We The People

We The People. . , John Jay (1745-1829) was the principal author of the New York State Constitution written at the Courthouse in Kingston. Although he himself owned slaves, he advocated tirelessly for the abolition of slavery in the state, but his efforts failed among the many slave-owning lawmakers, one of his greatest disappointments. Jay was chief negotiator (with John Adams and Benjamin Franklin) of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War. He also wrote five of the 85 essays in the Federalist Papers, published with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Jay was appointed by President George Washington as the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1789, after having served in that role in New York State. He was elected second governor of New York from 1795 to 1801, during which time he signed the “Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.” , Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) played a prominent role in the passage of the State Constitution, but was an arrogant, irritable womanizer disliked by many contemporaries , perhaps the reason he is often overlooked as a Founding Father. Morris was snubbed by New York leaders to be a delegate for the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, so he moved to Pennsylvania. There, he was appointed to the Convention and became its most vocal participant. He was an avid supporter of a strong central government and brought the guiding principles John Jay had developed in Kingston to the Philadelphia Convention. Much of the language was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, including Morris' immortal opening words “We the People” to replace a list of individual states. The U.S. Constitution would not be the same without the ideals born at the Courthouse in Kingston. , The Revolutionary War was in full swing when the British embarked on a plan to divide the colonists in New England from those in New York City and the mid-Atlantic states. British troops attacked Kingston, as the new state capital was considered a hotbed of rebels. Docking at Kingston Point overnight, 1,600 Redcoats armed with rifles and bayonets marched to the Stockade the morning of October 16, 1777 burning everything in sight. In just three hours, they destroyed more than 300 houses, barns, and structures in the defenseless town. No Kingstonians were killed or injured, but the homes and livelihoods of the town's 3,000-4,000 inhabitants were destroyed. While stone itself does not burn, framing, roofs, clothing, furnishings, and food supplies were destroyed. A determined community quickly returned and rebuilt their town. , Pieter Cornelius Louw, a Dutch immigrant, is believed to have built this home circa 1676 using native limestone. He and his wife Elizabeth Blanshan had nine children in the house. One of the earliest surviving colonial buildings in North America, it was partially burned by the British in 1777. The Bogardus family owned the surrounding property from 1777 to 1830, although the house itself passed through several owners. The next known owner was William Dunneman and his family who resided there from 1892-1921, when various additions were made. According to historian Howard Chipp in 1915, the street was called Frog Alley due to the “good, loud-voiced frogs” in nearby Mill Pond. The name was changed to Converse Street in 1892. In 1975, Friends of Historic Kingston saved the house from destruction and reinstated the original street name. , Sojourner Truth was a famous abolitionist and women's rights activist who won a case in the Ulster County Courthouse to free her son from slavery in Alabama. Born a slave named Isabella in Ulster County circa 1797, she was sold multiple times as a Dutch-speaking child. She learned English on the property of her final owner, John Dumont, in Esopus, from whom she escaped to freedom in 1826 with her baby daughter Sophie after he refused their release despite his prior agreement. When she learned Dumont had sold her five-year-old son Peter out-of-state in violation of New York's recent statute, she hired a lawyer and brought her case to the Courthouse, becoming the first Black woman to defeat a white man in court. She lived with her son until 1839 when he took a job on a whaling ship and was never heard from again. , After a religious conversion, Isabella changed her name to Sojourner Truth in 1843 and traveled the country speaking as an abolitionist and suffragette. A tall woman known for her powerful singing voice, she went on to meet President Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony, forging a lasting legacy far beyond the norm for an illiterate Black woman. Sojourner Truth died in 1883 at age 86, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1981. A statue of her stands in Emancipation Hall at the U.S. Capitol, the first to honor an African American woman. She is commemorated around Ulster County with statues in Port Ewen and the Walkway Over the Hudson, a library named for her at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a plaque in front of the Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston. , Originally founded in 1661, the county courthouse operated out of the multipurpose community center in the early Stockade. A separate two-story wooden structure was built at the current location on Wall Street shortly after Ulster County was incorporated in 1683, and rebuilt in stone from 1732-37. It was this Courthouse that played a central role in the creation of New York State. When the British captured New York City in 1776, a core group of young citizens charged with drafting the State Constitution, including 31-year-old John Jay, 30-year-old Robert Livingston, and 25-year-old Gouverneur Morris, fled to White Plains and then Fishkill before taking up residence at the Courthouse in Kingston in February 1777. The jail in the basement at this time held British soldiers and loyalists , criminals had been removed to make room , and the stench wafting upstairs was so unbearable the Convention passed a resolution to allow smoking in the building so they could continue their work. (Local lore that they moved to the Bogardus Tavern is false; the Assembly later met there.) The group approved a constitution in April of that year and it was read aloud from the front steps. In September, the New York State Supreme Court opened its first session in the Courthouse with Chief Justice John Jay presiding. The following month, the new government was forced to flee when British General Vaughan and his 1,600 soldiers burned Kingston to the ground. The Courthouse was soon repaired and in use until 1816, when it was demolished and rebuilt in 1818 as the structure we know today. Various additions were made in the mid-to-late 19th century, including a 4th floor and an annex, and a separate jail was built in 1899. The 50x80-foot, four-story, fireproof building with large windows was lauded by the New York State Prison Commission as the most perfectly constructed jail in the state. Today the courthouse continues to serve Ulster County and is the oldest property in the U.S. to continuously house a public building. The grounds fronting the Courthouse feature monuments to George Clinton , New York's first governor and U.S. Vice President , and Sojourner Truth. The cupola features a weathervane atop a golden ball. The most memorable case heard in the Courthouse since Sojourner Truth's involved Teamster and Mafia member Anthony Provenzano, depicted in the 2019 movie The Irishman. Tony Pro, as he was known, was tried in Kingston in 1978 for a 1961 murder in Kerhonkson and sentenced to life in prison. During the trial, armed federal marshals stood guard on the roof of Schneider's Jewelry Store.