Community hopes to be picked for Truth statue
Town and village officials are seeking to have a statue of Sojourner Truth placed on the New Paltz section of the Empire State Trail to honor the Ulster County-born abolitionist.
“The governor announced that [the state] wants to put it on a section of the Empire State Trail, which of course runs through New Paltz, and we feel that we have good standing to get the statue,” said town Councilman Daniel Torres.
“Not only, obviously, because of the location of the trail in our community but also because of Sojourner Truth’s connection to New Paltz as well,” Torres said. “Many people know she lived in what is modern-day Esopus, but in her own narrative, when she discussed her time in this area, she stated she lived in the town of New Paltz from
1810 to 1828.”
The state announced in November 2017 that it planned to place two statues, including one in Ulster County, that will honor suffragists to mark the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote in New York. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a statue of Truth would be erected on the Empire State Trail in Ulster County, though a specific location was not announced; and a statue of Rosalie Gardiner Jones would be built in Cold Spring Harbor State Park in Suffolk County.
The Empire State Trail enters Ulster County from the Walkway Over the Hudson in Lloyd, includes sections of the Hudson Valley and Wallkill Valley rail trails and the Kingston Point Rail Trail, and exits the county at the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge in the town of Ulster.
Ulster County is not without monuments to Truth: A statue of her stands in a small municipal park in the center of the Esopus hamlet of Port Ewen, where she lived; a plaque commemorating her successful legal fight to free her son from slavery stands in front of the Ulster County Courthouse in Uptown Kingston; and the library at SUNY New Paltz is named for her.
Truth was born in Hurley in 1797, with the name Isabella Baumfree, and was one of seven slaves owned by Johannes Hardenburgh. She was sold at about age 12 to John Ignatius Dumont, who operated a farm in what is now the town of Esopus.
She left Esopus in 1826, after Dumont broke a promise to free her, and took her infant daughter and walked 11 miles to Poppletown, in New Paltz, where she was taken in by the Van Wagenen family in a Quaker community.
In 1828, a year after New York abolished slavery, Truth became the first black woman to win a lawsuit against a white man when she took Dumont to court for illegally selling her 5-year-old son to an Alabama slave owner.
“Many people know she lived in what is modern-day Esopus, but in her own narrative, when she discussed her time in this area, she stated she lived in the town of New Paltz from 1810 to 1828.”
— New Paltz Councilman Daniel Torres