Women’s History Month: Sojourner Truth and Her Groundbreaking 1828 Court Case

This episode of A New York Minute in History commemorates Women’s History Month by uncovering the groundbreaking 1828 court case of Sojourner Truth, a self-emancipated Black woman who took on a white slave owner to free her young son from bondage.

Interviewees: Barbara Allen, author and Sixth-Great Granddaughter of Sojourner Truth and Taylor Bruck, Ulster County Clerk and the City of Kingston Historian

Marker of Focus: Sojourner Truth, Ulster County

Office of the Ulster County Clerk

Library of Congress

Library of Congress

Further Reading:

Barbara Allen, Remembering Great Grandma Sojourner Truth, and Journey with Great Grandma Sojourner Truth

New York State Education Department, “Sojourner Truth’s Historic Supreme Court Documents From the New York State Archives on Display in Kingston”

New York State Archives: People vs. Solomon Gedney

Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1850.

Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, 1996.

Teacher Resources:

National Park Service: Ain’t I a Woman Lesson Plan

PBS Learning Media: Sojourner Truth: Abolitionist and Women’s Rights Activist

Consider the Source NY: Sojourner Truth's Fight for African American and Women's Rights in 19th Century New York

Follow Along:

Devin & Lauren

Welcome to A New York Minute in History. I'm Devin Lander, the New York State historian, and I'm Lauren Roberts, the historian for Saratoga County.

Lauren:

In honor of Women's History Month, we are taking a look at a marker located at 285 Wall Street in the City of Kingston, which is in Ulster County. It's just outside the Ulster County Courthouse, and the text reads, Sojourner Truth at this courthouse in 1828 the orator and anti-slavery activist successfully sued to free her son Peter from enslavement. William G Pomeroy Foundation, 2023.

Before we take a deep dive on this particular marker, I want to point out that it's not the only historic marker erected by the William G Pomeroy foundation in recognition of the life and accomplishments of Sojourner Truth. There's actually four in total. One of them is just south of Kingston in Ulster Park, which marks one of the locations where Sojourner Truth lived when she was enslaved by tavern owner Martinus Shriver. There's another one down in Cold Spring Harbor, which is out on Long Island, where she's noted for visiting for three weeks in 1843 and taking part in a temperance meeting there. The final one is located in Florence, Massachusetts, and that marker is part of the national votes for women trail, and it marks where she lived from 1844 to 1857.

It's just incredible to think that this woman who lived so long ago in the constraints of the society at the time, has Four Pomeroy markers dedicated to her accomplishments back then, and that's just William G. Pomeroy markers. There are numerous other monuments and statues and parks named after her, so it's a pretty incredible legacy that she has left behind.

Now, getting back to the marker of focus that we're talking about outside the Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston, this court case in which Sojourner Truth brought the complaint against her sons and slavers, and where she was able to win this case, the first time that an African American was able to win a court case against a white man. It's an incredible story, but I think knowing her background and her early life makes it even more incredible.

Devin:

So let's start by talking about her early life when she wasn't yet Sojourner Truth. So Sojourner Truth was born enslaved in Ulster County. We don't know the exact date. I've seen dates suggesting 1797 but we don't know 100% exactly when she was born. But she was born into enslavement. She was born into a Dutch enslavers family, essentially, and spoke Dutch as her first language, and again, was enslaved in a situation in which, although the enslavers didn't have huge numbers of slaves, they did a variety of types of work. She would have worked in the house. She would have also worked on the property outside hard labor type of work, and she was sold several times in her youth, she was actually sold as a small child to a person named John Neely for $100 along with a few sheep. And by the time she was 13 years old, she had been sold two more times and ended up enslaved under a person named John Dumont. It's interesting to think of having a young woman who had been sold so many times in her short life. Sometimes we think about that in the as happening in the south, but it also happened here in New York and as late as the 1800s and you know, there was a variety, as you mentioned Evan in the work that she had to do. And we talked a little bit about this in the Frederick Douglass episode, that there was a difference between enslaved people who were on a farm, type plantation or a state, and then moving to the city, where they had maybe some more freedom than they were used to on the state. And Isabella, which was her given name at birth, experienced this too. She mentions in her autobiography the difference between, you know, having some more freedoms once she gets to a place of where she is learning some skills in a tavern setting when she's enslaved by Martinus Shriver, but also, you know, being able to learn English, which she hadn't been able to do previously.

