7

Race and Remembering in the Adirondacks

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present

Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

Since the early nineteenth century, outdoorsmen, wealthy urbanites, and oth-
ers have ogled the land comprising Adirondack Park, which today includes a
staggering 6.1 million acres of wooded and mountainous terrain to the north
and west of Albany, New York. While some have desired its natural resources,
others have viewed the Adirondacks as an ideal playground and retreat. Some

proof
have come for brief stays, and a growing number have taken ownership of
their own pieces of wilderness. Still others remain awed by what they view as
the park’s surplus of wildness, which they have sought to preserve and experi-
ence, in part for its restorative properties (Schneider 1997; Terrie 1997).
As writer Paul Schneider (1997, 9; see also Terrie 1994) has observed, these
idealists usually come to the Adirondacks “from elsewhere with their notions
about what that wilderness should be, and what it meant, already in place.”
Once there, they have struggled—both with other residents and with the en-
vironment itself—to make their visions it the reality they inevitably ind. In
fact, the region’s history has been conceptualized as a series of these struggles,
though conlicts among those who have diverse ideas about how the wilder-
ness should be managed, preserved, or used has tended to garner most of
the attention of researchers (Terrie 1997; Knott 1998; Jacoby 2003). To coun-
ter this, I highlight a lesser-known struggle over race and class involving an
oten-overlooked chapter in Adirondack history: a mid-nineteenth-century
land reform experiment initiated by abolitionist Gerrit Smith (1797–1874) to
empower black New Yorkers through 40-acre land grants (Staufer 2002; Gell-
man and Quigley 2003; MacKenzie 2007; Miller 2013).
In this case, I document when and how the primary settlement on this land
(nicknamed Timbucto or Timbuctoo) has been remembered and forgotten
and describe how the commemoration process has been rendered more com-
plicated (both morally and methodologically) in the past and in the present
because of the initial characterization of the settlement as an unambiguous
failure. I do not exclude my own remembrance here; for in addition to ex-
amining the accounts of nineteenth-century reformers and journalists, twen-
tieth-century historians, and recent museum curators, my analysis includes
a personal relection on the political ethics of contributing to a new chapter
in Timbucto history, through the Timbucto Archaeology Project, in light of
these earlier narratives (Hamilakis 2007; McGuire 2008).

Land Reform, Abolition, and the Birth of Timbucto

Smith’s experiment was born through the marriage of two social movements—
abolition and land reform—that brought together activists who shared a de-
sire to radically transform the unequal racial, economic, social, and political
systems of antebellum America. heir methods and views on what needed
to be changed did not usually cohere, however, and these diferences led to
contentious debates about the approaches used by both sets of activists. A
cursory look at any antislavery newspaper shows that these activists spilled a

proof
lot of ink defending themselves from attacks made not just by the defenders
of slavery but also by land reformers who believed the stakes were too high to
let abolitionists of the hook for not being radical enough.1 Instead of limit-
ing themselves to critiques of chattel slavery, these activists broadened their
attack to the larger capitalist system that had victimized both black and white
laborers through wage labor and the land tenure system. To respond to the
inequalities wrought by the market revolution, they declared property owner-
ship a natural right, condemned cities as sinful, and emphasized the liberating
qualities of farming (see Zahler 1941; Wilentz 1984; Roediger 1991; Bronstein
1999; Lause 2005).
Inspired by the republicanism of homas Jeferson, Tom Paine, and others,
land reformers such as George Henry Evans argued that widespread social
change could be achieved only if “wages slavery” and land monopolies were
abolished irst, since (they argued) abolishing chattel slavery would only lead
freed African Americans into the hands of new masters. hese sentiments and
an interest in broadening the inluence of land reform proponents led Evans
to write to central New York abolitionist Gerrit Smith in 1844, at a time when
Smith was one of the country’s largest landholders. Evans asserted that Smith
was one of the country’s largest slave holders, explaining that because humans
needed land to survive, land ownership was a natural right and that without

