The Underground Railroad at Mill Creek
Many thanks to Glenn Pearsall for permitting us to reprint this chapter from Echoes in These Mountains, which he first published in 2008 and brought out in an expanded second edition in December. We’ve added the Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church to our StoryMap, Warren County’s Underground Railroad.
Glenn initially figured he would just fix a few typos and add more photos, but it became a much bigger three-year research project for new stories. He explored the roots of famed photojournalist Matthew Brady, who unquestionably grew up in Johnsburg and may or may not have been born there, and peered more deeply into the histories of such places as an Indian settlement near Thirteenth Lake marked on an 1855 map. He wrote on the history of the 1964 Wilderness Act drafted locally by Howard Zahniser, and the story of North Creek resident Dr. Thomas Durant, who drove the golden spike in Utah uniting the Transcontinental Railroad. And Glenn wrote about the slopes of Gore Mountain, where skiing, inspired by the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics, featured one the nation’s first “ride up-ski down" mountains.
"The expanded second edition now also includes over 440 historic photographs and my research on 175 soldiers from the Civil War from Johnsburg, which is a surprisingly large number for a small town. And I added an index."
You’ll find our conversation with Glenn here, along with a presentation he made with Sterling Goodspeed at a book signing in December.
The Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church was born in the “Great Schism” that split Methodists over slavery and temperance, which was closely associated with the abolitionism.
Although Rev. Enos Putnam is the individual most associated with the Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church and the anti-slavery movement locally, it was actually Wesley Somerville who, as a layman, was one of the first in Johnsburg to advocate for secession from the Methodist Church in 1843 when the church failed to mirror his anti-slavery sentiments.
Wesley Somerville was born in Johnsburg in 1817, the son of Archibald Somerville, born in 1776 in Ireland, and Rebecca Armstrong. Wesley Somerville is said to have cast the first anti-slavery vote in Johnsburg.
His position as an abolitionist was initially a lonely one, but slowly, over several years, others in Johnsburg began to agree with him. Through Somerville's encouragement, anti-slavery Wesleyan ministers from Chester were employed to come to Johnsburg to preach. Membership grew in this new faction of the Methodist Church with many of the converts coming from the Methodist Episcopal Church on South Johnsburg Road.
In 1851 Wesley had married Nancy Noble, the daughter of Edward Noble, the minister of that other church in town. One can only imagine the friction within the family as Somerville led the defection away from the Episcopal Methodist Church where his father-in-law was minister; Thanksgiving get-togethers with the family might have been something really "special."
In 1849 Wesley Somerville and others hired Rev. Enos Putnam to hold revival meetings and to organize a Wesleyan Church in the township. Putnam, in addition to being a farmer and carpenter, was a "circuit rider from Chestertown" and was one of the dedicated group of Methodist ministers who, at the Syracuse Conference in 1848, twelve years before the Civil War, seceded from the Methodist Church because the parent body refused to condemn slavery.
An Outspoken Abolitionist
The secessionists formed the Wesleyan Methodist Church. For their members, crusading against slavery and helping escaping slaves was a basic religious imperative. It has been written that Enos Putnam moved to Johnsburg in 1833 and it was there that he met his future wife, Sybil (Daly), who was a schoolteacher from Vermont who was visiting the area. It is believed that she taught Enos to read. I do not know about the reading part, but research indicates that Enos Putnam was born in Bethel, Vermont in 1810 and he married Sybil in Barre, Vermont, on January 3, 1833, All of the children were born in Vermont; Henry (adopted) on Feb. 14, 1834, at Montpelier; Enos O. on May 15, 1835, in Barre: Francis O. on Oct.31, 1836, in Middlesex; and Mary on Sept. 21, 1838, in Westfield.
Rev. Enos O. Putnam (Courtesy of the Johnsburg Historical Society)
Enos and Sybil ran the underground railroad locally, and personally helped several escaped slaves reach freedom in Canada. He was known throughout Johnsburg as a fiery abolitionist.
The historical record is clear that Rev. Enos Putnam was an outspoken abolitionist. For years primary documentation lay in a letter handwritten years later by his adopted daughter Lucia Newell Putnam. Lizzie states, as a little girl, she woke at midnight to see Rev. Putnam carrying food to the basement. She followed him and discovered escaping slaves hiding there. Given Rev. Putnam's strong associations with the Mill Creek Wesleyan-Methodist Church it has always been assumed this happened at Putnam's residence on Garnet Lake Road. Lizzie was born March of 1855 in Minerva. From the tone of her story, Lizzie was likely 3 to 8 years of age when this happened; in other words, the discovery incident would have been between 1858 and 1863. It is unclear, however, if Reverend Enos Putnam was even in Johnsburg at that time.
Excellent research by Town Historian Deana Hitchcock Wood indicates Rev. Putnam arrived in Johnsburg about 1848, age 38. But he did not stay. In fact, he delivered his sermons, typically espousing passionate anti-slavery sentiments, as a traveling preacher throughout the north country. Putnam had joined the Methodist Church in Barre, VT in 1824, at age 14, and by age 19 was the leader of his class and soon after received an Exhorter's license from the presiding elder of the Danville District, New Hampshire Conference. He preached in Barre, VT (1836-1839), and in 1844, joined the Champlain Conference of the Wesleyan church at Keeseville where he was ordained as an elder. Then he preached in Beekmantown, Clinton County (1845), West Plattsburg (1846-1847, Hadley (1847), Warrensburg (1849), Crown Point (1851), and Chittenden, VT (1852 & 1854). In 1855 he fell ill and travel was out of the question. He stayed in Johnsburg and preached here from 1855 until the spring of 1859. In May of 1859, he was able to return to the circuit; ironically the same year the Mill Creek Wesleyan-Methodist Church was built. Putnam's travels have him then preaching in Macomb, St. Lawrence County, NY (1859-1860) and in West Plattsburgh (May 1861 & April 1862).
