Jermain Wesley Loguen
Jermain Wesley Loguen was born February 5,
1813 into slavery in Tennesee. His mother was a slave, his father
owned her. Loguen escaped in 1834 to St. Catherine's Ontario.
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.
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." 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.
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." 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.)
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. As Stationmaster of the Underground Railroad
in Syracuse, Loguen published in the local newspapers his calls
for aid to fugitives from slavery, as well as an account of how
he spent the money received. In 1851 along with Unitarian minsiter
Sam May, Loguen helped to arrange Jerry
Henry to escape. But Loguen was indicted for his part
in the Jerry rescue. He fled to Canada as well, but later returned.
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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.
His was reported to be the most openly operated
station in the state, if not the country. 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." It is estimated
that about 1500 fugitive slaves passed through his home on their
way to freedom. He told his amazing and inspirational story in
his autobiography, The Rev. J.W. Loguen as a Slave and as a Freeman,
published in Syracuse in 1859.
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Jermain W. Lougen died in 1872.
CHILDREN
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 1933. (Post-Standard, June 14, 1933)
Gerrit Smith Loguen became an artist. Mary
Loguen married James Cromwell, a Syracuse barber.)
reference: Gates
; Hunter
narrative; Hunter
- captives; Loguen;
additional references: New York Daily Tribune, 1
October 1872; San Francisco Elevator, 5 October 1872; Benjamin
Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New
York, 1974), 39-44, 65-66, 73-75; idem, Black Abolitionists,
66-67, 154, 188; DAB, 11:368-69.
Back to African
American History of Western New York 1830 to 1865.