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 135

 the freedom to use land, a person could not be free (Commons et al. 1910, 353,
360). Given this, Evans argued, Smith’s land monopoly was morally wrong and
constituted a form of enslavement (353).
To Evans’s surprise, Smith responded sympathetically and recognized his
own culpability in disempowering others via his massive land holdings. He
soon added the dismantling of land monopolies to his reform agenda, and he
gave away 120,000 acres of his land in northern New York to temperate and
landless African American New Yorkers.2 he grant, which Smith announced
in 1846, served multiple goals: it allowed Smith to jettison the label of land
monopolist and showcase his altruism, and it gave grantees (who could not
vote in New York State without a $250 freehold) a chance at economic and po-
litical power through land ownership. Smith believed that the thriving farms
of the grantees would invalidate the justiications of slavery’s defenders, who
oten argued that African Americans could not function outside of the slave
system. He hoped that advocates of slavery would then abandon their sup-
port for the institution (Staufer 2002; Gellman and Quigley 2003; MacKenzie
2007).
To execute this plan, Smith solicited the help of several prominent activ-
ists, including Dr. James McCune Smith, Rev. heodore Wright, Rev. Henry

proof
Highland Garnet, and Charles B. Ray, to select the recipients of 40-acre par-
cels located principally in Franklin and Essex Counties. Frederick Douglass—
himself a recipient of one of Smith’s lots—supported the initiative by writing
about it in his Rochester-based North Star newspaper. hough they received
no inancial assistance, grantees would eventually be helped by abolitionist
John Brown, who was to use his knowledge of farming to aid the settlers in
exchange for his own Adirondack parcel beginning in 1849 (Brown 1849).3

Experiment Propaganda
Ater the experiment was announced, it garnered both skepticism and praise
in period newspapers. In the Plattsburg Republican, a contributor labeled the
gited land inhospitable, mentioning the dense forests that were “almost im-
pervious to the axe of the settler,” the ields of stone, and the many bloodthirsty
insects awaiting the grantees. He then declared: “A Nantucket Yankee who had
learned to draw sustenance from the bare rocks and desert sands of native
shores might possibly live there, [but] the negro unused to self-dependence
never could.”4 In contrast, a Rochester Advocate writer applauded Smith’s gen-
erosity with a headline reading: “Honor to Whom Honor Is Due.”5 A Berkshire
County Whig reporter asked: “If this isn’t practicing as one preaches, what is?”6

136 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

 African American newspapers reported that those who attended black con-
ventions, antislavery meetings, and First of August celebrations (which com-
memorated the abolition of slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834)
responded enthusiastically to news of the experiment.7 Members of the African
American press praised Smith and quickly became cheerleaders for the project.
North Star writer William C. Nell, for example, challenged the grantees to make
history. He wrote: “Who, among the settlers . . . will . . . fell the irst tree? he
North Star will hail the name and hand it down to posterity.”8 In one North
Star letter, Smith joined the cheerleaders by arguing that free blacks could end
slavery by demonstrating their “dignity and capabilities,” thereby prompting
“awestruck” slaveholders to drop “the rod of the oppressor.”9
Across the state, small groups of ambitious grantees responded favorably
to the call to uproot their families and participate in what activists promised
would bring about radical social change. Meetings organized in Troy, Roch-
ester, New York City, and elsewhere brought together grantees planning their
migrations, which for some took place as early as spring 1848. For this early
efort, which involved grantees from Troy, Henry Highland Garnet ofered
a send-of sermon to remind the settlers that although their success was not
guaranteed, they would achieve it if they remained pious, industrious, frugal,

proof
and temperate. He added: “Take with you the spirit of freedom. Plant the tree
of Liberty upon the mountain plains, that it may spread its branches far and
wide.”10
By 1850, two small settlements had formed, one in North Elba (in Essex
County) and another about thirty miles north in and around Loon Lake (in
Franklin County). Smith and others indicated that at their peak these commu-
nities included a total of about ity grantees, though census takers recorded
fewer than thirty in both communities (see Figure 7.1).11 Despite the small
number, some activists declared the experiment a success. One reported that
“from [Smith’s] git has sprung a thriving and numerous settlement.”12
However, the lackluster response elicited considerable concern among its
cheerleaders as early as 1849. hat year, Frederick Douglass suggested that the
enterprise might end up embarrassing African Americans instead of bolster-
ing them. He wrote: “hese lands must soon be made a blessing . . . or they
will become a curse” (Douglass 1849, 2). Knowing that both supporters and
foes were monitoring the fate of the experiment, Douglass saw much at stake
for African Americans and those ighting for their rights. Many accounts of
the experiment shited to attempt to understand the reasons for the reluctance
of African American families to become settlers. Some writers blamed oppo-
nents who had misinformed grantees about the quality of the land and about

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 137

 proof
Figure 7.1. African America farmers in North Elba, New York. Courtesy of the Adirondack Museum,
Blue Mountain Lake, New York.