So she experiences a lot of different situations at a young age, even in in the state of New York.

While Isabella was enslaved by Dumont, she made a deal with him, because of the laws of gradual emancipation in New York State, all slaves would be freed in 1827, however, the deal that she made with Dumont was that if she worked hard enough, she could be released a year early in 1826 so she worked very hard, she kept up her end of the bargain, and when it came time for her to go to him and to get her freedom, he basically reneged on the deal and said, No, you can't, you have to stay until 1827, and she decided that because she had held up her end of the bargain she worked hard, that she was going to leave anyway.

She did make a point to leave in the daylight, so it wasn't as though she was running away in the middle of the night. So she woke up in the morning, in the daylight, and she walked away, and she was able to find help with the Van Wagonens, not too far away from where the Dumonts lived. And she went there and was able to stay with them. Dumont did come after her, but she refused to go back with him. And also, we should mention that she had a baby, Sophia, with her at the time, who she also took with her, although she had no choice but to leave her other children behind with the Dumonts the van Wagonens, who she had found shelter with, offered to pay Dumont cash for the rest of the year that she would have been enslaved to him, and he accepted that, and from then she was free.

Unfortunately, though, her children that she had to leave behind were not free, including Peter, who was born in and around 1818, and was about eight years old when she walked to freedom. John Dumont sold Peter to a man named Eleazer Gedney of Newberg for $20 and Eleazer Gedney, in turn, sold Peter into enslavement in Alabama, so the deep south plantation slavery, and this was the origins of this court case, and because Peter was born after 1799 he was legally no longer an enslaved person in New York State, and as a result, his sale into slavery and into the south could be challenged in court With the help of the Van Wagonens, Sojourner Truth, again at the time, known as Isabella Baumfree, brought forth a court case against Eleazer Gedney, and this case we've known about for, you know, 200 years, essentially at this point. But there was very little archival evidence, very little transcription of anything related to the case. And that was the case right up until 2022 when some of my colleagues in the New York State Archives actually discovered new court records in a major collection that they had acquired from the New York State Supreme Court. Early cases, about 5000 cubic feet of early court records.

And it is when they were going through and processing these materials that they came across this evidence, which is now been digitized and is available on the State Archives website. You can see clearly the court case and how it was brought forward. You can see the response from Eleazer Gedney. You can see how the judge ruled in the reason that it was ruled the way it was. So all of this was kind of swirling around, and this major discovery that the State Archives found in 2022 kind of at the same time Taylor Brooke, who is the city of Kingston historian, was thinking about how to acquire a Pomeroy marker to commemorate this court case, which, up to that time, did not have its own marker. We spoke with Taylor Brook about the process of acquiring the Pomeroy marker.

Taylor Bruck

My name is Taylor Bruck. I'm the City of Kingston historian and the Ulster County Clerk. I started my career at the county as the Ulster County archivist in 2016 did that for six years, and then was the deputy county clerk in charge of records management. Manage all the county's records. Here in Ulster County, our records go back to 1658, we have, like some of the oldest Dutch records here in Ulster County, since Kingston or Warwick was one of the first three original Dutch colonies. So I just really love the history of the area. Fell in love with the history of Kingston very young. My mom used to work at the Senate House, and I've been historian now for about five years here in Ulster County.

