III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
173
Elijah and Georgia Stewart House
29 Richardson Avenue (Union)
Auburn, New York
Significance: Home of African Americans (including nephew of Harriet Tubman)
498
February 2, 2005
In lieu of children and grandchildren, Harriet Tubman gathered around her in Auburn her
brothers, sister-in-law, niece, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews. This house, the one next
door, at 31 Union Avenue (now Richardson), and possiblly also one that once stood on the nowvacant lot at 33 Richardson Avenue represent several members of Tubman’s extended family.
Tubman’s brother, Ben Ross (James Stewart) married Jane Kane (Catherine Stewart) and settled
in St. Catherine’s, Canada. After James Stewart’s death in 1862, Catherine Stewart came to
Auburn with her son, Elijah, about 1862, where her daughter, Hester, was born. She married
Andrew Winslow in 1867 and they had a son, Albert, in 1868. After Andrew’s death shortly
thereafter, Catherine was listed in the 1870 census as a servant, living in the household of two
African American women who lived next door to the Elliott family. Catherine died died before
1880.
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III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
By 1880, Catharine’s son, Elijah, 24 years old and a laborer, rented a house at 29 Union Avenue
from John W. Reed. Elijah Stewart lived with his wife, Georgia, born in Washington, D.C., who
was listed in the census as mulatto, keeping house. They shared their home with their daughter,
Edith, three months old; boarders James and Hannah Whitmore, both African Americans born in
New York, aged 49 and 52; and Albert Winslow, Elijah’s half-brother, still in school. Hester,
their sister, had either died or moved out of Cayuga County. The Stewarts lived next door to
Thomas Elliott and Ann Marie Stewart Elliott. Ann Marie Stewart was a niece of Harriet
Tubman, perhaps a daughter of Ben Ross by an earlier marriage. In any case, the Stewarts shared
kinship as well as neighborly ties with the Elliotts.
The Elijah and Georgia Stewart house was probably built sometime between 1871 and 1880, for a
house in this location did not appear on the 1871 Richie map, but one did appear there by 1882. It
was located on Lot 18, just west of the Elliot house, and was labeled “J.W. Rood.” Assessment
records show John W. Reed assessed for $150 for a “vacant lot and house” at numbers 29 and 35
Union Avenue from 1880 to 1883. Most likely the vacant lot was at 35 Union Avenue, since
neither the 1871 nor the 1882 map shows a house on that site. In 1884, the assessment for 29
Union Avenue jumps to $300 for a “house and lot,” but this may not be accurate, since in 1885
the assessed value for the same property fell to $150, while the vacant lot at 35 Union was worth
$100. In 1887, the house and lot at 29 Union were valued at $200. By 1890, they were assessed at
only $100, which remained steady until 1897, when the assessment rose to $300, a value it kept
until 1912.1
City Atlas of Auburn, N.Y. Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins, 1882.
1
P.A. Cunningham, Map of Auburn, New York (Philadelphia: W.W. Richie, 1871); City Atlas of Auburn,
N.Y. Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins, 1882. All property research by Tanya Warren.
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175
Tax Assessments for 29 Richardson Avenue
Research by Tanya Warren
LAST
NAME
FIRST
NAME
Town
YEAR
Property/Lot #
(29 & 35) Union-vacant lot &
house
29/35 Union-vacant lot &
house
29/35 Union-vacant lot &
house
29/35 Union-vacant lot &
house
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
Reed
John W.
Auburn
1880
Reed
John W.
Auburn
1881
Reed
John W.
Auburn
1882
Reed
Reed
Reed
John W.
John W.
John W.
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
1883
1884
1885
Reed
John W.
Auburn
1885 35 Union-vacant lot
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
Reed
John W.
John W.
John W.
John W.
J. W.
J. W.
J. W.
J. W.
J. W.
John W.
John W.
John W.
John W.
John W.
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
Reed
John W.
Auburn 1902-1912
35 Union-vacant lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
29 Union-house & lot
25, 27-vacant lots & 29
Union-residence
REAL-$
150
150
150
150
300
150
100
100
200
200
200
100
100
100
100
100
300
300
300
300
300
100, 100 &
300
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III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
Thomas Elliott and Ann Marie Stewart Elliott
31 Union (Richardson)
Significance: Home of Freedom Seekers
City Atlas of Auburn, N.Y., G.M. Hopkins, 1882.
