Local Abolitionist Isaac Groot Duryee

Isaac Groot Duryee in 1860. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Isaac Groot Duryee (sometimes spelled Duryea) was born in Glenville in 1810 to William Duryee and Sarah Groot. As a young man, he first worked as a grocery clerk in Schenectady, then established his own grocery business. Duryee was attracted to religion during a revival held in the city in 1832. Following the revival, he became a member of the First Reformed Church.

As a young man, Duryee's devotion to the abolitionist cause became apparent. By the mid-1830s, he was contributing to the American Anti-Slavery Society. During his time as a student at Union College, from which he graduated in 1838, Duryee co-founded an Anti-Slavery Society at the college in 1836, and co-founded the Anti-Slavery Society of the City of Schenectady  in 1838. He also helped to found the first African-American church in Schenectady, known as the African Church (now the Duryee Memorial AME Zion Church), in 1837. As President of the Union College Anti-Slavery Society, Duryee wrote that the group would "cease not in every proper way to vindicate [slaves'] cause until their wrongs shall have been redressed and the last vestige of slavery be wiped from our beloved republic." In addition to his public agitation for the freedom of slaves and the rights of African-Americans, his granddaughter, Ruth M. Duryee, wrote in 1937 for a Union College alumni record that Duryee was active with the Underground Railroad, helping “many an escaping negro from Schenectady to the next stop, with the negro lying flat under hay in the back of the wagon.”

Present location of the Duryee Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church at 307 Hulett Street in Schenectady. The church is named on honor of Isaac Groot Duryee, who helped to establish the church's first building on Jay Street. August 2011 image obtained via Google Maps. 

In 1837, Duryee wrote to the Schenectady Cabinet about Schenectady's African-American community. He decried the racism that members of the community faced, writing that African-American Schenectadians were "represented as a mass of ignorant, slothful, miserable paupers - unable and unwilling to provide for themselves, and almost wholly incapable of moral and intellectual improvement." In contrast, Duryee wrote of the contributions that African-Americans made locally -- financially through their taxes to the public coffers, as well as in the works of African-American temperance and mutual relief societies, and in organizing ably to create a school and church. Duryee also noted that 13 of the 39 former slaves in the community had had to purchase their freedom. In comparison to these efforts, Duryee wrote, "we may safely challenge the [white] community to produce a like example of industry, perseverance, and generosity."

On the subject of education, Duryee remarked that "the cause of education among the people of colour has never received the least support from the school fund. They have paid their full proportion of taxes . .. but [those funds] have all been appropriated for the education of other children. Perhaps it will be said, that coloured children stand as good a chance as white children. It is not so. The doors of our public school are closed against the former, while they are open to the latter -- thereby excluding colored children even from the opportunity of receiving any advantage of the public fund." Duryee insisted that, barring integration of Schenectady's schools, African-Americans at the very least had a right to money from the public funds -- which they had contributed to -- to support a school their children could attend. "A greater outrage was never committed upon the rights of the poor," Duryee wrote in the conclusion of his letter.

Duryee left Schenectady for a period of fourteen years after graduating from Union College in 1838. He graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1841 and married Lydia Auger Budington in 1842, shortly before he became ordained as a minister. He served Reformed Church congregations in Fallsburg and Glenham before returning to Schenectady to serve as the first pastor of the Second Reformed Church, from 1852 to 1858. During his years in Schenectady, he continued to support rights and dignity for African-Americans in Schenectady. In 1854, he was selected as one of eight commissioners to serve of Schenectady's first Board of Education.

The Second Reformed Church was, during Duryee's tenure as pastor there, in this church building at the corner of Jay and Liberty Streets. Image from Grems-Doolittle Library Photograph Collection. 

Duryee also spoke up among his fellows in the Reformed Church to denounce the institution of slavery. In a meeting of the Reformed Church General Synod in 1855, ministers met to discuss whether to form an ecclesiastical relationship with a North Carolina Classis of the German Reformed Church. During discussion of the resolution, Isaac Duryee objected to receiving the North Carolina Classis because, in his view, owning slaves was a sin. "The question of slavery is the great question of this nation," Duryee said in remarks printed in the New York Daily Tribune, "and when the line is to be drawn I shall not be slow to show which side I am on. Sir, I am on the side of Liberty - Freedom . . . I can say that my inmost soul shrinks from extending the fellowship of our church to slaveholding churches as I shrink from the touch of the torpedo." The Tribune praised Duryee's courage in standing firmly against slavery, given, as they put it, that "the predominant feeling in the Church has been adverse to talking any stand with reference to the great reforms of the day."

In 1859, Duryee again left Schenectady to serve a congregation in Montgomery County. From 1862 to 1865, he served as a chaplain to the 81st New York State Volunteers during the Civil War. Duryee served with that regiment through the war, but became sick during the war and never fully recovered after his return to Schenectady. He died on February 8, 1866, at age 55, leaving his wife and eight children. He is buried in Vale Cemetery. An obituary published in the Schenectady Republican praised his "large experience," his "warm heart," and his "unselfish and elevated purposes." Duryee "was a great friend of the colored race," wrote Edward Corwin in A Manual of the Reformed Church in America in 1902. "He was an Abolitionist and not afraid to speak when it was yet unpopular to advocate the rights of a common humanity for all."

