Red Hook's Early Black Community History
Dutchess County Historical Society
The names of some of Red Hook's early Black residents, such as Abraham Lincoln Wool and Thomas and Maria Jefferson, had names reflecting a fervor for the professions of equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation. Other persons, with the same fervor for equality, had more traditional names such as Uriah St. Paul, Ellsworth and Lemuel Jackson, Prince Jackson, Sally, Cornelia and Alexander Gilson, Peter Henry, Jacob Harder, Thomas Row, Robert Churchill, York Zimmerman and many others. Before the Civil War, Dutchess County had a large community of Persons of Color. This was due, for the most part, from the implementation of slavery that affected not just larger river towns, but more remote and rural towns as well. The exception were Quaker strongholds, like Dover, which had very few or no slaves. Click here for fuller county story .
Below: The 1799 Gradual Emancipation Act lived up to its name, abolishing slavery in New York State on July 4th, 1827
In 1820, the last Federal Census before slavery was abolished in NY State, Red Hook was second only to Beacon in terms of size of enslaved population.
Below: Two Red Hook streets are named for African American residents. Prince Street and St. Paul Road.
After retiring as Montgomery Place head gardener, Alexander Gilson bought a house at the corner of Church and Fraleigh Streets. Prince Street is named for Prince Ellsworth, who is reported to have built the first house on the street. Both houses stand today.
St. Paul Road runs from Hapeman Hill Road into the Town of Milan and is named for the family of farmers who lived nearby. The home of Uriah St. Paul is shown on an 1876 map on what is today Route 199 just west of Hapeman Hill Road.
Please scroll down...
Scroll down to be introduced to some people and places relating to Red Hook's historic Africa American community.
Gilson Home, 17 Fraleigh Street
Alexander Gilson bought this house in 1885, having retired from a half century at Montgomery Place, where he earned an international reputation as a botanist and gardener. He died at this house on April 25, 1889. His sister, Cornelia, lived in the house until her death in 1917. Neither married. Both are buried with their mother at the Red Hook Methodist burial ground on Cherry Street. A fuller story is told through the Gilsonfest Exhibition .
An 1876 issue of The American Agriculturalist explained his fame, reporting, “Peter Henderson, Jersey City, N. J., exhibited a cut bloom of a double Begonia Verschaffeltii. This, the first of the double flowered Begonias, originated, we believe, with Mr. A. Gilson, a colored gardener, in charge of Mr. Barton's grounds at Barrytown, N.Y. Mr. Gilson was also the raiser of Achyranthes Gilsoni, that has for some years, by its extensive cultivation as a massing plant, made his name famous.”
Prince Ellsworth home, 25 Prince Street
In his 1926 Reminiscences of Red Hook, A story of the Village, Edmund Bassett refers to this house saying, "the first house on the street was built by a colored man by the name of Prince, hence the name of the street."
Prince Ellsworth and his wife Tamar lived here. They bought the property with another Black family, Jacob Harder, a "peddlar," in 1851.
1913 Booker T. Washington Speaks
On Saturday, June 28, 1913, at the Methodist Church that stands today, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) spoke at an event to raise money for Tuskegee Institute, the educational institution he began to transform from 1881. Washington died two years later, by which time he had exceeded a target of raising $1.8 million through talks such as his Red Hook talk. His advocates became individuals like Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman (Kodak founder). Among the last generation of persons born into slavery, he was criticized by Black leaders like W.E.B. DuBois as too accommodating to White politics. Among those mentioned as having attended were Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brenzel (postmaster), Mrs. Jonas Smith, Miss Maud Gardner, Misses Ethel and Lillian Bliss, Miss Anna Moore, Mrs. Morrison, W. Moore, Mr. and Mrs. W Knickerbocker.
ELLSWORTH JACKSON HOME
Ellsworth Jackson (1833 to 1917) and family lived here at 16 Cherry Street. Ellsworth and his first wife Jane (1835 to 1892) had several children, among them, a son named Luther.
Luther married Lillie Lowry at the Methodist Church Parsonage in 1891. Tragically, their six year old boy, Ellsworth, in 1899. The child is buried across the street at the Red Hook Methodist Cemetery.
The senior Ellsworth married Lena Montgomery in 1893 at the Methodist Church Parsonage. He is buried at the "Turkey Hill Colored Cemetery" in Milan.
GILSON FAMILY PLOT
The Methodist Cemetery is unusual in that burials of Persons of Color tended to be either in isolated cemeteries, or perhaps an isolated section of a White cemetery. Generally, no permanent headstones were allowed. See a profile from the Dutchess County Historical Society .
JANE CROSS GRAVESITE
Jane Cross was a nurse at Rokeby for Maddie Chanler. See a profile of her in Historic Red Hook's The Cemetery Next Door .
"Turkey Hill Colored Cemetery"
Referred to as the "Turkey Hill Colored Cemetery" at the time, and in the town of Milan about three miles east of Upper Red Hook, it holds the remains of a number of members of the Red Hook Jackson family.
Tivoli African American Burial Ground
Not showing exact location out of respect for the burial ground being deep withing a private property lot. Go to the Tivoli heading at this link for more information. Here lies Civil War Veteran Daniel Wool.
Red Hook "Colored Cemetery"
More information at this link .