Smith’s motives.13 In response to such concerns, many early reports gloriied

Smith and attested to the potential of the lots, either as farmland or as a source
of timber.14 Another suggested that the lack of startup funds limited grantees’
prospects for success.15
More troubling in light of Smith’s goal of creating a model of interracial
cooperation were suggestions that the grantees’ white neighbors opposed the
experiment. Preacher Jermain Loguen (1848) recounted a story about grantees
who owned good farm lots yet had encountered locals who led them to lots
of poorer quality when the grantees went to settle their land. hese swin-
dlers then sought to purchase the supposedly less desirable land at discounted
prices.16 A North Star account provided evidence of the opposition that both
grantees and their supporters would face. A contributor wrote that a surveyor
(Mr. Lewis) the grantees had hired “will have a hard time surveying, as there
exists in this community much opposition . . . against the lands being settled
by colored people. I have heard the white inhabitants accuse Mr. Lewis of try-
ing to ruin the town, by getting colored people to settle in this town.” he same
source reported that locals threatened to “starve [the grantees] out, and the

138 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

land would be settled by whites; that they would not live in a town surrounded
by colored people.”17

Timbucto as Failure
Concern about whether the experiment would succeed heightened in 1852
when its boosters realized that many of the 3,000 lots were about to be sold for
nonpayment of taxes.18 Initially, the response to this development was an in-
tensiication of calls for more grantees to settle the land, and when those calls
went unanswered, Smith and his supporters responded with anger and a pro-
found disappointment in the grantees.19 Instead of alluding to other reasons
for the settlement’s failure (e.g., lack of startup funds, hostility of neighbors),
they blamed the grantees. In one widely published letter, Smith acknowledged
that conditions in the Adirondacks were tough—“the winters there are long,
the snows deep, and the soil thin”—and that white settlers thrived there only
through “very hard work and very frugal habits.” He added: “Why, then, con-
sidering the character of the colored people, should we expect them to do
much in such a country?”20 hough this rhetoric made him sound like a rac-
ist apologist for slavery (and at least one recent scholar has labeled Smith’s

proof
later writings as racist [Staufer 2002]), ultimately abolitionists such as Smith
argued that the character laws he described were the result of slavery and
inequality—that African Americans were not innately inferior but that their
tendencies were the unfortunate consequence of an unjust system that en-
sured their continued oppression.
Ultimately, however, deeming the experiment a failure and degrading the
character of African Americans fueled the rhetoric of those who supported
slavery, who were only too willing to use Smith’s own words to bolster their
racist arguments.21 In an 1858 debate on slavery held in Philadelphia, for ex-
ample, pro-slavery editor William Brownlow (later the governor of Tennessee
and then a U.S. senator from Tennessee) called the experiment a failure, citing
Smith’s own opinions on the reasons for it. One reporter quoted Brownlow as
stating:

Gerrit Smith has become disgusted with the recipients of his bounty. He
said, in the New York Tribune, that ‘the colored people are generally idle,
worthless, and vicious,’ and that his ‘expectations of their reformation
have in no degree been realized.’ He asserts that half of those to whom he
‘gave farms have sold their lands, or have been so worthless as to allow
them to be sold for taxes.’”22

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 139

 Brownlow then read an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer for July 1857 that
stated that “there is no better mode of curing a neighborhood of abolitionism
than by inlicting on them a colony of free negroes.”23
hough the reform initiative had largely receded as a topic of discussion in
newspapers by the late 1850s, it did earn some mention ater John Brown’s raid
on Harper’s Ferry, when reporters described Timbucto in their articles about
Brown. One explained that Brown moved to North Elba to help the grant-
ees, who needed “leaders, if not masters.”24 And in a later Adirondack travel
narrative, Seneca Ray Stoddard (1881, 76) mistakenly gave Brown credit for
establishing Timbucto, whose residents he described as Brown’s “pet lambs.”
Avocational historian Alfred Donaldson’s early twentieth-century history,
which was the standard reference work on the Adirondacks for decades, con-
tinued this paternalistic tone in its description of Timbucto while ramping up
the racist rhetoric. In his unsourced description, Donaldson (1921, 6) wrongly
states that all settlers clustered on one lot, where they erected “shanties” and
in “a last touch of pure negroism” put up a “dilapidated” lag emblazoned with
the “half humorous half pathetic legend Timbucto.” Like Stoddard, Donald-
son emphasized the settlers’ incompetence, arguing that “unless directed by
[Brown], they did nothing for themselves or their own land” (ibid.).

