Auburn, NY’s Underground Railroad App

Harriet Tubman was one of the bravest women of all time, born into slavery but free at heart she did the unthinkable, defied all odds, broke boundaries as a woman, and became a legend. As we celebrate Underground Railroad Month in September Auburn, New York would like for everyone to embark on a virtual journey on their Underground Railroad with their revolutionary app. In addition, Cayuga County presents a unique opportunity, to be guided by Ted Freeman, a descendant of Harry and Kate Freeman his ancestral legacy is tied to the Underground Railroad’s narrative, including the New Guinea Negro Settlement which is a cornerstone of this clandestine endeavor.

Underground Railroad Tour Mission

They believe this innovative technology and guided tour offer a fresh perspective on the past, empowering us to shape the future. The app allows visitors to take a self-guided driving tour of places where Harriet Tubman’s life legacy is alive, including significant Underground sites. There are two tours available through the app: one that takes users around Auburn, NY (Harriet Tubman’s hometown) and one around Cayuga County as a whole. If you’re interested in taking the tour in person or virtually you can visit: tourCayuga.com or “Tubman UGRR-Cayuga County” The app is available for Apple and Android. Tap into your history

About Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was Auburn’s most famous freedom seeker. she was born Araminta Ross in March 1822. After escaping slavery, she made 13 missions to rescue approximately 300 enslaved people including her family and friends. Using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses as the Underground Railroad. But, as a traveler on the Underground Railroad, she was a relative latecomer. Although she escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1849, she did not settle in Auburn until 1859. By that time, the Underground Railroad had been operating locally since at least the early 1830s, sustained by an inter-racial group of men and women, rich and poor, old, and young, Black, and White. By the 1850s, Cayuga County’s Black population numbered about 400. Two hundred of them lived in Auburn. The first African Americans had come to Cayuga County in slavery, part of the earliest non-Indigenous post-Haudenosaunee settlers. Freed by 1827, when NYS formally abolished slavery, they remained to welcome newcomers from the South, many of whom bought land, found jobs, and raised their families here, leaving many descendants who represent their stories. Cayuga County’s significance on the Underground Railroad emerged partly from its geographic position. In the middle of the Finger Lakes region, it was a major crossroads for people coming north from Philadelphia to Lake Ontario and for those coming from eastern NY on what became the NY Central Railroad, headed for Niagara Falls and Canada.

The importance of Cayuga County for the Underground Railroad came also from its people. Several Quakers worked with a network that included the Vigilance Committee headquarters in Philadelphia kept by William Still, who regularly sent travelers to Auburn. Martha Coffin Wright, Frances, William Seward, and the Howland family in Sherwood were part of this network. Local African Americans such as Morgan “Luke” Freeman, a barber born enslaved in Auburn in 1802, became a major Underground Railroad operatives. The initial research study “Uncovering the Freedom Trail in Auburn and Cayuga County was completed by Judith Wellman and others in 2005 as published by the City of Auburn’s Historic Resources Review Board and the Cayuga County Historian’s Office. The study completed at that time identified over 100 documented connections in Cayuga County to the Underground Railroad. Additional research by noted historian Kate Clifford Larson and others has expanded our knowledge of several more connections. This project only identifies a small number of historic sites relating to the Underground Railroad that remained on Cayuga County’s landscape in the twenty-first century. They help tell stories of the remarkable people who committed their lives to freedom.