2024 Continuing Education Summer Destination
Join us for what promises to be a great chance to connect with colleagues and learn more about important regional history.
Friday, June 14
10am – 2pm, lunch provided
Lake Placid, NY
RESERVE A SPOT by June 10!
The rough schedule for the day looks like this:
- 10-11:30am Digging for Timbuctoo, in the field at Heaven Hill Farm, 302 Bear Cub Road, with Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron, Director of Timbuctoo Archaeology Project and Professor of Anthropology, SUNY-Potsdam.
- 11:30-11:45am Travel to John Brown Farm State Historic Site, 115 John Brown Road
- 11:45am-12:30pm Dreaming of Timbuctoo Exhibition, with Martha Swan, Executive Director of John Brown Lives!, in upper barn at John Brown Farm
- 12:30-2:00pm Lunch and Open Conversation, in lower barn at John Brown Farm
What is the Timbuctoo Archealogy Project?
Timbuctoo was a farming community of homesteaders of African descent in the mid-19th century near North Elba, NY.
New York State in antebellum context:
In 1821, New York State enacted a law that required free Black men to own real estate worth at least $250 or a house to be able to vote. An 1846 referendum on repealing this requirement failed by a large margin without carrying a single county in New York.
The North Star is read in the Adirondacks:
Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist, decided to remedy the injustice and gave away 120,000 acres of land to 3,000 Black New Yorkers in 40-acre lots who agreed to live by his pious standards. Smith’s land giveaway relied on Frederick Douglass’s expertise in circulating information through abolitionist networks across New York State in Black churches and newspapers.
Living at Timbuctoo:
Mary Ann Brown, her husband John, and their children moved to North Elba in 1849 to teach farming in the new free Black settlement. After John’s execution in 1859, the Brown family continued to live in this abolitionist community with New Yorkers of African descent like Lyman Epps who settled in the area that has become known as Timbuctoo near North Elba, NY.