Alternative Narratives
proof
Relecting and reinforcing the stark inequality that existed in a postbellum
America, when, as David W. Blight (2001, 4) observed, the “sections recon-
ciled [but] by and large the races divided,” late nineteenth- and early twen-
tieth-century writers either forgot the experiment, dismissed it, or remem-
bered it with paternalism and unabashed racism. But early twentieth-century
black activists asserted alternative accounts and sought to reshape the collec-
tive memory associated with the initiative. his memory work continues to
impact present-day remembrances, including those relating to the Timbucto
Archaeology Project.
he new chapter began in 1909, when W. E. B. Du Bois’s biography of John
Brown was published. he NAACP leader, sociologist, and author not only
gloriied Brown—critics called it “hagiographic” (Peterson 2004, 101)—but
also ofered an alternative narrative of the Timbucto experiment. Du Bois
(1909, 111) wrote that the project was “not wholly a failure” because (among
other things) it “turned out some good Negro farmers [and] gave some of its
best Negro citizens to northern New York.” More signiicantly, although he
acknowledged the diicult climate and the settlers’ lack of farming knowledge,

140 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

Du Bois placed the responsibility for the disappointing outcome on Smith,
not the grantees. He argued that the much-ballyhooed experiment was not
“a well thought out scheme” and that Smith and his cheerleaders should have
anticipated the challenges the grantees faced (110).
his more sympathetic portrayal likely resonated with members of the
John Brown Memorial Association (JBMA), a group that J. Max Barber of the
Philadelphia NAACP started in 1922.25 In the wake of Du Bois’s biography,
which “put the legend [of Brown] in the struggle of Black Americans” (Pe-
terson 2004, 101), this association of African American urban professionals
and activists embarked on annual pilgrimages to North Elba to commemorate
Brown’s birthday and highlight the continuing struggle for African American
rights. Notable speakers retold Brown’s story and derided present-day agents
of injustice in the shadow of Brown’s grave. he celebrations featured songs
by Lyman Epps Jr., who had participated in Brown’s funeral and had been a
toddler when his family moved from Troy to the Adirondacks to take part in
Smith’s experiment.26 At the 1935 birthday celebration, which attracted 2,000
attendees, Epps unveiled a statue of Brown that the group had commissioned
for display at Brown’s farm.27
Local Adirondack newspapers and African American publications re-

proof
ported that some locals welcomed African American pilgrims to North Elba,
participated in their commemorations, and sponsored special events to honor
them. he NAACP’s he Crisis reported that “every accommodation was given
and every courtesy [was] shown to the visitors” at John Brown Day in 1924
(Pickens 1924, 127). he article revealed that locals not only attended the
events at the farm but also hosted a celebratory gathering for pilgrims at the
famous Lake Placid Club, which was described as the world’s “wealthiest and
most richly appointed country club” (ibid.). here, they were given a tour that
culminated with a jubilant rendering of “John Brown’s Body” in its theatre
(Pickens 1924, 127).
North Elba residents also remembered Timbucto in their own celebrations
of the Epps family. Area newspaper reporters described Lyman Jr.’s 100th and
101st birthday parties, which were hosted by his friends and members of the
local JBMA chapter.28 his group commissioned his portrait, which they pre-
sented to him at a tea held in his honor in 1942.29 Lyman’s death also received
considerable notice in local papers, which featured articles explaining his fam-
ily’s connections to Smith’s experiment and their close relationship with the
Browns. His death notice, along with those of his siblings, emphasized the
reputation of the Epps family as “respected citizens in the community” and as
a “family which was instrumental in the early cultural development of Lake