Thomas Elliott and Ann Marie Stewart Elliott
31 Union (Richardson)
Significance: Home of Freedom Seekers
Thomas Elliott and Ann Marie Stewart Elliott, married in 1864, represent two important Underground
Railroad families and stories. Ann Marie Stewart Elliott was likely a niece of Harriet Tubman, probably the
daughter of one of her sisters who was sold away or the daughter of Tubman’s brother, Ben Ross, Jr.
According to Kate Clifford Larson, Tubman’s biographer, Ann Marie Stewart was probably the same Anne
Marie, age four, who was listed as free in the 1850 census of Caroline County, Maryland, in the household
of Harriet Tubman’s parents, Ben and Rit Ross. (Though listed as free, she may actually have been
enslaved, which was a common error in that particular census). There is also a puzzling reference to her as
the older sister of Margaret Stewart, the niece that Harriet Tubman allegedly kidnapped from the Eastern
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177
Shore of Maryland before 1862. Margaret Stewart’s daughter, Alice Brickler, wrote in 1940 that “Maria
Elliott was my mother’s elder sister.”2
Ann Marie Stewart married Thomas Elliott about 1864. We know this because the 1865 New York State
census listed her as Ann M. Elliot, age 22, living as a boarder with Harriet Tubman. Thomas Elliott, born in
Maryland, age 25, was a laborer, also living as a boarder with Tubman. The marriage of Anne Marie
Stewart and Thomas Elliott is recorded in the “Marriage Records” of the Central Presbyterian Church of
Auburn, NY, February 1864.
Thomas Elliott was born into slavery about 1829 in Dorchester County, Maryland. William Still, head of
the Vigilance Committee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recorded Elliott’s story in detail, first in Still
manuscript “Journal C” and then in his printed account, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, 1872). In
March 1857, at the age of 28, Thomas Elliott decided to escape from the plantation of Pritchett Meredith in
Bucktown, Dorchester County, Maryland. He fled with seven others—five men and two women – using
instructions and Underground Railroad connections given to them by Harriet Tubman (in fact, the group
sought shelter from Ben Ross, Tubman’s father, in Caroline County, on their first night of flight). With a
price of $3000 on their heads, they were betrayed into the hands of the sheriff of Dover, Delaware. They
escaped by throwing hot coals into the sheriff’s own apartment, jumping out of a twelve-foot high window
and leaping over a wall. When the sheriff fired his gun at them, it misfired. Thomas Elliott and the others
successfully made their way to Thomas Garrett’s home in Wilmington, who safely sent them along to
William Still’s office in Philadelphia. This dramatic escape story earned them the nickname of the “Dover
Eight.”3
Elliott settled in St. Catharines, Ontario, joining a close community of other refugees from the Eastern
Shore of Maryland, including Harriet Tubman’s parents, Ben and Rit Ross, and her brothers John and
William Henry Stewart. There, with Denard Hughes, another member of the Dover Eight, along with
several other Dorchester County freedom seekers, Elliott joined forces with John Brown. Neither Elliott nor
Hughes or the others decided to accompany Brown to Virginia, on Brown’s raid of Harper’s Ferry. It was a
decision that ultimately saved their lives. As Kate Clifford Larson has suggested, “they had already come to
Canada at great sacrifice and risk; perhaps they felt they had battled slavery enough. Their new lives in
freedom were precious now and outweighed any visionary dream of Brown’s.4
Elliott was recorded living with his brother, Abraham (who fled Maryland sometime after Thomas did) in
St. Catharines in 1861, but by 1862, Thomas Elliott had moved to Auburn, New York, and was living in a
building owned by William H. Seward at 32 South Street. After Elliott married Anne Marie Stewart in
February 1864, they both boarded at Harriet Tubman’s home at 180 South Street.
In 1868, the Auburn city tax assessments listed Thomas Elliott as owning a “house unfinished” on Union
Avenue worth $100, on which he paid $2.02 worth of taxes. In 1869, the Auburn City Directory listed
2
Alice Brickler to Earl Conrad, 1940, reprinted in Jean M. Humez. Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life
Stories (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 291; Kate Clifford Larson, “RossStewart Family Tree,” Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (New
York: Ballantine Books, 2004), after 295. For more on Margaret Stewart, see Catherine Clinton, Harriet
Tubman: The Road to Freedom (New York: Little, Brown, 2004), 117-123; Larson, Bound for the
Promised Land, 196-202.
