NORTHAMPTON — A broad effort by educators and activists to document the significance of Florence to the Underground Railroad continues as a new plaque marking the Hill-Ross Homestead, a stop on the 19th-century abolitionist network to free enslaved Black people, was dedicated Thursday.
The roadside plaque recognizing the house and farm at 123 Meadow St. features full-color photos and text that places the site in the context of the anti-slavery movement. The plaque was unveiled at a morning ceremony on a nearby strip of land next to Florence Fields that is owned by Grow Food Northampton.
Esosa Osayamen, an architectural historian, originally proposed the plaque for a senior project at Smith College in 2017 after a field trip to the site and others like it in Florence. The village, she said, has more than 20 sites important to African American architecture and history; many of them are part of the city’s African-African Heritage Trail.
“This is shocking to see this actually happen,” Osayamen said, thanking her family and others who supported the project. She said she “did not know” that the abolitionist icon Sojourner Truth lived in Florence or the details of the local Underground Railroad stations before learning about it in college and she wanted to inform others.
Osayamen said only 2% of documented African American historical buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Hill-Ross Homestead, also called Ross Farm or Hill-Ross Farmstead, is one of them.
Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said the Hill-Ross Homestead is a “beautifully important” part of the city’s history and served as “a critical stop on the Underground Railroad” that connected escaped slaves with assistance and hid them from slavecatchers.
“This is a history that we must continuously work to educate about and keep alive,” Sciarra told the attendees, a handful of interested citizens and people connected to the project. She said she hopes the plaque “will inspire many, as it does me.”
Tom Goldscheider, a public historian with the David Ruggles Center, said the house was owned by the utopian community known as the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, also called the NAEI or the Association, a farming collective that counted Sojourner Truth among its members.
The plaque is sponsored by Osayamen, Grow Food Northampton, the David Ruggles Center and Platinum K Publishing.
One photo shows the NAEI silk mill that offered jobs and homeownership opportunities to formerly enslaved Black settlers, while the plaque also tells the story of the Dorsey-Jones House at 191 Nonotuck St., purchased successively by two self-emancipated former slaves in 1849 and 1852.
The white Connecticut abolitionist Samuel L. Hill bought the house at 123 Meadow St. in 1841 and created a community dairy and mulberry tree farm that hired Black workers fleeing slavery. Hill’s son, Arthur Hill, was born in the house and, in 1886, elected the second mayor of Northampton.
After the NAEI disbanded in 1845, Hill sold the property to the Ross family, who kept working with the Underground Railroad. The Presbyterian Church excommunicated Austin Ross for his anti-slavery views, according to the National Park Service, and he once sheltered a self-emancipated slave, possibly named William Wilson, in his house for more than a year.
The National Park Service describes the house as “the only remaining Association building today.” Various outbuildings have been constructed over the past century-plus, but they are not considered historically significant.
The Rosses ran the property as a dairy and tobacco farm until 1902, according to the application to list the homestead on the historic register in 2007.
Grow Food Northampton associate director Michael Skillicorn said the organization’s involvement “fits” with its own mission to promote social equity through food justice and community farming programs. The nonprofit owns 121 acres of land that was used by the NAEI in the 1800s.
“It feels to me like this is a moment where we’re all working together to lift up this history,” Skillicorn said.