Paper Presented Before the Oswego Historical Society, September 30, 1940, by Miss Elizabeth Simpson, Vice-President of the Society
When Miss Schuelke gave her scholarly paper on the Underground Railroad before this Society last year she quoted from Siebert the names of two local anti-slavery workers—James C. Jackson and Asa S. Wing. Of the former I thought that I had never heard and of the latter name there seemed to be only the vaguest memories in my mind. Investigation showed that I had frequently read James C. Jackson’s name in the history of the old Pratville Presbyterian church, and that I had known the grandchildren of Asa S. Wing ever since school-days.
Thanks to the latter, Mrs. Jessie Holmes Smith of Dugway and Mrs. Mary Holmes Richards of Phoenix, to Mr. Jackson’s cousin, John Jackson Clarke of Mexico City, D. F., and his greatgrandson James A. Jackson of Pittsford, N. Y., and to Mrs. Kramer of the Dansville N. Y. Public Library, we may sketch a picture of these two men ol our county who did much to create and crystallize the antislavery sentiment in this north country.
James Caleb Jackson
James Caleb Jackson was born in Manlius, New York, March 28, 1811, a grandson of Col. Giles Jackson, who was on the staff of General Horatio Gates at the battle of Saratoga and who engrossed the terms of capitulation signed by Burgoyne and a son of Dr. James Jackson, post surgeon of the United States forces stationed at Sackets Harbor in the War of 1812. James Caleb came of equally good stock on the side of his mother, Mary Ann Elderkin. She was born in December 1771, the daughter of Vine Elderkin, a captain in the Revolutionary War, and granddaughter of Col. Jedediah Elderkin, a distinguished Connecticut lawyer. Her mother was Lydia White, daughter of Rev. Stephen White who was for fifty-seven years pastor of the Congregational Church of Windham, Connecticut. At the age of seven, Mary Ann went to live with this maternal grandfather, in whose home she met Washington, LaFayette, Rochambeau, and General and Mrs. Benedict Arnold before his treason. At eleven she was given a year in a boarding school at Providence, R. I. When she was eighteen she traveled alone by canal packet to New York State to live with her father who had been obliged to seek employment at a distance from his family, while the mother worked at home in a store as clerk and book-keeper. When the parents and younger children were reunited, Mary Ann returned to Windham and apprenticed herself to a tailor to train herself for self-support.
At the age of twenty-three, a week after her marriage to Henry Clarke of Lebanon, Connecticut, this young bride traveled to Whitestown, New York, where the bridegroom owned land. After four months, they sold this property and pushed on into the West as far as Pompey. Riding through underbrush and brambles, Mary Ann had her dress almost torn off. The young Clarkes bought one hundred and thirty acres two miles from Pompey Hill and lived in a small log house without doors or windows, and only one chair. There the first baby was born in 1795. Three more were born during t.hp eight years that the family stayed in Pompey and in old age Mary Ann called these her pleasantest years.
In 1803 Mr. and Mrs. Clarke moved ten miles farther into the wilderness and kept a tavern, and later a flouring mill, at Manlius. This property, in turn, had been sold and wild land in Oswego County purchased just before the death of Henry Clarke from typhus fever in 1810. Mary Ann Elderkin Clarke was left a widow with six children at the age of thirty-eight.
In the meantime, her sister, Harriet Elderkin, had married Dr. James Jackson of Manlius in 1807, and in 1809 had died, leaving a new born baby daughter. And so after Mr. Clarke’s death, Mrs. Clarke undertook the care of her brother-in-law’s baby and home. Later the two were married and had three more children, of whom James Caleb was one.
These details from an autobiography written in her eightyfifth year by Mary Ann Elderkin Clarke Jackson serve to show with what heritage this first of our two abolitionists was born.