3
William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, 1872), 72-74; Kate Clifford Larson, Harriet
Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero (New York: Ballantine Books, 138-41. See also Thomas Garrett’s
description of this escape in letters published in James A. McGowan, Station Master on the Underground
Railroad: The Life and Letters of Thomas Garrett (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.,
2005) pp. 178-181.
4
Larson, Harriet Tubman, 155, 159-61.
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III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
Thomas Elliott as living at Union n. South St. (now Richardson Avenue), an address that he retained in the
1870 and 1879-80 directories. The Elliot family probably lived in one of the small houses that is part of the
house currently on this property, because a small dwelling shows up on Lot #19 on the 1871 map of
Auburn published by W.W. Richie. On June 1, 1872, Thomas Elliott bought the property on which this
house now stands from Charles and Mary Cootes for $650.00. This price suggests that the lot was not
vacant but included a building. This is the same property described in the 1993 deed from Katherine Mary
Chapman, executor of Erna M. Strokarck, to Christopher Lupo: “north side of Richardson, formerly Union
Avenue, in said city, known as Lot #19, on a certain map made by Dr. A.C. Taber, Surveyor for Charles
Swift, filed 1863 Book 1, p. 48, lot being 61 feet 8 inches front and rear 176.6 inches depth.”5
In 1870, the U.S. census listed Thomas Elliott as 35 years old, a laborer, born in Maryland. Anna Elliott
was 24 years old, born in Maryland. They had two daughters, Marietta, age 5, and Martha, age 2, both born
in New York State. Local tax assessments also reveal they had a family dog. The 1880 U.S. census listed
the Elliotts still at 31 Union Avenue, but Ann Marie had died by this time, and Thomas, age 38, laborer,
was now married to Helen, age 37, living with a daughter, Nellie (i.e. Martha), age 12, at school. A son,
Anthony Elliott, born in 1871, had died before 1880.6
By 1880, the city directory listed Thomas Elliott at 31 Union Avenue, the same as the current 31
Richardson Avenue. Thomas Elliott was still listed in the city directory in 1882, but by 1884, the city
directory listed C.A. and S. Smith at 31 Union Avenue. Perhaps the Elliott family had moved between 1882
and 1884, or perhaps Thomas Elliott had died. Beginning in 1882, Charles Smith and James Seymour were
paying taxes on this property.
As it stood in 2005, this house was two smaller houses joined together. Subtle distinctions in the cornice of
these two smaller sections revealed their different origins. Probably the original Elliott-Stewart was just one
of these houses, with a second house moved to this lot sometime after construction of the original building.
The 1904 Auburn map showed an outbuilding at the rear of 31 Union Avenue. Tax assessments for this
property doubled (from $100 to $200) between 1911 and 1914 and rose again (from $200 to $700) between
1916 and 1919. Perhaps a small house from a neighboring lot was moved here during the 19-teens, or
perhaps the outbuilding at the rear of this property was attached to the house during this period.
After an early life of slavery; a terrifying escape to freedom in St. Catherine’s, Canada; and a close brush
(for Thomas Elliott) with death at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, with John Brown; this family found relative
safety and stability in Auburn, New York, surrounded by friends and family from their old neighborhood in
Maryland, from 1868 to about 1882. This modest house represents not wealth but freedom, physical safety,
home ownership, and community support for a family who risked their lives to achieve what many
Americans took for granted.
Written by Judith Wellman and Kate Clifford Larson
Property research by Tanya Warren
5
Tax assessments, Auburn, Second Ward, 1868, City of Auburn Records Retention Office; P.A.
Cunningham, Surveyor, Map of the City of Auburn, Cayuga County, N.Y. (Philadelphia: W.W. Richie,
1871); City Deed Book 879, p. 196.
6
Larson, Bound for the Promised Land, “Ross-Stewart Family Tree,” after 295.
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179
John H. and Mary Waire House, c. 1890
35 Richardson (Union) Avenue
Auburn, New York
Significance: Home of probable freedom seeker and leaders of African American community
February 2005
Looking NW
In the 1860s, John Waire, born about 1836 in Virginia, became part of the partnership of Hornbeck and
Waire, successor to Morgan Freeman’s barbershop. In Auburn, as elsewhere throughout the nation, barbers
formed an elite group among African Americans. Before the Civil War, Morgan Freeman, born in slavery
in 1803 to Kate and John Freeman, was the primary barber in Auburn. He died in 1863, and according to
his obituary, he kept one of the main safe houses on the Underground Railroad for 29 years. Sometime
before 1857, Freeman moved his shop from Cumpston Lane to the northeast corner of Genesee and State
Street. Sebeo Hornbeck, born in New York State, probably in slavery, worked with him in that location,
and John Waire became his partner in the 1860s.