This is where Sojourner Truth was, was born and raised. And there's, there's a number of different monuments and things about her around the county, but there was nothing ever at the courthouse where her historic court case took place. You know, being the first black woman to win a court case against a white man, we felt that that was a perfect location to have a Pomeroy marker. And it actually came about three years ago when we had the affneys conference here in Kingston, the Association of public historians for New York State. And I was giving a tour of the stockade district in Uptown Kingston, talking about Sojourner Truth in her case in front of the courthouse, and there was a representative from Pomeroy there on the tour. And afterwards, they said, you know, this is a perfect spot for a Pomeroy sign.

And so we started the process, and thankfully, a few months prior to that, is when the New York State Archives found the original court case documents in the state archives that had been really missing since the case happened. So we had all this new primary source documentation, and it was exactly what Pomeroy needed to really prove that what we were saying was true. And we were fortunate enough to be awarded the grant and got the marker, and then we had to wait almost a year to install it, because there was some serious renovations going on at our historic courthouse. So just this past few months ago now, we finally installed it, and it's been fantastic. We got a lot of good feedback on it already.

Devin:

You mentioned that there were documents discovered at the State Archives here in Albany. What can you say about those documents?

Taylor Bruck:

Well, they answered a lot of questions we had, and also made a lot of different questions come up. So before those documents were found again, all we had was this recognizance note that said that Solomon Gedney had to appear in court, and we never knew what happened in court. We thought it may have been settled at, like the conference level, but there was always questions about what happened with the case, and we had no idea, until, thankfully, Jim Fauci stumbled upon them, and it that's how we know about the commissioners to perform certain duties of the Supreme Court judge and how it was actually settled with Mr. Gedney, bringing Peter back and really saying that he didn't feel he did anything wrong. We never knew what his justification was or his argument that this was all really unknown. We had Sojourners narrative. Of course, she did talk about it briefly, but never went into any detail about what, Gedney said his side of the story was, and how the court case came to an end. So it really opened, it wide open, and then set us down another path of months of research about what actually happened. Because even when you read the documents, you're like, Wait, so there wasn't a jury, it never actually went to trial. Like, how did this conclude?

And thankfully, I have to give a big shout out to our commissioner of jurors and local history buff Paul O'Neill He has a really good sense of the history of New York State courts and the New York State court system. And without his expertise in that, and really diving into the court aspect of it, I would still be very confused about how this all took place, because it's, you know, it's all in legal ease, too. If you're not a lawyer and you read these documents, it can be very confusing to know what actually happened. I'm wondering in these documents, does it name Sojourner or Isabelle at the time? Does it name her as the complainant, or is it like the DA took up this case? No, my understanding is that it names her as the complainant. But yeah, you're exactly right.

When we found these documents, we thought, Oh, the mystery is solved. And then as you dive into them, you're like, oh, it's actually more mysterious. It's more mysterious in some ways, how it ended the way that it did, and why the records ended up in Albany, because that was a question like we always had researchers coming to us in Ulster County asking us where the court case was, and for years we thought we lost it, or something like when people were looking for this in the early 1900s we knew we had the recognizance note, and we just thought, who knows the we didn't Have an archivist until 2000 so maybe sometime between 1828 and then it just was misplaced or misfiled. So it was a relief for us when they found it in Albany that when we were telling people for years we just don't have it, that turned out to be true. One of the more historic court cases we think in the country, really, it shares the foundation of like the original courthouses in Kingston and Ulster County, which the first courthouse, I believe, was built around 1661, it is seen virtually the entire history of Ulster County and a lot of our country. One of the biggest things that happened at that courthouse before the Sojourner Truth case was the New York State Constitution. So Kingston was the first capital of New York State, and the Constitution was being drafted here in Kingston, New York State Constitution. So folks like John Jay Governer Morris, George Clinton, were there drafting this New York State Constitution that included a lot of language that ended up in the United States Constitution, and it was read aloud for the first time in New York on the courthouse steps, right in front of where Sojourner Truth eventually walked Up to have her freedom granted, which is pretty remarkable. And those steps actually the original steps that Sojourner walked up. They just replaced and they took the old steps and just put them in Sojourner Truth Park, which is a state park here in Kingston, right along the river. So you can go see those, those historic steps now right along the brand new Sojourner Truth park just opened two years ago, I believe, and it's really a nice addition, but we're very proud of our courthouse here and some of the history that it's seen.