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 141

 Placid.”30 Reporters referred to Lyman Sr.’s position as a founding board mem-
ber of the local library, his skills as a music teacher, and the family’s leadership
in local churches.31
Contrasting sharply with other racist and paternalistic remembrances,
these accounts convey a celebratory spirit that echoed the enthusiastic and
idealistic tone supporters expressed when the experiment was announced a
century earlier. While the African American commemoration can be under-
stood as a pointed challenge to racism, understanding the local responses to
Timbucto is complicated when one considers the region’s reliance on a tourist
economy that perpetuated inequality. North Elba was a northern resort town
that—like others of the period (see Armstead 1999)—featured establishments
that refused to accept African Americans, Jews, and others. he Lake Placid
Club, for example, permitted JBMA pilgrims a tour in 1924, but it would not
have allowed them as members. According to its 1928 yearbook, the club “ex-
cludes rigorously every person against whom there is a social, race, moral or
iscal objection,” adding that “except as servants Negroes are not admitted”
(quoted in Rauch 2008, 3). Notably, accounts of these commemorative events
suggest that their targets were generalized and nonlocal sources of racial
injustice. Speakers in 1922, for example, decried lynchings in Texas and the

proof
South’s lien system of farming while ignoring the segregation and economic
inequality found in Lake Placid.32 Similarly, the evils of the Ku Klux Klan were
noted, but speakers did not mention that the group was active locally at that
time.33

Recent Remembrances
hough JBMA members and interested locals continued annual pilgrimages
to the Brown farm into the mid-1980s, remembrances of Timbucto became
more rare ater Lyman Epps Jr. died in 1942. Only occasionally would curious
academics inquire about the settlement with longtime North Elba town histo-
rian Mary Mackenzie, whose research was eventually compiled and published
in 2007.
However, a new narrative is gaining ground in the wake of the publication
of a relective magazine essay by Katherine Butler Jones (1998), a descendant
of a Smith grantee, and the unveiling of the exhibit Dreaming of Timbuctoo,
which was inspired in part by Jones’s article. In this piece, Jones described
her path to discovering her ancestor’s participation in the experiment and
recounted her experience of traveling to land granted to her family. he ar-
ticle ofered a personal accounting of the meaningfulness of African American

142 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

land ownership and ofered a new standard for measuring the experiment’s
success. Jones wrote that her ancestors’ story “tells me that the goal of the land
grant experiment initiated by Gerrit Smith was accomplished, independently,
by [her] great-great-grandparents” (Jones 1998, 33).
Unfamiliar with this chapter in Adirondack history, activist Martha Swan
and historian Amy Godine set out to create an exhibit that would allow others
to honor this heritage (Godine 2002). By doing so, they aimed to acknowledge
the experiment’s failures but not dwell on them and to connect the experiment
and the experience of the African American grantees to bigger (and still rel-
evant) questions pertaining to civil rights and social justice. hey also sought
to demonstrate that the history of the Adirondacks, which is not known for its
diversity, can be ethnic history too (Godine 2002). hough Godine ultimately
curated the exhibit, in the tradition of Du Bois and JBMA members, Swan
continues to use the region’s history to start conversations about contempo-
rary social problems through the John Brown Lives! organization, which (be-
ginning in 1999) rekindled interest in commemorating Brown with annual
events in the same way that the JBMA had done for most of the twentieth
century.34 Swan’s group has recently pushed to focus the group’s program-
ming on local concerns, including prison reform, migrant worker rights, and

proof
environmental justice, though it continues to show the Timbucto exhibit at
various New York State venues.
Building on the renewed interest in the Smith grantees, the North Country
Underground Railroad Historical Association (NCURHA), which formed
in 2004, also highlighted aspects of the Timbucto story by recounting the
experience of grantee and freedom seeker John homas in its new North
Star Underground Railroad Museum, located in Ausable Chasm in Clinton
and Essex Counties. he multimedia exhibit, called he Forgotten Story of
John homas, focuses on a grantee who developed a large Adirondack farm
ater irst selling his Smith parcel. By 1872 his Bloomingdale, New York, farm
had increased in size from 50 to 200 acres, and today his descendants still
live in the region. Viewing his story as the “quintessential American story
of triumph over adversity,” curators celebrated homas’s experience as the
experiment’s ultimate success.35 his emphasis serves the group’s mission,
which is to “inspire all people to rise above their diferences and celebrate
the importance of freedom to the survival of the human spirit” by preserving
regional history (North Country Underground Railroad Historical Associa-
tion 2011). hough in less overtly political ways, the NCURHA joins John
Brown Lives! in connecting the past and the present with stories of Smith’s
grantees.

