By the time white people started moving into our area in large numbers, slavery was still legal in 12 of the 13 states. So tiny numbers of enslaved people trickled in, usually in ones and twos. Frederick Barthles, who founded what we call Bradford, reportedly had “his slave Jim” buried at his feet, though if that’s true, the stone has disappeared.

Eleazar Lindsley brought in seven enslaved people, but Captain William Helm brought up many more… maybe over a hundred… from Virginia. While his arrival was hailed as the coming of gentility and sophistication, it also debuted a spectacle of cruelty and profligacy. To be a slave, and be sold or traded, was bad enough. To be yanked from your family and sent to a new master because Captain Helm lost you in a game of cards was even worse. And he lost a lot.

With very few people owning slaves, and attitudes slowly changing, slaves occasionally got away with facing down their masters. But as Austin Steward walked across Bath’s Pulteney Square on his way to church, he once heard his sister screaming as her master beat her, and couldn’t do a thing. “Imagine my feelings when I saw the smooth-faced hypocrite, the inhuman slave-whipper, enter the church, pass quietly on to his accustomed seat, and then meekly bow his hypocritical face.”

Helm repeatedly hired Steward out, and one night Steward encountered lawyer Daniel Cruger on the Cameron Street bridge. “I asked him to tell me if I was not free, by the laws of New York. He started, and looked around him as if afraid to answer my question, but after a while told me I was NOT free.”

But at a private meeting in Cruger’s office, the lawyer assured Stewart that he WAS legally free, and gave him contact information for abolitionists in Canandaigua. He escaped in company with a young woman known only as Milly, a slave to George Hornell (for whom the city was named). He had legally acknowledged paternity of her child Milo, but now she left Hornell “to take care of himself… resolved on death, or freedom from the power of the slaveholder.”

Pretty much broke, Helm gathered a few confederates for a gigantic kidnaping scheme. A front man arranged a large reunion in Palmyra, particularly for former Helm slaves. The Captain and his gang burst in to capture the whole crowd, race them southward, and sell them off. But the slaves and former slaves fought back with “fists, clubs, chairs, and any thing they could get.” Returning with only a few captives to Bath they grabbed a few more, most of whom later gave them the slip, so they arrived in Virginia with only two young boys.

Daniel Cruger, by then in Congress, got wind of the upcoming sale and investigated. Not only were both youngsters from his district (Elmira and Painted Post), but he actually knew one of them! He also knew darned well that they were both free people, and after extricating them he paid for their journey home.

Thanks to Robert Troup and others, New York slavery ended on the Fourth of July in 1827. Since southern whites only agreed to join the United States if they got bonus Congressional and Electoral votes as a reward for having slaves, each census up to 1820 counted New York slaves. Steuben County’s highest number was 87 (in 1810)… Ontario had 212 the same year, and Allegany 21. The highest total statewide was 21,193 in 1790. Every one of those lives was lived with terror and tragedy looming.