From Mr. James C. Jackson’s autobiography we learn that his formal education was interrupted at the age of twelve and, except for one winter spent with a cousin in Seneca Falls, was not resumed until he was sixteen, when a family council resulted in his entering the school of the Rev. Dr. Yates at Chittenango, called Polytechny, with the idea of preparing for college. He described himself as an inexperienced farm lad, dressed in countrified “sheep’s grey,” obliged to earn part of his fees by splitting wood and kindling fires for the masters, entering a school of one hundred and twenty lads, many of whom came from aristocratic slave-holding families of the South. Like many another new boy, he had to fight his way, taking on a South Carolina boy, a year his senior, step-son of the Rev. Dr. Beman of Troy, but being a good wrestler, he emerged victorious with the nickname “Young Hickory.”
Two years later his father’s death forced him to leave this school and to abandon all thought of college. To salvage the farm, still unpaid for, Mrs. Jackson formed a partnership with this son of hers, pooling their shares and renting those of the other heirs. Young James had no desire to become a farmer; but making a virtue of necessity, he accepted the roll and announced his intention of marrying. He had known the girl of his choice— Lucretia Edgerton Brewster of Prattville in the town of Mexico —ever since she attended the marriage of her father, the Hon. Elias Brewster, to Harriet Clarke, James Caleb’s half-sister. In spite of her opposition to such a youthful marriage, Mrs. Jackson allowed the boy to go to Prattville to visit his sister, Mrs. Brewster. James Caleb made good use of “his time and on September 10th, 1830, Lucretia Brewster became Mrs. James Caleb Jackson.
The youthful couple (he was 19) seem to have lived in Manlius, working the Jackson farm until a good opportunity came to sell it. After the sale, James Caleb, borrowing a large part of his mother’s “thirds,” bought, in 1833, a farm in Lucretia’s native town of Mexico. County records show that he bought 145% acres from Elezar and Mary Peake for $2400, the second house on the right as one goes from Lambs Corners, to Grafton Square. Here the Jacksons settled down with the idea of making it their permanent home and farming their life work. A son was born in 1836 and given the name of Giles for his great-grandfather and Elderkin for his grandmother Jackson. He must have been the baby whose illness, his father explained in a letter preserved by the Historical Society to Edwin W. Clarke of Oswego would prevent his attendance at an anti-slavery meeting in Oswego in 1838. Mr. Jackson says that his wife was hopeful, cheerful, and happy in this home which he characterizes as simple and humble—the only ornaments on the parlor walls being a mirror and a twenty-five cent picture of “The Soldier’s Departure,” in a plain cherry frame. But James Caleb had within him stirrings of soul looking toward a broader life.
Anti-Slavery Meeting At Colosse
He was early converted to the ideal of the immediate emancipation of the slaves by the arguments of Theodore Clarke, cousin of Grace Greenwood, and had in his turn, converted his friend, Algernon Savage, an unusually gifted fellow-townsman at Mexico who was teaching in a nearby district school. So when a meeting was called in the Colosse Baptist church to listen to an antislavery lecture by a youth from New York, the two friends were, naturally, among those present. The audience was predominantly pro-slavery, or, at the best, favored colonization of the blacks in Africa. On the pro-slavery side of the question were the village lawyer, the Judge of the county court, the Town Clerk, the County Treasurer, a Member of Assembly, and the Baptist, Methodist and Unitarian ministers. After the lecture “Quaker” Wells, an older man, was the only one who challenged the position of these worthies and when it was suggested that a public debate be held on a future date with three speakers on a side Mr. Wells asked young Jackson and Savage, as the only two known abolitionists in the town, to help him defend the anti-slavery side.
Accordingly the debate was held in a large school-house with room for three or four hundred people, on two propositions “that American slavery is a sin and that it ought to be immediately abolished.” For six nights the debate continued, with the lawyer, the County Treasurer, and the Assemblyman taking the negative. On Saturday evening after a three and a half hour session a vote was taken on each proposition separately. The affirmative won unanimously on the first, that slavery was a sin; and on the second, that it should be immediately abolished, there was a tie. But the chairman, the proslavery Baptist minister, had seen a great light and, to the amazement of all, cast the deciding vote for the anti-slavery argument.
