Jermain and Caroline Loguen

293 East Genesee Street

Corner Pine and Genesee

Syracuse, New York

Site only

Significance

While many abolitionists, both African American and European American, aided freedom seekers in Syracuse, Jermain and Caroline Loguen’s home became the major stopping point by the mid-1850s.  As Milton Sernett noted in North Star Country, Syracuse became known as “the great central depot” of the underground railroad in New York State, the “Canada of the North,” and Loguen was called the “Underground Railroad King.” (162, 174) This is the single most important site for underground railroad activity in Onondaga County.

Biography

Born into slavery in Tennessee about 1813, Loguen escaped in 1834. After spending a few years in Canada, he moved to Rochester in 1837 before he enrolled in Beriah Green’s Oneida Institute. In 1840, he married Caroline Storum of Bustin, New York. Loguen moved to Syracuse shortly afterwards, but he spent three of the next few years at Bath and two in Ithaca, as an AME Zion minister. Caroline may not have moved to Syracuse until 1847 or 1848, when Jermain Loguen bought property at the corner of East Genesee and Pine Streets. The 1855 census noted that Caroline had been in Onondaga County only eight years.

 In 1855, the couple had six living children at home, Latiecha, aged 13; Amelia, aged 12; Garret, aged 7; Marinda, aged 5; William, aged 3; and Mary, aged 1. Corydon Williams, a forty-six-year-old African American painter from New York lived with them, as did Catharine Williams, twenty, born in New England, and Maranda Storum, Caroline’s sister, thirty-six years old.

Loguen became a school teacher, an AME Zion minister and later bishop, an abolitionist lecturer, and chief agent of the underground railroad in Syracuse. Jermain and Caroline Loguen helped an estimated 1500 people reach freedom. While most of these people remain unidentified, a few specific examples have been recorded.  On Christmas Eve, 1855, six freedom seekers left Oak Hill plantation in Loudon County, Virginia. Two of them were captured, but the remaining four (Barnabas and Mary Elizabeth Grigby, Frank Wanzer, and Emily Foster) confronted their pursuers with guns and managed to escape across the Maryland-Pennsylvania line to freedom. William Still, who kept the main underground railroad station in Pennsylvania, bought them tickets on the train to Syracuse, New York, where Rev. Loguen officiated at the wedding of Frank Wanzer and Emily Foster. All four went to Auburn, Rochester, and St. Catherine’s, Ontario. (Family traditions, as recorded by Allen Uzikee Nelson)

In 1869, Amelia Loguen married Lewis Douglass, son of Frederick Douglass, in the Loguens’ home. Marinda S. Loguen, later called Sarah, graduated from the Syracuse University College of Medicine in 1876, one of the first African American women in the country to become a doctor. After working Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C., she went to Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, where she married Charles A. Fraser and lived until 1897.  She returned to Syracuse and bought a house on Westcott Street, where she lived for four years. She died in June 1833. (Post-Standard, June 14, 1933) Gerrit Smith Loguen became an artist. Mary Loguen married James Cromwell, a Syracuse barber. (Genealogy notes, Loguen files, OHA)

Site

In 1848, Loguen purchased about one-half acre of land on the north side of the Genesee Turnpike at the corner of Pine Street for $800 from Joseph and Sarah Chapman on Block 224, Lot 1, “excepting and reserving thereout [?] a piece at the southeast corner of forty feet wide on the Turnpike road, and fifty feet wide [?] of the same width on which the school house was built.” (Deed Book 95, p. 178. See attached copy of deed.) Loguen was active as a school teacher, and he may have purchased the property next to the school house to promote his educational work.

Probably, a house already existed on this property, since the price was relatively high. At some point, the Loguens added an apartment for freedom seekers. An obituary for Sarah Loguen Fraser noted that this home “was a station on the ‘underground railroad,’ and the basement was fitted with bunks and other equipment for care of runaway slaves.” In 1860, Loguen was assessed $1500 for a lot on this corner, 108 feet x 150 feet, with house and barn,  Most houses in the neighborhood at the time were assessed for $300-$400, so the Loguens’ home was substantially larger than many of the surrounding houses.  Jermain Loguen sold this lot in 1870 to H.W. Clarke (Deed Book 180, p. 30)

Jermain Loguen noted in his autobiography that he was not dependent on his work as a teacher and minister to support his family.“ He drew his own money from the bank," he wrote, "and bought him a house and lot, and became, and has continued, a freeholder and tax paying citizen. Real estate rose in value in his hands, and by industry and care, his early investments made him not rich, but in good credit.” (372) Perhaps he was using money brought into their family by Caroline Storum Loguen.

In fact, he seems to have been a land speculator, as well, as suggested by the deeds. Between 1848 and 1870, Loguen purchased at least thirteen properties in Syracuse. He sold most of them, some of them to other African Americans. Only one of these properties may possibly be extant, the building on the northwest corner of Walnut and East Fayette. Loguen owned three lots on this corner. Is it possible that this building combines two of the buildings that stood on this corner? (See attached list of properties that Loguen acquired and map of locations.)

Bibliography

Clark, Sylvester, “Early Black Syracusans,” 70-71.

Hunter, Carol M. “The Rev. Jermain Loguen: A Narrative of Real Life.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 13 (July 1989), 33-46.

_______________. To Set the Captives Free: Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen and the Struggle for Freedom in Central New York, 18325-1872. New York: Garland, 1993.

Loguen, Rev. Jermain. The Rev. J.W. Loguen, as a Slave and As a Freeman. Syracuse: Truair & Co., 1859. Reprint, New York: Negro University Press, 1968.

Nelson, Allen Uzikee. Family tradition, uzikee@aol.com.

Sernett, Milton. North Star Country. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002.

News articles, Loguen file, Onondaga Historical Association

Censuses

Deeds

Assessments

Insurance maps.

Genealogy notes in Loguen files, taken by Mansfield French, OHA

“Dr. S.L. Fraser Dead, Aged 83,” Post-Standard, June 14, 1933, OHA files.

Further Research

While much research has already been done on Loguen, much remains to be done. Intriguing clues in extant newspaper articles suggest, for example, a division in the AME Zion Church in the late 1840s and early 1850s, perhaps related to issues of underground railroad activism, perhaps relating to questions of religious doctrine coming from the Christian Union movement, certainly revolving around Rev. Loguen, whose church is often referred to as “Rev. Loguen’s Church” rather than as AME Zion Church. Loguen’s position as a bridge between abolitionism and woman’s rights and between African Americans and European Americans, his relationship to Caroline Loguen and her family, and his connections with the local Syracuse African American community would provide a useful context.

The site itself should be marked in some way.
Loguen deeds

Grantee index to 1874

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