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Freedom Trail Maps
The Freedom Trail in Farmington:
Underground Railroad &
Amistad Sites
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The Connecticut
Freedom Trail was authorized in 1995 by an act of the Connecticut
General Assembly. Farmington sites on the trail include Amistad
sites and
Underground Railroad safe houses where fugitive slaves were hidden
by abolitionists.
Freedom
Trail marker and lantern, 2 Mill Lane
In the Amistad
case, a group Mendi Africans led by Cinque (Sengbe Pieh) revolted
aboard a Spanish slave ship while being transported from Havana to
another Cuban port in 1839. The Africans took control of the Amistad
and forced the owners to return to Africa, using the sun as a guide,
but the Spanish navigator sailed northward toward the American coast at
night. An American naval brig captured the Amistad off Long
Island, and the 53 Africans were imprisoned in New Haven. After a two-year
legal case, they were declared free by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Amistad, Mystic, CT, 2007. Photo by
Brooke Martin.
In 1841,
thirty-six Amistad survivors lived in Farmington while they raised funds for their return home to what is now
Sierra Leone. One of the men,
Foone, drowned in the canal basin of the Farmington River.
His gravestone is
in Riverside Cemetery in Farmington.
Cinque,
by Nathaniel Jocelyn, 1839
Other Amistad sites in
the town include:
●
First Church of Christ,
75 Main Street, where the freed Amistad survivors were welcomed to
Farmington and where Cinque gave a farewell address;
● Deming Store,
2 Mill Lane, where the Africans attended classes on the second floor;
● Austin Williams Carriage House, 127 Main Street, which was built
as a dormitory for the
Africans;
● Deming House,
66 Main Street,
owned by Samuel Deming, an abolitionist who supervised
the Africans'
stay in Farmington;
● Art Guild at Church and Hart streets, where
church women sewed clothing for them;
●
Pitkin's Canal Basin, where
the Africans swam after working across the river in the Meadows
and
where Foone drowned.
127 Main Street, Austin Williams house.
Photo by Brooke Martin.
Underground Railroad sites in Farmington include:
●
First Church of
Christ, where the Rev. Noah Porter was a prominent abolitionist and
where
the Rev. J. C. Pennington, a former slave, preached;
●
Norton (or Barney)
House, 11 Mountain
Spring Road, home of abolitionist John
Treadwell Norton;
●
Elijah
Lewis House, 1 Mountain Spring Road, where fugitive slaves were hidden
in a space
at the base of the chimney;
●
Horace Cowles House,
27 Main Street, a station on
the Underground Railroad and where
Samuel Smith Cowles published an
abolitionist paper;
●
Art Guild on Church Street, the site of
abolitionist and anti-abolitionist meetings;
●
home of Noah Porter, an abolitionist, at 116 Main Street;
●
home
of Austin Williams, the leader of Farmington's abolitionists, at
127 Main Street;
●
Timothy
Wadsworth House, 340 Main Street, possibly an Underground Railroad
station.
Elijah
Lewis house, 1 Mountain Spring Road. Photo by Brooke Martin.
The Farmington Historical Society
conducts tours of Freedom Trail sites in the town by appointment. Call
677-2754 or write to the society at P.O. Box 1645, Farmington, CT
06034. |
"Freedom Trail Sites in Farmington, Connecticut"
Brochure published by the Farmington
Historical Society. Graphic design by Tony Fons for Jos. Amaral & Co.
Download in
Adobe pdf format.
"Farmington's Freedom Trail"
Freedom Trail map by Brooke Martin.
"Underground Railroad & Amistad Sites in Farmington"
Original map by Jean Johnson,
adapted by Peg Yung and Carol Leonard
"Underground Railroad and Amistad Sites" Map and Key
adapted from "Speaking for Ourselves, African
American Life in Farmington, Connecticut,"
by Barbara Donahue and the Farmington Historical Society Research Team.
Copyright ©
1998 by Farmington Historical Society, All rights reserved.
Original map by Jean Johnson, Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
The Farmington Historical Society, P.O. Box 1645, Farmington, CT 06034
Site graphics, Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
Copying any portion of this site without
permission is expressly forbidden.
Please
send inquiries about permission to the
Web site manager.
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