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 143

 Toward an Archaeology of Timbucto
On its most basic level, this research reiterates the point that remembering is
political and oten involves a struggle between those who hold and those who
want power (Hobsbawm 1983; Lowenthal 1985; Blight 2001, 2006; Kammen
1991; Trouillot 1995; Shackel 2001b, 2001c, 2003; McGuire and Reckner 2002;
Walker 2009). he research has also proved important in a diferent, more
personal way, since it has prompted some serious relection on the ethics of
creating yet another Timbucto narrative in the service of yet another activ-
ist agenda, in this case using data collected via the Timbucto Archaeology
Project. Stories about the settlers have been mobilized by various political
actors who had a stake in when and how they were told. Both the seemingly
progressive reformers and racist, pro-slavery pundits tainted the memory of
the experiment as a story of failure in the nineteenth century. Even later, more
positive readings have been complicated by a general lack of direct connec-
tion to the settlers, except through outsider and descendant accounts. he
archaeology to be conducted at Timbucto sites, therefore, is crucial to docu-
menting the settlers who were once thought to have let “very little behind to
bear witness” to their Adirondack experience.36 However, this understanding

proof
has forced me to realize my own role as a steward of the settlers’ legacy as I
work to create an “emancipatory” narrative through the archaeological study
of their actual lived experience (McGuire, Wurst, and O’Donovan 2005; Mc-
Guire 2008; Duke and Saitta 2009).
Some recent eforts to remember Timbucto have involved countering the
failure narrative with a focus on the settlement’s success stories. his work
honors the settlers’ experience and highlights the lasting presence of African
American families in a region not known for its diversity. Still, replacing a
failure narrative with one of success runs the risk of reinforcing the American
Dream ideology—the insidious notion that economic success and upward so-
cial mobility come to those who work hard enough. Viewing property owner-
ship as the main avenue to achievement for free African Americans, Smith
gave away his land and encouraged the grantees to achieve social, economic,
and political progress through their industry, frugality, and morality. Smith
and his agents repeatedly emphasized self-reliance, writing that “there is, in
you, the same physical and intellectual power which other men have—exert
this power, do for yourselves what other men have done for themselves.”37
In each of the 3,000 deeds, Smith reminded his grantees that the land was
granted to them out of “his desire to have all share in the means of subsistence
and happiness which a bountiful God has provided for all.”38 Douglass praised

144 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

the few grantees who had created working farms on their Adirondack land as
the rare exceptions who “with commendable zeal, industry, perseverance, and
self-reliance, have found and are funding, in agricultural pursuits, the means
of supporting, improving and educating their families” (Douglass 1853).
In other writings not related to the experiment, both Smith and Douglass
coupled their discussion of self-reliance and individualism with relections on
the importance of interdependence and communalism. To be hard working,
frugal, temperate, and charitable was one’s responsibility as a member of a
moral community, and an individual’s success was not supposed to breed in-
creased isolation and selishness. Instead, the success that these traits brought
was to accompany a strong and steady concern for the well-being of one’s
neighbors (Dann 2009; Buccola 2012). hus, Douglass and Smith argued that
self-reliance was not antithetical to a more just and equal society; in fact, it
was central to it. As Douglass wrote in his oten-repeated speech “Self-Made
Men,” “Individuals to the mass are like waves to the ocean. he highest order
of genius, like the lotiest wave of the sea, derives its power and greatness from
the vastness and grandeur of the ocean of which it forms a part.”39
But the balance found here—between an individual’s responsibility to self
and community—was absent from their assessments of Smith’s Adirondack

proof
land experiment. Instead, the implication of Smith’s and Douglass’s rhetoric
was that the success or failure of individual settlers rested solely on the qual-
ity of their work ethic. hat the grantees and their families who stayed in the
Adirondacks on their farms for decades worked hard cannot be questioned.
But the implication that the many others who surrendered their land ater a
few years of labor had not worked hard enough or that those who had chosen
never to settle on their property lacked adequate discipline is troubling in
light of modern-day conservative rhetoric that regards poverty as a choice.
If my work were to uphold this narrative, the research could give credence to
this ideology, which minimizes or discounts the structural obstacles to social
mobility that have helped maintain the status quo in the past and the present
(e.g., Bandow 2002).40
Because singular stories of success or failure remain problematic, a more
complex narrative that explores the experiences of a diverse range of grantees
is desired. Whether or not the lifeways of “success stories” are the focus, the
questions can shit to how various settlers responded to the many challenges
they faced in the Adirondack wilderness. Primary sources suggest that the
experiment failed because settlers were ill equipped to live on and farm their
lots. Archaeological data will help evaluate this assessment by considering
the consumption and production strategies settlers employed to help survive

