ABOLITION IN THE ARCHIVES #7
“A Christian Philanthropist” - The Flushing Times, May 3, 1849.
Someone in the Bowne or Parsons families saved this lone issue of the Flushing Times. Possibly, this was due to a front-page article about Garrit Smith, the abolitionist and Underground Railroad “station-master” to whom Robert Bowne Parsons had been introduced back in 1842. This feature describes how Smith, having given away free land in Upstate New York to 3,000 poor Black people, is now giving free land to 1,000 poor whites. As a matter of historic interest, those previous 3,000 grants likely refer to one of Smith’s more quixotic ventures, where he attempted to endow a 120,000 acre Black separatist community named “Timbuctoo” in the Adirondacks. New York state only permitted land-owning Black men to vote, so this project was intended to enfranchise the grantees. However, the community only lasted a few years, for a variety of reasons including the land’s unsuitability for farming and Smith’s insistence on recruiting only teetotalers.