The fame of this debate brought repeated invitations to young Savage and Jackson to go out far and wide to school houses ro present their views. As one was a farmer and the other a teacher, Sunday was the only day on which they could answer these calls. It was contrary to the strict Presbyterian upbringing of both Mr. and Mrs. Jackson to hold cr attend other than religious meetings on the Sabbath and, when James had decided that he was divinely called to conduct the anti-slavery meetings on that holy day, it was with Lucretia’s disapproval that he did so, and in a very quiet but firm manner she made known her attitude. The first Sabbath meeting was held in a large school house five miles from home. The speakers found so many assembled that wagons had to be drawn up to the open windows to hold the overflow. Mr. Jackson tells us that Algernon Savage talked to the people like an inspired prophet for an hour and then Jackson followed, holding the audience for another hour. They walked the five miles home after the meeting and found a good warm supper awaiting them, but otherwise Lucretia’s greeting seems not to have been equally warm.
Slavery Debates Wax Popular
After morning service at the Prattville Presbyterian church the next Sunday the two young speakers slipped away at noon to another school house where they argued either that those who claimed Biblical sanction for slavery misinterpreted the Scriptures or that the Bible was not the word of God. This heresy was too much for their pastor and the next Sunday he preached a mighty defense of slavery and denunciation of their desecration of the Sabbath. When he was challenged to meet the boys in debate he laughed them to scorn. But they succeeded in engaging the school-house only thirty rods away from his church where they might make their answer to his arguments. They invited “Quaker” Wells again to add his eloquence to theirs and they received Ransom Goss Williams of Colosse as a volunteer supporter of their cause. Three or four times as manj as the school-house would hold came and some of the leaders of the church opened the meeting-house for their use. Perhaps five hundred people crowded into the body of the house and the gallery. From 2 o’clock in the afternoon until 7 o’clock in the evening, the four abolitionists debated against the whole audience. They “pushed these men from Genesis to Revelation and crowded them back again,” insisting upon the New Testament teaching that there was “neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free,” rather than the Mossic law of the Old. After five hours they had made many friends but some bitter enemies as well; and none more bitter than Mrs. Jackson’s father, Elias Brewster, and her uncle, Dr. Sardius Brewster. For a year the father and son-in-law never met, leaving the wife and daughter between the upper and nether mill stones.
The history of Dansville, N. Y., tells of Mrs. Jackson from 1830 to 1847 having to assume the responsibility of sheltering fugitive slaves in her Colosse home during her husband’s numerous absences. One wonders why no mention of this connection with the Underground R. R. is made by her husband in his autobiographical notes; but perhaps the habit of secrecy in this connection was too strong to be broken even in later years. Siebert, however, indicates that Mr. Jackson was one of the forwarding agents for Gerrit Smith’s refugees.
Talks On Undeterred By Loss Of Supporters
But in spite of all family or public opposition James C. Jackson in company with his friend, Algernon Savage, continued to spread their doctrines into all parts of Oswego County, when suddenly Mr. Savage sickened and died at the age of twenty four. Soon the elderly “Quaker” Wells also died and Ransom Goss Williams obtained a clerkship in New York City. Thus Mr. Jackson was left alone, confronted by the temptation to relax his efforts and win the approval of Judge Brewster, thus pleasing his wife, the Judge’s daughter. But he resisted the temptation and at the invitation of a son of the Rev. Oliver Leavitt he visited Palermo and there made his first anti-slavery argument without support of another speaker.