Devin:

Taylor, you're a city historian and a local government historian, and you went through the process of getting a Pomeroy marker. And what can you tell us about what that process was like and how it is working with Pomeroy, who I will know, is a funder of this program. The funder.

Taylor Bruck:

They're the absolute best we've gotten a couple markers through them now, and I find the process very fun, because you have to prove everything that you're saying. And for historians, I think that's very important, but they're rigorous in their research that is required to have them. If you see a Pomeroy sign, you can rest assured that that is a true statement that's on it, and that that really give me relief that they're not putting them up willy nilly, but they're super responsive. We went back and forth on the wording. They helped us with the wording, because for something this complicated, you do have a character limit, so it's hard to determine what's important enough to go on the marker itself. And they were able to give us really good guidance and help with the wording also, because depending on what the wording is, you have to prove different things. So that's always part of the fun of trying to draft it. It's almost like writing a poem. You have to really be clever and precise with the language, but just the responsiveness, and they're so polite, and you can tell they're always excited. It never even feels like they're at work when, when you talk to them about a marker idea, they usually jump right in, get their hands dirty and help out. I just love working with them.

Devin:

We'll make sure that gets included.

Lauren:

Taylor, can you tell us about the event of actually unveiling the marker? Did you do anything special? Did you invite people? How did that go?

Taylor Bruck:

Oh, yeah, this, was big time. We invited, you know, all of our local elected officials and so on. And our special guest Barbara Allen, who I think you'll be talking to as well. She is remarkable. I think she's seventh or eighth generation descendant of Sojourner Truth. So she came and spoke, and we were able to announce a very exciting project that was years in the making, really, but Sojourner Truth day, it is an official New York state holiday now, November 26 our local state representatives, Michelle Hinchey and Sarah Hana Shrestha, had been advocating and pushing for that after a youth group here though, YMCA farm hub youth group, a group largely of young women who, when they learned about Sojourner Truth in school, they said, this should really be a holiday. And they talked to our reps, they put in a resolution, and two years later, it went through, and we were able to announce that, actually, I think it was the day before we held our unveiling ceremony, the governor signed it into law, and that was a huge win for the whole community, really, but I shout out to those YMCA farm hub kids for getting this started, because it was really cool to see something started by I think when they started it, they were in like ninth and 10th grade, and by the time they graduated high school, they had passed a New York State law. Just remarkable work, and thankful for our state reps for listening and advocating on their behalf and getting it done.

Devin:

The first steps to freedom exhibit featuring the new bronze statue is on display in Kingston at City Hall until August 2025.

So after winning the court case, Sojourner Truth would go on to even greater accomplishments, if that's possible, and become a legendary figure in American history. First, she moved to New York City, where she spent some time, and then eventually moved on to New England and to Massachusetts, where she essentially became a preacher and an orator for the cause of the enslaved African Americans. And we have to really think about this deeply, because she could neither read nor write. She was completely illiterate, but she went on to become one of the most popular and powerful speakers against enslavement and eventually for women's rights and in the temperance movement.

 So she became one of these 19th century great orators along the same lines as what Frederick Douglass would become a couple decades later, when he gains his freedom, and again, follows a similar trajectory by moving to New York and then eventually New England, and then moving west, as our last episode discussed. So she really became a powerful orator. She also published a autobiography, obviously with the help of a ghost writer, that told her story how she walked to freedom, how she was able to free her son Peter, and then how she made the transition into a public speaker and a passionate advocate.

