Significance

Benjamin Bakeman and Rachel Bakeman represent the second generation of free African American land owners who lived in rural upstate New York after the Revolutionary War. Son of Henry Bakeman, Revolutionary War veteran, Benjamin bought land in South Onondaga in 1828 and remained there the rest of his life. Some of his descendents still live in Onondaga County.

Biography

Benjamin Bakeman, born in Montgomery County about 1794, probably came to central New York with his parents, Henry and Jane Bakeman, before 1800, to settle on the west side of the Oswego River in what is now Fulton. While at least two of his brothers stayed in Oswego County, Benjamin and several other siblings moved to the Town of Onondaga, where they bought land and intermarried with Days, DeGroats, and Talbots. Benjamin’s wife, Rachel, may have been Rachel Day. She was born in New Jersey about 1801. (1855 census and Bakeman file, OHA).

In January 1828, Benjamin Bakeman bought a bit more than forty-five acres of land on lots 194 and 195 in the Town of Onondaga from William and Sarah Day for $210.93-1/2. (Deed in Book LL, pages 384-5) According to the 1850 census, this land was valued at $2000.

In 1850, Benjamin and Rachel Bakeman lived with their five children (Marinda, 23; Oliver, 18; Artemas, 15; Lovicia, 11; and Charity, 6), as well as with Benjamin’s mother, Jane, aged 80. (1850 Census)

On August 28, 1862, Lovicia Bakeman married William R. Edwards in Syracuse. Rev. William A. Cornwall, minister of AME Zion Church and Rev. Jermain Loguen and Caroline Loguen’s son-in-law, officiated. (Clark)

On September 5, 1864, Artemus Bakeman, who gave his age as 29, enlisted in the 185^th New York Volunteers, Company H, for one year as a private, for which he was to receive a bounty of $100. His enlistment records described him as five feet six inches tall, with dark eyes, black hair, and a dark complexion. He was sent to the hospital on February 2, 1865. He died of measles in the hospital at City Point, Virginia, on April 21 (or 28), 1865. (U.S. Army rolls, Bakeman file, OHA)

In 1878, Benjamin was still living on a farm of about 46 acres on lot 195 in South Onondaga (county directory).

Benjamin Bakeman died March 9, 1882, aged 88. Rachel Bakeman died December 4, 1886, aged eighty-five years, eleven months, and fifteen days. Both are buried in South Onondaga Cemetery. (Bakeman files, OHA)

Site

Maps in 1852, 1860, and 1874 suggest two different sites for the Bakeman house, both between a small creek and the main crossroads in South Onondaga. The earliest map, however, shows the Bakeman house behind a house owned or lived in by the ? family. The 1874 map shows the Bakeman house very near the road. In the spring of 2002, the site near the road was not longer standing, but a cellar hole surrounded by foundation stones was clearly visible. It is not known whether there were, in fact, two Bakeman houses or when either or both of them was demolished.

Further research

Further research in deeds, assessments, and mortgages, as well as oral interviews with local residents, might help determine the chronology and approximate dates of destruction of these houses.

Bibliography

Clark, William. Onondaga

“Henry and Jane Bakeman,” Oswego County Freedom Trail,

www.oswego.edu/Acad_Dept/a_and_s/history/ugrr

Censuses, 1850 and 1855.

County directory, 1878.

Bakeman file, OHA.

Interviews with Barbara Bakeman Fero and Joanne Bakeman.