Day 13: Seneca Falls, Auburn, Erie Canal

It was an early morning for our group today as we had to make a two and half hour drive from Oneonta to Seneca Falls.  The drive was scenic, at least as much as I was awake for.  The late nights and early mornings are starting to catch up to me.

Seneca Falls was the scene of the first women’s rights convention in 1848.  We saw three sites in Seneca Falls, the Wesleyan Chapel (now undergoing reconstruction, and therefore unavailable) where the convention actually met near the visitor’s center; the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the home of Mary Ann M’Clintock, one of the organizers. Meagan, our tour guide, gave us an overview at each of the sites we visited.  The Declaration of Sentiments echoed the words of the Declaration of Independence except in proclaiming that “all men and women are created equal” and filing grievances not against the British government, but against men who these women stated held women in a virtual state of bondage.  The document itself was drafted in the M’Clintock home.  In reality, other than seeing the actual site where these people lived, there was not a lot to see at the two homes.  The visitor’s center was better, in that there were displays that showed the long-range consequences of what was done here in 1848.  The displays show the changes in women’s roles over time and the efforts to achieve equality, both in the nineteenth century as well as the modern women’s rights movements.  Some of the displays were thought-provoking in that they subtly posed questions as to what progress has been made and whether or not there is equality today.  This will help me show the evolution of the women’s rights movement.  There were also displays that inferred (as did the video that was shown on the bus on the way up) the split in the movement between moderate and radical elements, going way back to the beginning of the struggle for women’s rights.  That split still exists today, and I think that this can be useful to discuss with students.

Seneca Falls, 1848: First Women's Rights Convention

Cartoon I Will Use in Class

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Home

M'Clintock Home: Declaration of Sentiments Written Here

Ray: Once a Legionnaire, Always a Legionnaire

It was then off to Auburn, home of William Seward and Harriet Tubman.  Seward was a lawyer, New York senator, United States Senator, frontrunner for the 1860 Republican nomination for president (which he lost to Lincoln), and Secretary of State in the Lincoln and Johnson Administrations.  This home had much more to see than the previous ones, with mementos galore from the life and work of Seward and his sons, and it was a stop on the Underground Railroad.  The home was actually owned originally by Seward’s father-in-law, and as a condition to marry his daughter, he required Seward to move into the home.  One great thing about this trip is seeing all of these people forced to live with their in-laws and laughing while you thank God that it isn’t you.  At any rate, the collections (which were originals of the family) included rooms commemorating the Civil War and Seward’s role in the Lincoln cabinet and celebrating the purchase of Alaska, which Seward was harshly criticized for.  Though perhaps morbid, it was cool to see some of the blood-stained bed sheet from the attempt on Seward’s life in the Booth plot on April 14, 1865.  Last summer I got to see the blood-stained gloves Lincoln had at Ford’s Theater that same night, so this kind of completed the story.

William Seward Home

William Seward Home

Our stop at the Harriet Tubman home was a whirlwind tour.  Our host gave us a brief oral overview of Harriet Tubman, since we did not have time to see the video that they normally show.  I did not have time to see more than a couple of the displays on the walls, and wish I could have seen more.  The tour through the house lasted about one minute.

Our last scheduled stop took us to the Rochester area and the Erie Canal.  We boarded a passenger barge and took a trip of about an hour and a half on the canal.  Completed in 1825 during the period when great impetus was given to improving the transportation infrastructure of the country, the canal is 363 miles long.  It served as a highway from the Hudson River valley to the Great Lakes, and thus was a veritable highway into the interior.  As a result, more people and traffic began pushing inland, and commerce exploded.  New York City was a prime beneficiary this commercial bonanza, and its growth quickly surpassed other American cities by leaps and bounds.  Just this week, our guide told us that a personal ship was on their way home to Minnesota via the Erie Canal, meaning their journey took them down the Mississippi River around the east coast of the United States, up the Hudson River, and now across the Great Lakes and back to the Midwest.  The best thing that happened on this trip was seeing in person how the locks worked.  As the gates closed, almost instantly I could feel the boat lifting in the lock.  It only took five minutes to gravity-feed three million gallons of water into the lock to “float our boat.”  As peaceful as the trip was, it took a lot to transport myself back into time and imagine the canal jammed with barges. 

Erie Canal near Rochester

 

In the Lock

Dave in a Lock on the Erie Canal

 

After we returned, we boarded the bus and headed to Syracuse for the evening.

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