Rose Hill Cemetery / African Americans on the North Side

Rose Hill Cemetery, also, African Americans on the North Side. The Freedom Trail. By the 1820s and 1830s, families such as the Allens, Jacksons, Reeds, Robinsons, Thompsons, Wales, and Wandells formed a coherent black community., Rose Hill Cemetery , Established in 1841, Rose Hill was the burial place of many people who lived and died in Syracuse in the mid-19th century. Syracuse's first mayor, Harvey Baldwin, was buried here, along with Oliver Teall, an Erie Canal superintendent, and many African Americans, including Thomas Leonard, who helped Harriet Powell escape in 1839; William Briscoe, Civil War veteran and well-known caretaker of the Police Office; and Enoch Reed and Prince Jackson, who helped rescue William "Jerry" Henry in 1851. Part of the cemetery was set aside as a potter's field and divided into areas for Africans, Irish, English, German, and "Americans." Most of the Rose Hill burials are no longer marked with stones, but many hundreds of Syracusans still rest here., African Americans on Syracuse’s North Side , A small number of African Americans were among the earliest post-Native American settlers in central New York. Two African Americans were boiling salt here in 1774. An African American doctor settled among the Onondagas in the 1770s. Most likely, they had escaped from slavery to find freedom among these Haudenosaunee people. Most settled in what is today Syracuse. Originally they settled on the north side; later many lived on the near east side., By the 1820s and 1830s, families such as the Allens, Jacksons, Reeds, Robinsons, Thompsons, Wales, and Wandells formed a coherent black community. Working in transportation and service occupations (with jobs as cooks, barbers, school teachers, whitewashers, laundresses, farriers, cartmen, and laborers), they bought property, created community organizations (including the A.M.E. Zion Church), and promoted the Underground Railroad., Isaac Wales, born in slavery in Maryland, bought his freedom for $80 and settled in Syracuse in 1824. He bought a house on the corner of Ash and Lodi Streets, next to Richard Wandell, cartman. Before 1830, Francis and Jane Allen bought a house on Catawba Street. Their son, Francis H. Allen, a barber, was the last surviving participant of the Jerry Rescue at his death in 1908. Mary Robinson owned two houses near the corner of Catherine Street and Burnet Avenue, next door to Francis Lando, the last person living in Syracuse known to have been born in slavery in New York. The Robinson houses remained in the same family until the 1960s.