That autumn when he was drawing his winter supply of wood, he met with a very serious accident that paralyzed his legs and rendered him helpless for months while he was attended by his wife and his bitter opponent, Dr. Brewster. No sooner had he recovered than he accepted an invitation from Hiram Gilbert, who had heard his Palermo address, and the latter’s brother, Andrus Gilbert, to speak at Gilbertsville. He found his host, Hiram Gilbert, a noble and a delightful man and Mrs. Gilbert as fine a woman and cordial hostess. Both husband and wife were very devout and musical as were their half dozen children, almost down to the baby in arms. Meetings were held for four or five nights, resulting in the formation of the Gilbertsville Anti-Slavery Society, one of the first local societies in this state.
As the “Farmer Boy Speaker” Mr. Jackson, became more and more widely known. At one of his meetings held in Scriba, a delegation from East Oswego, headed by the extremely handsome and cultured Congregational minister, were so favorably impressed with his work that they insisted upon his coming to their city to speak in the Court House which was then serving the Congregationalists as a meetinghouse, in spite of his objections that he was not fit to address a city audience. He was entertained at the home of Dr. Deodotus Clarke at the invitation of the Doctor’s son, Sidney, whose wife was Olive Jackson, a favorite cousin of James Caleb. When he called upon the minister he had an embarrassing experience with the door-bell, a hitherto unknown quantity. He was seriously embarrassed, too, at the meeting by not being able to find the notes for his prepared speech. This resulted in the discovery of his ability to make a long extemporaneous speech and with this knowledge came added power as an advocate.
Jackson Heads Peterboro Pilgrimage
In October 1835, Mr. Jackson answered the call for an Anti-slavery Convention in Utica and the formation of a state society, and en-route on the packet boat from Fulton, he was introduced to Gerrit Smith who was destined greatly to influence Mr. Jackson’s future career. When the good citizens of Utica drove the delegates out of their city and Gerrit Smith invited them to reconvene at his home in Peterboro, James C. Jackson was one of the two enterprising youths who hired a canal boat to carry one hundred and four men to Canastota, where, after a voyage of twelve hours, they were landed on the bank of the canal it 3 A. M. October 22. Thence they marched a hundred strong singing, praying, laughing, shouting to Peterboro for ten miles tip a succession of mountains, as Mr. Jackson called them, for lie said, Peterboro rose at least a thousand feet above Canastota. Given their breakfasts by the people of the village, the delegates reconvened at 11 o’clock in the Presbyterian Church and heard Gerrit Smith renounce his former belief in colonization in Africa as a solution for the Negro problem and proclaim his adherence to the doctrines of the Abolitionists. At the close of the meeting Mr. Jackson and his companion, young Sweesey, son of the New Haven minister, were taken to Canastota by Gerrit Smith’s team and from there walked forty-two miles back to the Jackson home in Colosse.
Jackson Removes to Peterboro
A wider field of work began to open up before Mr. Jackson. In spirit he was no longer a farmer but became Oswego County Agent for the State Anti-slavery Society. In 1837 he attended a state convention of the society at Penn Yan and spoke of slavery as a legal question that must be settled in accordance with the law. His presentation of this view appealed so strongly to Gerrit Smith that he urged the speaker to give up farming and devote himself entirely to the emancipation cause. Mr. Jackson states that Mr. Smith bought his Mexico farm and gave him a home in Peterboro whither he moved his family in the spring of 1838. Whatever financial arrangements were made, title to the farm must have remained with the Jacksons, for the record of deeds shows that James C. Jackson and wife Lucretia sold the farm which they purchased in 1833, to Minor Calkins in 1839 for a consideration of $3,302.
Mr. Jackson was concerning himself with Oswego County politics in 1838. In Mexico’s local history collection we have a draft of a long letter that he wrote to Thurlow Weed urging the necessity of electing abolition Whigs to Congress in the forthcoming election and in another letter he begged our local Whig leader, Starr Clark, to offer himself as such a candidate.
Friendship With Greeley and Garrison
In September 1838, the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society engaged the services of Mr. Jackson as their agent and speaker at a salary of $800 and traveling expenses. On his trip to Boston he sought out in New York a boarding house conducted by a disciple of Sylvester Graham, advocate of diet reform, and in Boston he was directed to another Graham house by Horace Greeley whom he chanced to meet and who then became his life-long friend. In Boston, too, he met William Lloyd Garrison, editor of “The Liberator.”