John Waire quickly became part of the local and regional African American community. In 1870, he was
appointed, along with Zadoc Bell and Nelson Davis (Harriet Tubman’s husband), as trustee for the property
of the short-lived AME Church of Auburn (known also as St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal Church). He
became a hostler and barber in the firm of Hornbeck and Waire, which operated at 3 Genesee Street, 3
Market, and then at 115? Genesee Street, at the corner of State Street.
The 1867-68 Auburn city directory reported John H. Waire lived at 9 Grover Street. Later, the Waire
family moved to the new section of Auburn opening on Union Avenue near Harriet Tubman’s home. In the
1880s and 1890s, John H. and Mary Waire lived in several houses along Union Avenue (now Richardson
Avenue), including 19, 28, and 35 Union Avenue. Judging from the evidence of the relatively rapid
turnover of their houses, John Waire was not only a barber but also a real estate developer.
The Waire family did not appear in the 1870 census, but by 1880, they lived at 19 Union Avenue.
According to the 1880 census, John H. Waire, age 34, was a barber, born in Virginia. His wife, Mary E.
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III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
[DuBoise] Waire, age 29, was born in New York, keeping house. They had 5 children—Alta H. (8),
William H. (6), Anna M. (4), Harry (2)., and Bessie (1 month), all born in New York. In the 1887-88 city
directory, John H. and Mary Waire lived at 28 Union Avenue. By 1891-1902, they and their children had
moved into this house at 35 Union Avenue. No house appeared on this site on either P.A. Cunningham’s
1871 map of Auburn or Hopkins’ 1882 Auburn atlas. As late as 1885-86, this property was still listed in tax
assessments as a vacant lot, owned by John Reed, worth $100, so the Waire family probably built this
house to their own specifications sometime in the late 1880s or very early 1890s. It is frame, gable-end-tothe street house, typical of an urban neighborhood in the late nineteenth century. Waire family descendents
still own it.7
19 Union Avenue
Site of Waire family home, 1880
Current structure probably dates c. 1880-1900
28 Union Avenue
Site of Waire family home, late 1880s.
Current house probably dates c. 1880-1900.
7
P.A. Cunningham, Map of Auburn, New York (Philadelphia: W.W. Richie, 1871); City Atlas of Auburn,
N.Y. (Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins, 1882); Database compiled from Auburn City Directories and ImageMate Real Property Records from Cayuga County Real Property Office by Tanya Warren. Online.
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III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
181
City Atlas of Auburn, N.Y. Philadelphia: G.M. Hopkins, 1882.
Waire Family--1880 Census
Waire
Waire
Waire
Waire
Waire
Waire
Waire
John H.
Mary E.
Alta H.
William H.
Anna M.
Harry
Bessie
m
f
f
m
f
m
f
34
29
8
6
4
2
1mo
Bl
Bl
Bl
Bl
Bl
Bl
Bl
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Auburn
Union Ave.
Union Ave.
Union Ave.
Union Ave.
Union Ave.
Union Ave.
Union Ave.
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
118
118
118
118
118
118
118
11
11
11
11
11
11
11
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
Head
Wife
Daughter
Son
Daughter
Son
Daughter
Barber
Keeping house
At school
At school
At Home
At Home
At Home
Waire Family Residences from Auburn City Directories and Cayuga County Image-Mate
Database
Waire, Altie
Waire, Altie
Waire, Altie
Waire, Anna
no
no
no
no
1894-95
1895-96
1891-92
1895-96
Lincoln- 6 bds
South- 106
Union Ave- 3
Fulton- 41-1/2
Gone-replaced by Wegman's
Gone
Most definitely the same house
Gone
Waire, Bessie E.
Waire, Bessie E.
Waire, Grace L.
no
no
no
1900-01
1897-98
1900-01
Union Ave.- 35
Swift- 40, student CGS
Elizabeth- 7
Gone-replaced by 1920's house
Victorian, built about 1900-likely same house
Waire, Grace L.
no
Union Ave-. 35 bds
Most definitely same house-Imate suggests const. Date of 1890.