 It was in 1843 that she decided to change her name from her enslaved name to what we know her today as Sojourner Truth during the 19th century, probably the most famous speech that she was credited as giving took part on May 29 1851 as part of the Ohio women's rights convention in Akron, and this became known as the Ain't I a Woman, or Aren't I a Woman? Speech? Now there is some discussion among historians today as to whether or not she actually said those exact words or a version of those exact words, and one of the reasons that this is being discussed is because some of the people who were there and who really said that she meant, said these words years later, were giving Sojourner a southern accent and the way she spoke, they were kind of putting words into her mouth, and because we know that she grew up speaking Dutch in New York, she would not have had a southern accent, but irregardless, the sentiment was there, and she was advocating for the fact that men and women are equal and should be treated equally under the law.

So this became her kind of defining speech in the 19th century. She was also very good at creating her own image, similarly to Frederick Douglass, who many people suggest is the most photographed person in the 19th century, Sojourner Truth was probably a close second, and she did that to sell her image, to help support her activities as an advocate, and really controlling the image of herself and being able to profit from it, to make it so that she could continue her advocacy efforts.

Lauren:

In thinking about the legacy of Sojourner Truth in the present, it's great that we have these markers and monuments and statues to her, because her accomplishments were really remarkable for the time that she was living in as an African American woman, and we were lucky enough to be able to speak with Barbara Allen, a sixth great granddaughter of Sojourner Truth. And she explained to us what she's doing to keep moving the legacy of Sojourner Truth forward.

Barbara Allen:

My name is Barbara Allen. I am the sixth-generation granddaughter of Sojourner Truth, and probably everyone knows the story. When Sojourner walked away from slavery, she took her daughter, Sophia with her, and that is the line that my family is from, Sophia. Now, Sojourner, during her travels, she ended up in Battle Creek, Michigan, and that is where she's laid to rest at to this day. So most of my family is still here in Bell Creek, Michigan, and we honor the journey by going out and sharing her history. For me, I wrote two children's books. One of them was named Journey with Great Grandmother, and the other one is Remembering Great Grandmother. And I wrote them really to tell children about this, this wonderful woman, and what she did for all of us in history. And one of them is a story that my mom used to tell me over and over, about Sojourner. And it was amazing, because, you know, when I'm look when I'm smaller, I didn't understand just how fantastic this woman was, but as I got older, I kind of researched who she was, and so I wrote two children's book to share with other children.

Devin:

I'm curious. You're in Battle Creek, Michigan, and that's where Sojourner, you know, lived the end of her life and several decades. When did you first become aware of her origins in the Hudson Valley in New York? And maybe you can take us back to the first time that you would have come and visited the area, and what was that like as a descendant.

Barbara Allen:

That was amazing, because my mom used to tell me that she was, she was a slave in upstate New York. That's all I knew. Was the name upstate New York. And when I was a child, I used to think, where could that possibly be, you know, it just didn't resonate with me. The historian told me about Upstate New York again, but he never said Kingston to me. And when I wrote the two children's book, I think it was my first one, this young lady named Tiffany got a hold to me because she saw my Facebook, and she said, You need to come visit here. And I, and I was like, then, and she put in all the missing pieces for me. Sojourner up Kingston was upstate New York, because I didn't know I didn't know that. So the first time I came to visit, I actually was invited by, I think it's Scenic Hudson. They donated a park to Sojourner, right and I and it was Earth Day, and I think it was in me 2023, I came there for the first time. And I've been here probably five times since.

Devin:

Were you aware of the court case that she was is being commemorated on this marker, but was also a very groundbreaking court case, where were you aware of that history as well?

Barbara Allen:

Yes, I was aware of it. I was aware of it on the surface, like say, I didn't know a whole lot, but I was aware that she did sue to get her son Peter back. We didn't know that probably when I was a younger child, Ian. I had heard the name Peter, so I did know that I was there on the day that they brought the court records back, because they got lost, and then they had them, they brought them back. I was there for that as well. So it was amazing, you know, because I didn't know it was really basically two court cases gone, one to free him and one, one to get him back to his mother, and then one to free him. So it was amazing when I read some of the documents.