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 145

 those tests. For example, did the settlers boost their income by engaging in
nonagricultural household labor (e.g., sewing or laundering for others) and
supplementing their diets with wild food sources? Were they canning their
food at home or buying tinned food at market? Were they consuming national
brand merchandise or goods made locally? More generally, how were they
engaging with the consumer culture of the period (Mullins 1999, 2012)?
he question of what deined success looms large here, especially because
the sites associated with long-term settlers hold the most promise in terms of
archaeological data recovery. But the experience documented at these sites
will be compared to what the material and documentary evidence can reveal
about the lives of both short-term Timbucto settlers and their white neighbors
(e.g., Wurst 2002). Broadly speaking, instead of relying on assumptions about
the settlement that were grounded in racism and the ideology of individu-
alism, archaeology will permit explorations of what “success” and “failure”
looked like at Timbucto. Complicating what is and was meant by success and
failure also enables this project to examine other aspects of social inequality
in terms of race, class, and gender that were made, maintained, and resisted
in everyday life.

Conclusions
proof
he speed with which Smith and others declared the initiative at Timbucto a
lost cause reveals the harsh reality of becoming involved in a political experi-
ment that has implications beyond the level of the individual. he dismissive
quality of Smith’s and Douglass’s declarations that the experiment was a failure
is particularly striking when one considers that dozens of settlers and their
family members and individuals who boarded with those families were still
living on Adirondack parcels at that time. he project’s supporters sacriiced
these pioneers for the sake of the greater cause of antislavery and the failure
narrative was born. Failure narratives also bolstered pro-slavery rhetoric, and
this narrative of failure continued to be adopted by a range of commentators
into the twentieth century. However, at times alternative depictions have been
ofered to challenge this negative portrayal, and various social actors—black
and white, local and nonlocal—have found reason to support more celebra-
tory accounts of the settlers who were considered the experiment’s “successes.”
Revealing details about past heritage eforts and commemorations, this ex-
ercise in critical relection becomes a crucial step in formulating new narra-
tives that speak to the settlers’ lived experience. Knowledge of how the settlers
have already been remembered and how these memories have been deployed

146 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

clariies the political dimensions of this remembering. Plainly speaking, a crit-
ical remembering is a moral obligation, and following Hamilakis (2007), it
involves a consideration of what questions are being asked and who is served
by when and how they are answered. For the Timbucto Archaeology Project,
this means a focus on how settlers responded to the challenges they faced
and an approach that unsettles simplistic accounts by questioning the mean-
ings and measures of success and failure in this context. In so doing, I expect
to develop new knowledge about how inequality has been made, challenged,
and remade in the past in order to inform future eforts to bring about social
change. hese eforts follow the path forged by the Smith grantees, who sought
to “plant the Tree of Liberty” in the Adirondack Mountains.41

Notes
1. E.g., Wendell Phillips, “Letter to George H. Evans,” he Liberator, 4 September
1846; “Young America—Reform—‘Wages Slavery,’ &c ‘Young America.’” National Era,
11 February 1847 (Washington, D.C.); “Not to Be Trusted,” Liberator (Boston, Mass.),
18 February 1848.
2. heodore Wright, Gerrit Smith, Charles B. Ray, and James McCune Smith, “Ad-

proof
dress to the hree housand Colored Citizens of New-York Who Are the Owners of
One Hundred and Twenty housand Acres of Land, in the State of New-York, Given
to hem by Gerrit Smith, Esq. of Peterboro,” 1 September 1846. Samuel J. May Anti-
Slavery Papers, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York.
3. John Brown to Gerrit Smith, 20 June 1849, Boyd Stutler Collection, West Virginia
State Archives, Charleston, West Virginia.
4. “Gerrit Smith’s Liberality,” Plattsburg Republican, 10 October 1846.
5. “Honor to Whom Honor Is Due,” Brattleboro Weekly Eagle (Brattleboro, Ver-
mont), 28 September 1847.
6. Description of land grants, Berkshire County Whig (Pittsield, Massachusetts), 21
October 1847.
7. “he Colored Convention,” North Star (Rochester, N.Y.), 3 December 1847; “A
Christian Philanthropist,” National Era, 17 May 1849; “Philanthropy,” National Era, 21
February 1850.
8. William C. Nell, “he Smith Lands,” North Star, 14 April 1848.
9. Gerrit Smith, “To the Colored People of the Northern States,” North Star, 4 Au-
gust 1848.
10. Henry Highland Garnet, “Communications: Extract from a Sermon,” North
Star, 12 May 1848.
11. New York State Secretary’s Oice 1855; North Elba, Essex County, New York,
1850 U.S. manuscript census, 177–180; Franklin, Franklin County, New York, 1850 U.S.
manuscript census, 82–90.

