Auburn in Harriet Tubman’s Time

Central Presbyterian Church was founded in 1861, when Reverend Henry Fowler was forced to leave the Second Presbyterian Church because of his frequent abolitionist sermons. A group of  66 anti-slavery members followed Reverend Fowler. The new members ranged from Presbyterians, Methodists, and individuals from the Theological Seminary, and over half were women. They temporarily worshiped in the basement of this building on Genesee Street, which they called the “basement chapel,”  until they had the funds to build a new stone church on William Street (now Westminster Presbyterian Church).  Harriet Tubman married her second husband, Nelson Davis, in this church in March 1869 and noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a lecture in the space.

In her biography of Harriet, Sarah Bradford writes that Harriet and the elderly residents living with her traveled into Auburn every Sunday to attend services at Central Presbyterian and class meetings at the Methodist Church.

Besides being a growing and prosperous industrial city, Auburn and the surrounding area was also a hot spot for early social justice movements. Slavery ended in New York in 1827 and the abolition movement had been strong in central New York since the 1830s. A highly organized system for helping formerly enslaved people to freedom was well established by the time Harriet Tubman arrived. A high population of Quakers in the region connected Cayuga County abolitionists to a network of abolitionists in southeast Pennsylvania and Delaware. The fairly large population of African Americans in Auburn also provided a support system for newly arrived freedom seekers. In 1857 William Seward sold Harriet Tubman a seven-acre farm on the south edge of the city. Seward was a well known supporter of the underground railroad and Harriet had used his house as a station many times in her trips to bring formerly enslaved people north. Harriet brought her family and many other formerly enslaved people to Auburn, and eventually settled here herself. William Seward was an important figure in Tubman’s life and she attended his funeral services.

The early 1900s were the start of the Progressive Era. Partly in response to the rapidly changing economic and political landscape, social reformers organized to make the country a better place to live. In addition to abolitionists, Central New York was also home to many of the leaders of the suffrage movement who had been working towards their goal even before the 1900s. Auburn was home to several of the leading figures in the suffrage movement, including Martha C. Wright, Frances Seward, and Eliza Wright Osborne, who organized supporters in the county. In November of 1891, the New York State Woman Suffrage Association held its 23rd annual convention in Auburn, at the Academy of Music (later called the Burtis Opera House). Harriet was a supporter of the women’s rights movement and was invited to speak at several meetings of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association.

The Auburn Weekly Dispatch of March 15, 1888 details a meeting of the Society for Political Education for Women at which Harriet spoke. The paper introduces her as “noted women scout and soldier of the late rebellion.” Harriet spoke to the society about her time helping freedom seekers and her time spent as a scout and nurse during the Civil War. She recounted stories of the many brave women nurses who faced the same danger as the male soldiers. She concluded that “her prayers carried her through and they would eventually place women at the ballot-box with man as his equal.” By 1913, the suffrage movement was so large that they staged their first march on Washington as Woodrow Wilson prepared to be inaugurated as President.