Wesleyan Methodist Church

The Wesleyan Methodist Church was a biracial abolitionist congregation and a major center of the Underground Railroad in Syracuse. Luther Lee, pastor in 1843 and from 1852 to 1855 and editor of the True Wesleyan from 1844 to 1852, assisted as many as 365 freedom seekers a year. Church members Charles, Montgomery, and Chloe Merrick raised money and supplied railroad passes to freedom seekers bound for freedom in Canada. James Baker, a Georgia-born whitewasher, and Mary Baker, his Maryland-born wife, were freedom seekers themselves, and after the 1851 arrest of William "Jerry" Henry, the Bakers and some other fugitives living in Syracuse feared more arrests and soon fled to Canada. The church hosted a prayer service for John Brown when he was hung on December 2, 1859, and it also hosted a gathering of Syracuse black citizens on January 20, 1863, to celebrate Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Its members also supported the early women's rights movement, and Susan B. Anthony spoke there in 1852, demanding for women "all the rights enjoyed by men, even to the ballot box."

Syracuse, New York · United States