The final resting place of York, a formerly enslaved man who became a free Black landowner in Otsego County, has been restored and his life recognized through a memorial plaque and a new headstone.
A dedication ceremony, open to the public, is scheduled for Oct. 10 at the historic West Burlington Cemetery on state Route 80, at a time to be determined.
SUNY Oneonta Professor Matthew Hendley, who led the research into York’s life and was awarded a grant to refurbish his gravesite, called York “an ordinary hero.”
“(He was) someone who lived a remarkable life,” Hendley said Wednesday, Sept. 23. “He was born in Africa, and he came over as an enslaved person and somehow got his liberty. Maybe he fought the Revolutionary War, maybe he didn’t. But by the end of his life, he had gained freedom.”
York’s headstone states that he died in 1807 around age 60, “free and Christian.” Beyond a few other clues — a land deed with York’s name, a record of him in the local Baptist church in Burlington — not much is known about his life, such as whether he married or when he gained his freedom.
“We contacted the church,” Hendley said. “They don’t have records that far back. They had a fire at some point in the 19th century.”
Hendley and Lee Fisher, a former Oneonta Area NAACP branch president, collaborated on the project starting in the spring of this year after noticing the fading and deterioration of York’s headstone. Their starting point was an existing plaque from the Oneonta Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution through the Pomeroy Foundation that mentioned York’s interment in the cemetery.
Fisher said Friday, Sept. 25 that the presence of a formerly enslaved man in the cemetery was unexpected and shocking, and that other members of the Oneonta NAACP “thought was a great idea” to restore his resting place.
“For African Americans, we know this is the type of history that we have lived with,” Fisher said. “When you talk to some families, they can go way back in their history. And you talk to others, and they can only go just maybe 50, 60 years back from their original family. This is history that just wasn’t kept.”
Hendley applied for and received a grant of about $2,400 from the Community Foundation of Otsego County for gravestone restoration. Oneonta NAACP contributed about $1,000 for a total project cost of $3,400 to $3,500.
Hendley worked with Cherry Valley Memorials to select a new headstone and Alpine Awards and Engraving in Oneonta to create a plaque. To preserve history, they chose to duplicate the original 1807 headstone rather than move or replace it.
The new stone is “a little higher than the original stone,” Hendley said, “but it has the original old-fashioned language from 1807, which is quite moving as a tribute to York, and then the plaque at the base of it. It’s side-by-side directly to the old stone.”
Researchers, including Hendley’s former student Robert Page, have attempted to find manumission papers — which documented the freedom of an enslaved person — or baptismal records for York, but the search continues.
Since the spring, Page, a 26-year-old junior at SUNY Oneonta studying adolescent education with a social studies focus, has been conducting research as a volunteer, searching records within specific timeframes for mentions of emancipated African Americans and overseers of the poor who may have helped formerly enslaved people.
He searched records from Montgomery County — which contained the area of Otsego County until 1791 when it split off — and the Fenimore Art Museum research library.
“I also work there,” Page said, “so I was able to contact the librarian, and they helped out a lot with all the early records.”
He plans to contact the library again regarding potential leads on records in another storage facility.
“I found other people with a similar name, but they weren’t him, because they were either too young or just no relation,” Page said. “I’m happy to have helped. It was a really good experience.”
The dedication ceremony at the cemetery intends to bring together members of the Oneonta NAACP, the SUNY Oneonta campus and representatives from CFOC. The ceremony will serve as both a tribute to York and an opportunity to raise awareness of local diversity, Hendley said.
“It’s a beautiful spot there with the hills rising up, I like to think it’s a peaceful spot for York,” he said. “Hopefully we’ve done it an honor by having a nice stone that will last for a while.”