Almost Everywhere You Go There's A Bay City History Connection
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Gerrit Smith was the brother-in-law of James G. Birney; they married sisters from the Fitzhugh family of Livingston County, New York
LAKE PLACID, NY - Almost everywhere you go there is some historical connection with Bay City.
Lake Placid, New York, has one of those historical connections.
Lots of people have heard of John Brown.
You know, the radical abolitionist of the Civil War era. Some might more properly call him a terrorist.
The guy the song was written about: "John Brown's Body Lies A Mouldering In the Grave."
The song was one of the inspirational melodies of the Union Army during the war.
But few people have heard of Gerrit Smith, the sponsor of John Brown on his ill-fated attack on Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
Smith was the brother-in-law of James G. Birney; they married sisters from the Fitzhugh family of Livingston County, New York.
It is the Smith-Birney linkage that makes John Brown's burial site a figure of interest for Bay Cityans of a historical bent.
Smith has other, more mysterious, Bay City ties.
A house at Tenth and Adams, built by Birney, apparently was financed by Smith.
A loan on that house from Smith to Birney shows up on old records at First American Title Co., according to Manager Barbara Dinauer.
And we have written before about the mystery ship, the 70-foot long steamer Gerrit Smith, that lies in the Saginaw River along with the Davidson hulks off Veterans Park.
The vessel, built in New York in 1855, may have been used as part of the Underground Railroad, perhaps toferry escaping slaves to freedom in Canada.
How and why the ship ended up in the middle of the Saginaw River is anybody's guess.
John Brown's Body, the theme of the Civil War song, actually lies mouldering near Lake Placid. You can visit his farm and a little graveyard enclosed by an imposing iron fence at nearby North Elba.
His original intention was to provide small farms for free blacks. He surveyed lands, instructed blacks in farming and helped them build homes at North Elba. The settlement, known as "Timbucto," died out and the blacks moved away.
Brown was buried here Dec. 8, 1859, six days after he was hanged at Charlestown, Virginia. Ironically, Brown and his co-conspirators had been arrested by Col. Robert E. Lee, soon to win fame as the heroic military leader of the Confederacy.
Brown was born in 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut. As a youth Brown saw a black boy with whom he had become friendly badly beaten. This incident sparked his lifelongstruggle against slavery. He believed the practice was a sin against God.
As the story goes, Brown had purchased a 244 acre farm from Smith for $1 an acre in 1849. the original buildings are preserved and restored and are on display at a New York State Historic Site here.
Two of Brown's sons and several of his followers, killed at Harper's Ferry, are also buried here.
Despite his violent activities that helped set the stage for a bloody Civil War that claimed about 600,000 lives, Brown is acclaimed a hero by some. He is more well known that James G. Birney, who, on the other hand, was a major political figure in the abolition movement.
No one ever sang: "James G. Birney's body lies a mouldering in the grave." But his reasonable, objective approach to ending slavery through the political system was vastly more humanitarian than Brown's terrorism. However, Brown got action and Birney remains in virtual historical obscurity. There is no state historical site whereBirney lived for 11 years in Bay City and few historians know much about him.
Another icon of Bay City history, financial tycoon James E. Davidson also was reported to have died at Lake Placid in July, 1947, although newspapers here have no obituary of Davidson and he does not surface in local history books.
The Lake Placid village historian, Beverly Reid (she is paid $3,000 a year for providing this service), is researching Davidson's death and the reports that he donated substantial sums to this Adirondack Mountain community.
What happened to Davidson's reputed fortune of about $70 million, about $1.4 billion in today's dollars, also is anybody's guess. No Davidson will was filed in either Bay City or Lake Placid.
The unveiling of another Bay City myth, or the creation of a new urban legend, may be in the making if some new information is unearthed. Stay tuned.
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