Schenectady's Nineteenth-Century Black Barbers and the Anti-Slavery Movement

Tom Calarco, who has written many books about the Underground Railroad, writes in his book The Underground Railroad in the Adirondack Region that "census records generally show that the majority of free blacks in upstate New York who had attained some level of prosperity were barbers. But more significant to a study of the underground Railroad is the inordinate number who were agents or active in organizations that intersected with the Underground Railroad." This certainly seems to hold true in Schenectady, where at least three nineteenth-century black barbers appeared to have been connected to Underground Railroad activity or to the movement for the abolition of slavery. More information and research needs to be done in this area; for now, here are a few brief biographies of these men:

Newspaper advertisement for Francis Dana's barber shop

Francis Dana (ca. 1811–d. ca. 1875?)
Francis Dana was born in the British West Indies sometime between 1808 and 1811. There is a Francis Dana listed as a passenger on the ship George, which arrived in New York City from Frederickstaat, St. Croix, in 1826. Dana applied for naturalization in Schenectady in 1840. He is listed in the 1841 city directory as a barber working out of 146 State Street, on the canal. In 1842, Dana was listed as one of Stephen Myers’ North Star Association agents for the distribution of the Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate. He continued to live and work in Schenectady until about 1865. A Francis Dana last appeared in the 1870 Federal census in Saratoga Springs, Saratoga County, and in Oriskany Falls, Oneida County (both locations show a man of similar age listed as being "mulatto" or "colored" and working as a barber).

Newspaper notice announcing the shop of John Wendell moving
from State Street to Ferry Street.

John Wendell (ca. 1801-d. 1875)
John Wendell (sometimes spelled Wendall, Wandell, or Wandle) was a barber. He was active in the Duryee Memorial AME Zion Church, serving as one of the church’s first trustees. He served as the first president of a local African-American temperance society in 1836. He was chosen to serve as secretary at a meeting of African-American citizens about the elective process (See The Colored American 28 December 1840). Articles in The Cabinet on March 18, 1845 and June 13, 1848 mention Wendell applying to the Common Council for aid to the school for African-American children in the city. Wendell died in 1875.

Advertisement for Stillman's razors endorsed by Richard P.G.
Wright. These types of advertisements were common in the
mid-nineteenth century.

Richard P.G. Wright (ca. 1778–1847)
Wright is perhaps the best known and most well-documented person in Schenectady connected to Underground Railroad and anti-slavery activity. He was born in Swansey, Massachusetts, and lived in Rhode Island for several years. In earlier years, he went by the name “Prince G. Wright.” By around 1811, Wright had moved to Schenectady, where he would continue to live until his death in 1847. Wright was a barber and both his business at 2 Canal Street and his home at 84 Ferry Street were close by the Erie Canal. Wright was deeply involved with local and regional anti-slavery activities; he was an early member of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a founding member of the Anti-Slavery Society of the City of Schenectady in 1838, and attended many anti-slavery conventions and gatherings in the region. Along with his son, the abolitionist and pastor Theodore Sedgwick Wright, he was a member of the New York Vigilance Committee. Wright and his son were also the only African-American members of the St. George’s Masonic Lodge in Schenectady. An Eastern New York Anti-Slavery Society 1843 annual report mentions 3 freedom seekers and notes that the agent who helped them “gave letter to Emp. Wright and Ellis Clizbe [of Montgomery County].” According to an article in the Emancipator and Weekly Chronicle (Boston) 16 April 1845, Wright assisted Charles Nelson in escaping slavery to freedom in Canada. Wright died in 1847; he is buried at Vale Cemetery in Schenectady.



Page from the 1841 Schenectady City
Directory. Black heads of household are
listed in italics.

 It is also worthwhile to investigate the lives of other free blacks who may have been active in anti-slavery efforts. Among other sources, the 1841 city directory is helpful here. The directory lists in italics all of the heads of households who are black, and in some cases professions are noted. Francis Thomas is another black barber listed at that time. The directory also includes names of prominent black citizens, such as Jacob Douw and Richard Sampson, who we find in a 1836 Schenectady Cabinet article as being involved in a black temperance society that had invited abolitionist Gerrit Smith to speak. Additionally, significant events, such as a national black conference held in Schenectady on September 16, 1844, deserve further inquiry. The library's collections of church records, cemetery records, family files, census records, newspapers on microfilm, clipping files, historic manuscripts, and other sources can help researchers learn about the lives of the city's black residents at that time period and about the contours of anti-slavery activity in the region.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad provides an interesting and sometimes mysterious part of the history of the United States, which as interested adults and children of all ages for generations. The story of the Underground Railroad includes stories of compassion, daring, and lawbreaking in a period of American history fraught with conflict and tension.

On April  8-10 the Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region is hosting its 10th conference, entitled “Abolishing Slavery in the Atlantic World: the ‘Underground Railroad’ in the Americas, Africa and Europe and its relationship with us today.” The conference will be held at Russell Sage, in Troy NY and you should go to www.ugrworkshop.com for more information and registration.

However, the URHPCR conference is only one way for you to learn more. Here at the Schenectady Historical society we also have material on the Underground Railroad relating to both the city and County of Schenectady, including newspaper articles, original documents, maps and several books dedicated to the topic.

If you or your child is interested in the Underground Railroad, stop by the Schenectady County Historical Society and learn more.