which was formed to create opportunity, fight for racial justice, and change American history in the process.

Register for the event online to reserve your spot.

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