A Home on Garnet Lake Road
Enos Putnam’s home on Garnet Lake Road in Johnsburg.
Putnam purchased his property on Garnet Lake Road in October of 1861, while still assigned to the church in West Plattsburgh (1861-1862). It was from the West Plattsburgh ministry in 1862, age 52, he left the ministry without appointment at his own request. He died 3 years later in Johnsburg and is buried, with his wife Sybil, in the churchyard of the Mill Creek Wesleyan-Methodist Church.
Is it possible, even probable, that Lizzie discovered the escaping slaves in her father's basement, in West Plattsburgh, N.Y., rather than here in Johnsburg? The Plattsburgh area was part of a major underground route up the Champlain Valley. Escaping slaves, if they could find a sympathetic captain, might even safely stow aboard cargo vessels sailing north on the lake. Another major route was through central New York, crossing Lake Ontario from Rochester or Oswego. But along these routes escaping slaves would likely encounter slave catchers, who received a bounty for each escaping slave they captured and returned south. To avoid possible detection and capture, some escaping slaves bushwhacked through deep Adirondack forests at night, their paths lit only by moonlight. Some lucky families might find a sympathetic farmer who would move these freedom-seeking people north, clandestinely stowed away in a wagon bound for market.
There is also some thinking that slaves escaping to Canada for freedom may have stopped at Wesley Somerville's house, not Reverend Enos Putnam's. Somerville and Putnam were neighbors, close friends, and both adamant anti-slavery advocates. Determination awaits further documentation; difficult since abolitionist activity was illegal at the time and not widely publicized.
A Vote for Emancipation
Rev. Enos O. Putnam’s tombstone. His wife, Sybil, was buried alongside him but her stone has split at its base.
The Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church was built in 1859 on land given by Wesley Somerville. Margarita Flansburg Yeaw, in Pictures in My Heart, describe it as "a beautiful Georgian building with a horse shed attached where horses were stabled during church services. It had three floors. The upper rooms were for church socials and meetings of the governing body. The church was never quite finished. It had a belfry, but no bell was ever installed. A great chandelier in the center served as light, and two wood stoves, in separate corners of the room, provided heat."
Camp meetings where tents were set up and day-long sermons before hundreds, typical of the era, were held *on the flat ground near W. Somerville;" believed to be the flat, open field just south of the church along Garnet Lake Road. Wesley Somerville is believed to have lived in the farm just down the road.
On September 15, 1862, the church voted that "we believe that it is the duty of the President to liberate all the slaves in the United States and let them be free and forever free." This was fourteen weeks before Lincoln freed slaves through the Emancipation Proclamation, but Lincoln's proclamation only impacted "persons held as slaves in areas in rebellion against the United States; it did not free the slaves held up north, in the border states, or even in the sections of southern states already under Union control. Slavery was actually not wiped out in the country until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865...
Enos died March 17, 1865, less than a month before Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Enos was buried in the churchyard, in the shadow of the Georgian steeple which, the story has it, he built single-handedly. His grave lies along with his wife Sybil's near the center of the cemetery. Also in the cemetery is a plaque about the church.
The church was a rather severe institution by today's standards. Church records indicate that on December 12, 1857, they "resolved that tobacco, tea, and coffee are expensive and self indulging and stant [?] opposed to economy and self denial as taught in the Scriptures." The church, in its quarterly meetings, also reviewed the moral behavior of its members and regularly tossed people out of the church for "backsliding" in their Christian duty or "because they could not here [sic] the truth preached" ...
Schisms in the Church -- and Its Demise
This marker stands in the cemetery of the Mill Creek Wesleyan Methodist Church at the intersection of Hudson Street and Garnet Lake Road in Johnsburg.
Take a moment to admire the scene as you travel onto our next historic site and reflect on what life must have been like during these difficult and turbulent times in our nation's history and how, in days past and today, so much of what we call society so easily falls prey to small-minded bickering. The grand barn with the beautiful stone work alongside it just south of the church on the west side of the road lies on what was Somerville's property and, as it seems to predate 1869, it might well have been built by or for Wesley Somerville and used by him and his family.
Like the national schism of the Civil War just a few years earlier that tore apart this nation, the growing friction among the groups using the church ultimately lead to its demise. There is a story indicating that the congregation dissolved into three groups that didn't agree. Emotions and North Country stubbornness ran so high that in time each group locked up the church with their own locks and refused to share the keys with the others. The result was that no one could gain access to the church.
I have not been able to document this, but church records do indicate that on October 1, 1910, the second quarterly meeting of the church in Johnsburg was to meet at the old church, but the church was locked and they were forbidden to go in so they moved and adjourned to the church in Bakers Mills. In 1893 apparently someone suggested that the church building be given to the Methodists or Episcopal denominations; feelings still ran high, however, as church records indicate church members took this as an insult. Nevertheless, in 1913 it was decided that the Wesleyan Church be joined with the Bakers Mills Wesleyan Church (1891). In the summer of 1964 the Mill Creek Wesleyan Church was razed and the usable materials transported to Bakers Mills to add to the church there. For the next few years Johnsburg Central School bus #32 would periodically get flat tires on the dirt road cut-off from nails apparently tossed when the church was taken down.
If you have a moment, stop and take a few minutes to walk through this fine old rural cemetery. You'll easily find the tombstones of Enos and Sybil Putnam.
Rev. Putnam's own log home was just south of the intersection of today's Gamet Lake Road and Coulter Road. Today all that is left is a mall stone foundation on the side of the hill.