Waire, Harrison D.
no
1900-02
1895-97;
1901
Union Ave- 35 bds
Most definitely same house-Imate suggests const. Date of 1890.
Waire, Henry D.
Waire, John & Mary
(DuBoise)
Waire, John H.
no
1897-98
Union Ave.- 35 bds
Most definitely same house-Imate suggests const. Date of 1890.
yes
yes
Union/Richardson-35
Grover- 9
Gone-replaced by late Victorian structure
Waire, John H. and Mary
Waire, John H. and Mary
Waire, John H. and Mary
Waire, John H. and Mary
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
Genesee- 3 h (work)
Grover- 9
Market- 35 (work)
Market 57- (work)
Union Ave -19 n South
h
Gone
Gone-replaced by late Victorian structure
Gone
Gone
Waire, John H. and Mary
1929
1867-1868
1879-80;
1880-81
1867-68
1887-88)
1891-94
1879-80;
1880-81
Waire, John H. and Mary
yes
1887-88)
Union Ave 28 h
Possible site of earlier home-present home of 1890 const.-Imate
Most definitely same house-Imate suggests const. Date of 1890.
Possible site of earlier home-present home of 1890 const.-Imate
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III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
Waire, John H. and Mary
Waire, William
yes
no
1891-94
1893-96
Union Ave 35 h
Market 57
Most definitely same house-Imate suggests const. Date of 1890.
Waire, William
no
1893-96
Union Ave. 35 bds.
Most definitely same house-Imate suggests const. Date of 1890.
Gone
Tax Assessments—35 Union Avenue
LAST NAME
FIRST NAME
Town
YEAR
Reed
John W.
Auburn
1885
Reed
John W.
Auburn
1886
Property/Lot #
35 Union-vacant
lot
35 Union-vacant
lot
Sources:
Bryant, Judith, comp., “Directory Database of African Americans in Auburn, New
York.”
Bryant, Gladys Stewart. “Census of Auburn,” Typscript, 1929.
Auburn, Two Hundred Years of History, 1793-1993 (Auburn: Auburn Bicentennial
Committee, 1992), 39.
Storke, Elliott. History of Cayuga County.
U.S. Census, 1880.
Warren, Tanya. “Sites Relating to the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism, and African
American Life in Auburn, from City Directories and Image Mate Database.”
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REAL-$
100
100
III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
183
Philip and Mary Gaskin House
34 Union Richardson (Union) Avenue
Auburn, New York
Significance: Home of freedom seekers
497
February 2, 2005
Looking SW
This house represents the second generation of families of freedom seekers, as those who came in
the 1850s and 1860s began to intermarry.
Thomas Elliott and Ann Marie Stewart (Harriet Tubman’s niece), both freedom seekers from
Maryland, bought a home at 31 Union (Richardson) Avenue. They raised two daughters. One of
them, Mary Elliott, married Philip Gaskin, who had come in 1864 from Virginia as a young boy
(8-10 years old), with his parents, Mary and Richard Gaskin. The Gaskins settled in Ledyard,
where Mary and Richard bought a home on Dixon Road in 1869. When Mary Elliott and Philip
Gaskin married, they built this home at 34 Union Avenue (now Richardson), across the street
from her parents, in a newly-opened suburb on the south of the city.
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The 1880 census did not list any Gaskins in Auburn, but the Auburn city directory for 1887-88
listed Philip Gaskin at 34 Union. In 1892, Mary and Philip Gaskin, both 38, were living here,
along with Delia (age 49), Frankie (age 40), Naomi (age 43), Harriet M. (age 34), and Mary and
Philip’s two children, Harriet (age 14) and John (age 10). Philip Gaskin was a barber, perhaps
working with the firm of his neighbor, John Waire, who lived across the street at 35 Union
Avenue (Hornbeck and Waire). In 1894, Philip Gaskin was assessed for a residence at 34 Gaskin
worth $100.
Further work in assessment records would indicate when the current house was built.
By 1929, Philip and Mary Gaskin were living at 77 Chapman Avenue with their son, Philip
Gaskin, Jr., his wife, Myrtle Gaskin, and their children.
Mary Gaskin, 1913
With Harriet Tubman and friends, at Tubman Home
Courtesy of Tubman Home for the Aged
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186
III. Sites and Stories: Auburn--South
Auburn, South, 1904
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