Mr. Jackson began his lecturing in Massachusetts dressed in a swallow tailed coat of blue broadcloth with gilt buttons, grayish pantaloons, and a vest of picturesque velvet, rustic in effect, he knew, but quite in character for the part of “The Farm Boy Speaker,” he felt. Friends finding the outfit good but unfashionable gave him a well-tailored suit of green or brown broadcloth and taught him that there was a philosophy of dress and, no doubt, bolstered his morale and gave him new power over his audiences. Within a year he was called to even a wider field by the New England Society and as their agent he spoke in all the Eastern states, except Maine and in the Central states. In the winter of 1839-40 the abolitionists split on the question whether or not to organize a political party of their own. The politically minded group seceded from the American Society and took with them “The Emancipator.” Accordingly the American Society set up a new paper, called “The National Antislavery Standard” and made Mr. Jackson acting editor; but his duties as the newly elected Secretary of the American Society forced him to resign the editorship in which he was succeeded by Lydia Maria Child of Boston. The next winter Gerrit Smith issued a call for a meeting at Warsaw, N. Y., to form an antislavery political party and Mr. Jackson was sent to oppose such action. In subsequent meeting at West Bloomfield, two colored men arrived pursued by their owner and the sheriff of Ontario County. The delegates turned them over to the Underground Railroad and they were smuggled across the border to Niagara Falls. While Mr. Jackson was influencing the convention to vote against the organization of a political party he became converted to the idea himself. Although he did make one more speech at Leroy against his own new views, he repented and refused again to take that stand for the American Society. He remained in their employ as agent and Secretary until the winter of 1842.
Johnson Becomes Partner in Ownership of Albany “Patriot”
At that time at the suggestion of Gerrit Smith, he became associated as editor with a paper of the Liberty Party, published at Cazenovia, “The Madison County Abolitionist,” and thus earned the personal enmity of William Lloyd Garrison. For a year this editorial work continued in conjunction with lecture tours in Madison County with only week ends in Peterboro where there was now another son, James H , now two years old. Ownership of the paper changed and the name became “The Liberty Press,” and Mr. Jackson continued as editor until 1843. In that year he formed a partnership with the Rev. Abel Brown in the ownership of The Albany Patriot,” which Mr. Jackson edited until 1846.
Turned To Medicine Through Illness
That winter while at Honeoye, N. Y., on a lecture tour Mr. Jackson was stricken with an illness that kept him there all winter. cared for by Mrs. Jackson, who left the house and family in Peterboro under competent care. In the spring of 1847, recovery being considered impossible, Mr. Jackson sold his Albany paper and was taken home to Peterbop) to die, as all supposed. But hearing of a Dr. Silas O. Gleason who was using the Priessnitz water cure at Cuba, N. Y., he went there in a forlorn hope for help. Convinced of the efficacy of the treatment by the improvement in his own condition and that of other patients, he formed a partnership with Dr. Gleason, and they opened a Water Cure called “Glen Haven” at the head of Skaneateles Lake. Here Mr. Jackson continued to improve, studied medicine, and eventually received the M. D. degree from Syracuse University. At the end of three years he purchased Dr. Gleason’s interests in Glen Haven Water Cure and continued as proprietor and physician for eight years. At some time during these years the establishment was burned with the loss of all of the doctor’s records and historically valuable anti-slavery correspondence.
Perhaps as the result of this fire Dr. Jackson moved to Dansville, N. Y., in 1858 where on October 1, he opened another “Water Cure” called “Our Home on the Hillside,” later to be called the Jackson Sanatorium. Besides treating his patients, Dr. Jackson lectured and wrote extensively on the laws of health and psycho-hygiene, advocating dress, diet, and medical reforms. He prepared what was, perhaps the first health cereal food “Granula” and the cereal beverage “Soma.” The Mexico Independent of July 6th 1866 records the burning of the Water Cure at Dansville; but the buildings were restored and for many years used for their original purpose and after the retirement of the Jackson family, for several other purposes.