Battle Creek celebrates her just as much as Ulster County. And so I do read, especially during Sojourner Truth day in Black History Month. I read a lot in the local elementary schools, and one of my books I even read in the high school. The second book is more towards middle school and high school, but the first one is for more elementary children, and I read to them all the time. I read out our library, and I'll come to Kingston. I think I read at probably five schools there at one time in one day. And it was, it was amazing. So Kingston and Battle Creek both, they celebrate the journey for her time that she was there in Ulster County and for a time that she was in about in Battle Creek. So when I come to Ulster County, I feel like I'm bringing Sojourner home. I'm, I'm telling you  it's a spiritual visit for me every time.

Devin:

I can imagine.

Lauren:

Can you tell us a little bit about what the process was for you to write the actual children's book?

Well, I had known the story, you know, of course, some of the story. And the historian that taught me passed away, and he gave me a big box, well his wife did after he passed away, of all his research, a lot of his research. So I got to know Sojourner for like, two years after that, after he passed away, I just read everything that he had in there. So I got to know her more and more. And, you know, I talked to some family members about her, and I it was COVID, actually, when I wrote my first children's book, I had nothing else to do, you know, I thought, finally, I have some time to get this out of my head and get it onto paper. I just start typing I had, and I found an illustrator to illustrate all the pages, watercolor so that it looked like it was like back in history, and it was just it was beautiful.

Devin:

Sojourner Truth's historical legacy is assured and continues to this day. The emphasis on the court case came to a crescendo, really, last year, not only with the erection of the Pomeroy marker and Barbara Allen attending that event, but with the opening of the Sojourner Truth, first step to freedom exhibit, which features a bronze sculpture of Sojourner Truth, done by the renowned sculptor Trina green, it also the opening reception in September featured the documents that were discovered by the State Archives on display those archival documents, again, are available online at the New York State Archives for anyone who wants to download high resolution images and see those court cases. They are in the State Archives collection. They're not on display a lot because they are old and very fragile, but you can get a sense of what they say and their importance by taking a look at them firsthand on the Archives website, it's important for us to realize that as much as we are and should be commemorating Sojourner Truth in New York State and in Ulster County, her experiences there were not positive. She was not there by her own will, as we have seen, she had to walk away from enslavement. She had to battle for her son's freedom in the court of law in Ulster County. And it was really possibly, as a result of her experiences that she never returned to Ulster County after she left and after she moved to New York City and then eventually New England, and then eventually Battle Creek Michigan, where she spent the rest of her life.

Lauren:

One of the other things we learned about her legacy is that both the City of Kingston and Ulster County and Battle Creek Michigan work together to share the memory of Sojourner Truth, and both of those communities are doing things to make sure that her name is not forgotten, and that her accomplishments are talked about and that they help people today who may be who may be experiencing similar struggles in their own lives.

Taylor Bruck:

I would just encourage folks to stay tuned for the next Sojourner Truth Day, November 26 I think it's a state holiday. And again, the work that she did as a suffragist and an abolitionist should be celebrated statewide, not just here in Ulster or in Albany, and on November 26 really hope there are other communities that will do something for Sojourner and help get her story into schools. She's a very inspirational figure.

Barbara Allen:

She had hope. You know, she was a slave, and she still knew that there was a better life out there. And she hoped upon hope, and she did everything she could to be free. So, I see her legacy is just about hope and promise and that, that if you use your voice, you use what God has equipped you with, you can change things, you can you can make changes. And it doesn't have to be angry. It just has to be deliberate in what you're doing. And she was so deliberate and that's when I look at her, her legacy, that's what I think of. It's just hope. It gives people that hope to just get up and try again. She did that for me, if I sometimes, you know, if I have a bad time, I think about her, I think if she could do it, I definitely can pull myself back up. And I have because of her.