The Laborer, published at Governeur, New York
The tagline reads "Our Labor is not to Embalm Dead Yesterdays, but so to Improve the Living Energies of To-day as to be the Blessings of all To-morrows."
Myron Cushman of Gouverneur was a conductor on the Underground Railroad
The Abolitionist Database is the culmination of a two-year collaborative project of the St Lawrence County Historians' group, a SUNY Potsdam graduate intern and other interested local citizens. The primary resource for the database was the original abolitionist petitions from St Lawrence County on file in the Congressional Archives in Washington, DC. Other sources included contemporary newspaper accounts of local abolitionist societies and abolitionist political party meetings and activities, St Lawrence county town and abolitionist church histories and religious incorporation records on file in the St Lawrence County Clerk’s office.
West Potsdam church, site of Several St Lawrence County Abolitionist Society meetings
Each Town Historian was asked to transcribe the petitions for their town. Then each name was double checked and entered into a database file. All names were cross-referenced to the 1840 and 1850 United States census records to determine official residence. Blanks in this column occur because in some cases with extremely common names it was not possible to determine which individual was the signatory. In other cases the individual did not appear in the census record.
Database provided by St Lawrence County Historian's Group © 2010. For more information contact DeKalb Historian Bryan Thompson