In both the Glen Haven and the Dansville establishments. Mrs. Jackson, known as “MotherJackson” by the patients, continued active in household management until 1868 when she gave over these duties to her daughter-in-law, Mrs. James H. Jackson. She was said to have been proud of her Puritan descent from Elder William Brewster of Plymouth Colony and to have had a wonderfully developed character, to be noted for quietness, steadfastness, sunny disposition, and all Christian graces. Possibly these were just the needed complements to her husband’s nature, for he is described by his cousin, John Jackson Clarke, former Oswegonian, as “a human dynamo in the pursuit of his many and varied interests.” The Doctor died in Dansville July 11th 1895; but some years before had passed on the management of the Sanatorium to his son, Dr. James H. Jackson and he, in tu. \ was succeeded by his son Dr. James Arthur Jackson, the fourth physician in direct descent in the Jackson family. T believe that Mr. James A. Jackson of Pittsford, N. Y., is today the sole surviving descendant.
Asa S. Wing
Asa Smith Wing, according to his family, friend and fellowworker of Dr. James C. Jackson, was the son of William Wing and Esther Follette, and was born “down East ” or “back East”, as our early settlers used to say, which meant, in this case, the vicinity of West Winfleld or Bridgewater, N. Y. As a child he was brought to Oswego County when the family settled in the town of New Haven.
The boy Asa attended the Rensselaer-Oswego Academy (now Mexico Academy and Central School) and one episode of his school-days was told at the semi-centennial of the Academy in 1876 by his school-mate, the Rev. Dr. Henry Kendall. These two and ten other boys subject to militia duty reported on training-day at Colosse in 1836, armed with alpen-stocks made from sticks picked up at the site of the new Academy building, then under construction. This infraction of military regulations displeased the Colonel and he ordered Private Kendall and OrderlySergeant Wing and nine of the ten other school-boys under arrest. Borrowing a fife and drum and taking along the Corporal who had been put in charge of the prisoners, the boys staged a parade of their own that stole the Colonel’s show and left him speechless with rage. After dinner he so far recovered as to be able to tell the mutineers with blistering vocabulary what he might have done to them.
Even as a student Asa Wing spoke out for temperance and against slavery. Unpopular as these reforms were in many quarters, his personality won the respect and devotion of all. One old lady who knew him told his grand-daughter, “Everyone just about worshipped him.”
After his marriage in 1848 to Caroline Mitchell, daughter of Levi Mitchell of Mexico, their home was at Colosse on the right hand side of the road between the corners and “the million dollar bridge” (now the home of Mrs. Spoor). Three daughters were born to the Wings, two living to womanhood, Myrtis who became Mrs. Jesse Holmes of Dugway and Frances who married F. M. Wills, and their son, James, I believe, lived in Pulaski or in the town of Richland. A dark closet in the Colosse home seemed to Myrtis to have been especially designed as a hiding place for runaway slaves.
Mr. Wing’s diary of 1850-51, put at our disposal by his grand-daughter, Mrs. Jessie Holmes Smith, shows that.he was living the life of a farmer, doing “chores”, buying and setting out cherry, pear, and plum trees, grape vines, gooseberry bushes, grafting apple trees, going to the County Fair at New Haven and buying three new kinds of seed potatoes, paying off a small mortgage on the farm to P. N. Allen. He attended and spoke at the funeral of his neighbor the wife of “Quaker” Wells. He had his younger daughter vaccinated, for small-pox was epidemic in town. He contracted the disease himself and was then vaccinated, with seemingly mitigating effect, for within ten days from his first recorded symptoms he was repairing the cellar-way and again doing his own “chores.”
