Fayette Park

Fayette Park. The Freedom Trail. ”… numbers of persons, who have never felt any interest in the cause of the slave, before, now seem to have all their sympathies awakened, in his behalf.” , , from Diary of Ellen Birdseye Wheaton (Boston, 1923), Named after General Marquis de LaFayette, French supporter of the American Revolution, Fayette Park once was surrounded by many outstanding houses. Abolitionists Stephen and Rosa Smith lived on the north side of the Park. In 1843, they invited Frederick Douglass to speak in front of their home. Douglass, orator and editor of the North Star, was one of the country's most influential abolitionists. Born in slavery in Maryland about 1817, he escaped in 1838 and moved to Rochester, New York, from New England in 1847. Throughout his career, he was a frequent visitor to Syracuse., Charles Wheaton, once called "the President of the Underground Railroad," and Ellen Birdseye Wheaton lived on Fayette Park at 406 East Genesee Street. Wheaton supplied tools from his hardware store to assist in the rescue of William "Jerry" Henry from a Syracuse jail in 1851. After Henry's escape to Canada, Henry presented Wheaton with "a splendid hickory cane with a deer's horn for a handle" as a sign of gratitude. Ellen Birdseye Wheaton noted in her diary that "numbers of persons, who never felt any interest in the cause of the slave, before, now seem to have all their sympathies awakened, in his behalf.", Hamilton White lived in the 1842 Greek Revival-style mansion at the east end of the park. White was a major supporter of the A.M.E. Zion Sunday School and the Syracuse Orphan Asylum. In 1854, White, along with several hundred local citizens, signed a call to oppose the extension of slavery into the territories through the Kansas-Nebraska Act, one of many such actions across the country that resulted in the formation of the Republican Party. Hamilton's brother Horace White was a key Underground Railroad supporter. Part owner of the Syracuse and Utica Railroad (later the New York Central), Horace White regularly gave free passes to freedom seekers.