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STEWARDFrom Page A1His youth unfolded in Ontario County in the early 19th century when slavery was still legal in New York.Stewards escape from slavery around the age of 22 was assisted by anti-slavery members of the Society of Friends. The Comstock family and others who were among the founders of the town of Farmington offered him refuge.The former slave went on to be president of the Canadian Wilberforce Colony of free slaves in the early 1830s and to develop a successful grocery business in Rochester, where it is believed he helped other escaped slaves find freedom through the Underground Railroad.He wrote and published his autobiography, “Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman,” in 1857.June Hamell, Macedon’s town historian and a library assistant at MacedonPublic Library, read the book — the library owns an 1851 edition in its Bul-lis collection of rare books — last summer and was impressed.“Austin Steward strikes me as a very brave and just man,” said Hamell. “He knew what was right and fought for that. He placed that fight above his family’s well-being. He had high standards for all of mankind — black or white, and knew there were some battles that must be fought. He was driven and truly remarkable.”He was also a self-made man who rose above his oppressive early years, said Anderson.“He taught himself to read and write,” said Anderson, who noted that the year Steward opened his grocery business, 1818, was the year Frederick Douglass was bom.The Underground Railroad, Anderson explained, was often “quiet and undocumented,” but Steward’s store on the east bank of the Genesee River wasquite likely a place where those leading slaves to freedom might have gone for help.After fire destroyed his grocery business in the 1850s, Steward moved to Canandaigua, where he became a schoolteacher in a “colored” school. That is where the dramatic presentation is set.The dramatization includes a portrayal of the Rev. Thomas James, founder of Rochester’s Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded in 1827 and connected to the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass edited his abolitionist papers, “The North Star,” from presses set up in the church basement. Douglass was an associate of both Steward and Rev. James.While England had ended slavery in all its possession as early as 1834, in the U.S., Africans were still enslaved. Anderson’s narrative will focus on a well-attended gathering of the West India EmancipationCelebration in Canandaigua with which Steward was involved.“Storytelling is the way to get inside a personality,” said Anderson — a founder of Blackstorytelling League of Rochester, Inc.He has done a number of living history re-creations over the years. At Farmington Friends Church last year, he delivered Douglass’ Fourth of July speech of 1952 that derided the national holiday as a day of celebration for whites only.As a community scholar in residence in the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education at Nazareth College, Anderson engages students in reviewing the Underground Railroad freedom struggle as it unfolded in this region.Canandaigua’s Steward, he said, is a big part that history.“There is much to the Steward story,” said Anderson. “He is heroic and a pathfinder for those who would follow, including Frederick Douglass.”
Newspaper Details
Daily Messenger
Canandaigua, New York, US
Mon, Feb 04, 2013
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
CA 13 Aug 2024
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