Early Contact With Dr. Jackson
The very first entry in the diary on February 19th, 1850 indicates some association with Dr. Jackson for he notes that he took the stage for Syracuse and Glen Haven. Mr. Wing’s general health was poor and he was suffering, and had been for four years, with a disease of the throat that interfered with articulation and finally allowed him to speak only in whispers. In Syracuse, he consulted a “clairvoyant” and was assured that his throat was not in itself diseased but was indirectly affected by organs weakened by overexertion, that it was doubtful if any treatment would restore his voice. In Syracuse, too, he listened with interest to stories of “the Rochester knockings” or rappings of spirits, as recounted by some of his antislavery friends. But when this group sought. answers to their questions, the spirits gave no reply.
The real purpose of the Syracuse visit, however, was to attend on February 20 the Liberty Party Convention, where Gerrit Smith received Henry Clay’s compromise proposition. On the 21st Mr. Wing attended the Antisectarian Convention, a movement in which Gerrit Smith was also interested, believing that all Christians should belong to one church-Christ’s—and that alone. This belief brought Mr. Wing into conflict with his church, the Baptist, in which he lost his membership because he chose to take communion with other denominations.
Oswego Convention Names Smith For Presidency
In October 1850, he attended the National Liberty Party Convention in Oswego at which Gerrit Smith was nominated for President and S. K. Ward for Vice-President of the United States in 1852. On the 17th the whole family attended a meeting of indignation against the Fugitive Slave Bill in the Town Hall in Mexico which was well filled, with great excitement prevailing. On the 23rd he was off for Canastota and an Anti-slavery Convention. In January 1851, he was in attendance on the State Convention against the Fugitive Slave Law and served on several committees. In the meantime he had received through J. B. Edwards from Gerrit Smith a deed for 42 acres of land in Franklin County with $10 in money in recognition o’ his intense interest in the work of the abolitionists.
Mr. Wing was also going in for local politics. At the spring caucus of 1850 he was nominated by the Democrats for Justice of the Peace. In the ensuing campaign, some of his French neighbors, having lingered late at the Colosse tavern, went home, lashing and racing their horses, singing at the top of their lungs “Wing, Wing’s the man for us,” in spite of his well known stand on the temperance question. At town meeting on March 5, he was elected Justice of the Peace, along with the rest of the Democratic ticket. That evening the newly elected officials gave an oyster supper at R. Kelly’s hotel for some sixty guests at a cost of $25. Apparently they paid for it themselves for Mr. Wing had to pay $2.00, after paying fifty cents toward a team to bring voters to the polls. Stopping in at the Democratic Convention at Union Square in September he found that “Hunkers and liberty men got nothing. They have the exalted privilege of voting for the Barnburners, I think I shall be excused.” After consultation with other adherents of the Freesoilers, and finding general distrust of their policies, he formally withdrew from that group in a letter of September 29. Throughout October he had charge of the Liberty Party ballots of his district, distributing them to Redfield, Constantia, Sandy Creek, and Richland. On November 5th, he attended election at Colosse and found everything quiet, “in spite of a free rum shop on the corner”; but he had, as he wrote, “some confab with sham Democrats because I would not sustain their ticket.” Seventeen Liberty votes were cast in that precinct.
Active in Underground Railway
Mr. Wing’s opposition to slavery took a practical turn when he kept in his home for several days a fleeing slave family, consisting of a father, mother, and five little daughters. While waiting for their team to rest the father made himself useful by chopping wood for the Wings. Finally the refugee Thompsons left for Mexico village, intending to cross at some point into Canada over the ice. But when they were never heard from, it was feared by their benefactors that they had all been drowned. This may have been only one such experience at the Wing home out of many, for it was to Jackson and Wing that Gerrit Smith was accustomed to forward many of his fugitives to be sent through Oswego, Mexico Point, or Port Ontario to Canada. Asa Wing was also the agent to whom a thousand anti-slavery tracts were sent to be distributed in communities too poor to pay for a speaker.
