Walk the Abolition Road in Madison County!

The firsthand account of the October 21, 1825, canal boat ride from Utica to Canastota - followed by a nine mile walk up the hill to Peterboro for an abolition meeting - was provided by James Caleb Jackson from Oswego NY. He attended that October 22, 1835 inaugural meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society and then moved to Peterboro in 1838 to work with Gerrit Smith in the abolition movement. His residence in Peterboro is one of the sites on the Madison County Freedom Trail (2006). He lectured on abolition for a short time in Massachusetts and became corresponding secretary for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. Jackson came back to Peterboro in 1842. He became secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, and published antislavery newspapers including The Albany Patriot, The Liberty Press, and the Madison County Abolitionist in Cazenovia.

When Jackson became ill in 1846 he took a water cure and became well. He was so convicted to the excellence of hydropathy that he established the Glen Haven water cure on the south shore of Skaneateles Lake, and then went on to Dansville where he built and operated a large health estate that he called Our Home on the Hillside. It was there that he created a cold breakfast cereal that he called granula. (Jackson was also a follower of Sylvester Graham who invented the graham cracker.) Clara Barton visited the Home on the Hill when exhausted from her work in the Civil War. Ellen J. White came for a hydropathy treatment and later founded the Seventh Day Adventist Church. One of her followers was John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek. When Kellogg commenced making granula, Jackson sued, and Kellogg renamed his cereal granola!

The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum invites the public to join the Third Abolition Walk to follow in Jackson’s footsteps on Saturday, October 5, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. at 102 South Peterboro Street in Canastota NY. The Abolition Walk is a reenactment of a portion of the steps that 104 abolitionists took from the “brink of the canal” to Peterboro on October 22, 1835. The escorted walk travels on The Oxbow at an easy group pace for 2.7 miles to Clockville and returns to Canastota for a party. A bus is at ready for folks unable to manage all or part of the walk along Abolition Road.

This project has been funded in part through the generous support of the New York State Canal Corporation and Erie Canalway National Heritage, CNY Arts, and from the generosity of many sponsors in Central New York. To become a sponsor: https://www.abolitionroad.org/want-to-sponsor, or abolitionroad@gmail.com, or call 315-751-6779.

Registration to walk and ride is at www.AbolitionRoad.org. Registrants receive a long sleeved tee shirt with the event logo. For more information: 315.308.1890 and abolitionroad@gmail.com