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 147

 12. “Philanthropy,” 32. See also Sally Holley, “An Address,” North Star, 23 Janu-
ary1851; “Gerrit Smith,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), 11 March 1852.
13. E.g., Smith, “To the Colored People of the Northern States.”
14. E.g., “Essex County,” North Star, 2 February 1849; “Mr. Waite J. Lewis and the
Smith’s Lands,” North Star, 16 February 1849.
15. Frederick Douglass, “he Smith Lands,” North Star, 5 January1849.
16. Jermain Loguen, “Gerrit Smith’s Land,” North Star, 24 March 1848.
17. “Essex County.”
18. “Gerrit Smith’s Land,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 15 April 1853.
19. “Gerrit Smith, in a Recently Published Letter,” Provincial Freeman (Chatham,
Ontario), 12 September 1857.
20. “Gerrit Smith’s Experiment with the Negroes,” Weekly Wisconsin Patriot (Madi-
son), 5 September 1857, 4.
21. “Slavery Discussion,” National Era, 23 September 1858.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. “Old John Brown,” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, Ill.), 3 December 1874.
25. “Anniversary of John Brown Observed Here,” Lake Placid News, 12 May 1922,
46.
26. E.g., “Anniversary of John Brown Observed Here”; “Elaborate and Impressive

proof
Ceremonies at Unveiling of the John Brown Monument,” Lake Placid News, 10 May
1935; “Lyman Epps, Oldest Resident of Placid, Dies,” Lake Placid News, 27 November
1942; Pickens 1924; Mackenzie 2007
27. “Elaborate and Impressive Ceremonies at Unveiling of the John Brown Monu-
ment.”
28. “Lyman Epps to Reach Century Mark Tuesday,” Lake Placid News, 14 June 1940;
“Lyman Epps, 101 Years Old Last hursday,” Lake Placid News, 27 June 1941.
29. “John Brown Mem. Assoc. Has Tea on Lake Shore,” Lake Placid News, 21 August
1842, 5.
30. “Albert Epps to Be Buried Here Today,” Lake Placid News, 5 November 1937;
“Lyman Epps, Oldest Resident of Placid, Dies.”
31. “Albert Epps to Be Buried Here Today”; “Lyman Epps, Oldest Resident of Placid,
Dies.”
32. “Anniversary of John Brown Observed Here.”
33. Ibid.; “Glens Falls Faces Ku Klux Problem,” Lake Placid News, 28 November 1924.
34. “Celebration Will Mark 140th Anniversary of John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s
Ferry,” Adirondack Daily Enterprise (Saranac Lake, N.Y.), 15 October 1999.
35. “John homas Brought to Life,” North Country Lantern 6 (2006–2007): 4–5.
36. Nichole Christian, “North Elba Journal: Recalling Timbuctoo, a Slice of Black
History,” New York Times, 19 February 2002.
37. Wright et al., “Address to the hree housand Colored Citizens of New-York.”

148 Hadley Kruczek-Aaron

 38. E.g., Deed to Lyman Eppes from Gerrit Smith, 1 November 1847, Book FF, p.
44–45, Essex County Clerk’s Oice, Elizabethtown.
39. Frederick Douglass, “Self-Made Men,” Address before the Students of the Indian
Industrial School at Carlisle, Pa., pp. 4–5, Folder 4, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library
of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/item/mfd000532, accessed 19 July 2014.
40. E.g. Steve Malanga, “he Truth about Poverty: Bad Choices, Not a Bad Econ-
omy, Are to Blame.” Chicago Sun-Times, 4 February 2007.
41. Garnet, “Communications: Extract from a Sermon.”

proof

Accounting for Timbucto in the Past and the Present 149