But, undoubtedly, Asa S. Wing’s greatest contribution to the cause of the slave consisted of his constant and unremitting efforts as an orator. Even when he could speak only in a whisper, such was his eloquence and power that audiences would eagerly strain their ears to hear his pleas for emancipation of the negroes. Much of this work was done in Oswego and Fulton, but he was also called to Connecticut where he spent considerable time.’ The Local History Museum of Mexico has his expense account for the journey to New England which was to be paid by the Friends Of Liberty.
Due in part to over-exertion and strain in this work, Mr. Wing’s health continued to fail and Dr. Jackson took him to his Sanatorium in an effort to save his life. Many of the Doctor’s ideas on dress and diet reform were introduced into the Wing household and carried by the daughter, Mrs. Holmes, into her own home. In the days of long skirts, she wore short work dresses. Her graham gems made by a Jackson recipe, calling only for well beaten graham flour and cold water dropped into iron gem-pans and baked in a hot oven, were of delicious flavor, though her husband, accustomed to his mother’s rich food, did not appreciate their wholesome plainess.
Asa S. Wing died of consumption March 8th 1854, at the early age of thirty-eight. An obituary said: “The first time we saw him was ten years ago. We heard of him before, that he was a young man of great heart, abilities, and eloquence; but then we saw and heard him holding thousands of men and women by the force of his logic in the great grove of Syracuse, pressing the claims of the noble Birney against Van Buren and Clay, breasting the storm of ’44 pregnant with Texas Annexation and continental despotism. From that time, he was a public man and identified with the first class of anti-slavery orators in the State, including Gerrit Smith and J. C. Jackson, certainly inferior to none in innocence, purity, benevolence and all that is lovely in human character.”
Thousands Attended Wing Monument Dedication
On September 11th 1855, between two and three thousand people gathered in Mexico for the dedication of a monument in honor of Asa S. Wing. Charles G. Case of Fulton presided at the ceremonies and Frederick Douglas was orator of the day. A poem eleven pages long was read by A. C. Hills; a hymn written for the occasion by John Pierpont of Boston was sung to the air of “God Save the King.” George W. Clark and his two daughters of Rochester furnished the music and prayer was offered by Rev. Luther Lee, a prominent Wesleyan Methodist minister of Syracuse, first pastor of an anti-slavery group. Copies of these tributes are in the possession of Mr. Wing’s grand-daughters. Just recently a program of the day’s ceremonies was discovered and presented to our local history collection by Mrs. Ralph Shumway—perhaps the only existing copy. The only additional information it gives is that the placing of the cap-stone was part of the ceremony and that the benediction was pronounced by the Rev. Thomas A. Weed, pastor of the Mexico Presbyterian Church (1847-1870).
The monument was the first one erected in the village cemetery. It bears the inscription:
ASA S. WING
Died March 8th 1854 aged 38 years.
He Trusted God and Loved His Neighbor.
Erected by the Friends of Freedom
Sept. 11th 1855
In his oration, Frederick Douglass said:—”I think I never met a man in whom the fountains of benevolence and sympathy with the injured were deeper and purer. Certainly I never met with a zeal, more noble, untiring and invincible than his. To him was allotted to possess a spirit greatly beyond the strength of his physical constitution. The earnestness of his sympathy, the warmth of his temperament, his natural abhorrence of oppression and the coldness and indifference manifested on all sides to the overshadowing and stupendous crime of slavery deeply disturbed him and swept him on to labors far too arduous for his slender frame.—He poured out his life for the perishing slave, pleading for him with an eloquence and earnestness which could have scarcely been more direct, pathetic, and touching, had his own wife and children been on the auction block.” “He did not shrink from the perils and hardships of the cause in the day of small things. He dared to be called an abolitionist when the demon of slavery made inquisition for blood and mob violence howled from one end of the state to the other.” “He died a martyr, a glorious martyr, to the cause of emancipation.”
