Dreaming of Timbuctoo
The Struggle for Freedom in the Adirondacks
Summary: In the shadow of the High Peaks, where rocky soil and old stone walls mark what once was, lies the ghost of a radical dream called Timbuctoo, a Black settlement carved from Adirondack wilderness in defiance of racist voting laws. Born from abolitionist Gerrit Smith’s unprecedented land grant, this bold experiment gave free Black men not just acreage, but the chance to claim citizenship and political power through the land itself. The terrain was punishing, the odds steep, but the vision was revolutionary: a hidden foothold for freedom, scratched from an unforgiving landscape. Though few traces remain, the story endures—rooted in the belief that justice could take shape, acre by acre.
A Land Beyond the Map
In the Adirondacks, not far from Lake Placid, lies a place you won’t find on most maps. There are no streets, no monuments, no chimneyed ruins to mark where homes once stood. The few physical remnants that remain are buried beneath trees, frost, and time, stone fragments consumed by root systems, rusted iron tools lost in the undergrowth, traces of lives folded into the forest floor. No signage points the way. You could pass through it without ever knowing a community once tried to rise here.
But in the 1840s, this stretch of mountain wilderness carried a name loaded with history and radical intent, Timbuctoo.
Not the West African city once known for its gold, manuscripts, and mosques, but a reinvention of that promise: a settlement carved into northern New York’s high country, born from a vision of Black self-determination and resistance. It was both symbol and strategy, an audacious effort to bypass the racist voting laws of the era, which required Black men in New York to own $250 worth of land before they could cast a ballot.
Here, abolitionist Gerrit Smith sought to weaponize land as liberation. By giving away 120,000 acres to 3,000 free Black men, he aimed not just to provide opportunity, but to create enfranchisement, political power rooted in the soil. Each parcel was more than a homestead. It was a claim to visibility, citizenship, and permanence in a nation that offered none of those freely.
Timbuctoo was never a city of wealth or grandeur, but it was no less ambitious. It was a dream staked into the wilderness, and though few stayed, and fewer still managed to build lasting lives, its legacy is not measured in survival alone. It lies instead in the fact that it ever existed at all.
Freedom by Acre
In 1821, New York amended its state constitution with language that masked its true intent: to suppress Black political power. The law required Black men to own real estate worth at least $250—roughly $8,700 today—before they could vote. White men faced no such threshold. This wasn’t universal disenfranchisement; it was targeted exclusion. In a state that had only recently ended slavery, the law made clear that freedom alone did not guarantee a voice in the political process. Power remained a privilege, priced and rationed.
Into this breach stepped Gerrit Smith.
Abolitionist, land baron, and son of inherited wealth, Smith was among the few white reformers of his era who attempted to turn radical ideology into material action. Where others offered speeches or safe houses, he offered deeds. In 1846, Smith announced he would donate 120,000 acres of Adirondack wilderness, cut from his vast holdings in Essex and Franklin Counties, to 3,000 free Black New Yorkers. The parcels were to be forty acres each, enough, he hoped, to meet the property threshold for voting and provide the foundation for independent, agrarian livelihoods.
It was philanthropy as protest. A land grant as a lever against injustice.
The idea carried the weight of revolutionary promise. Smith envisioned a transformation—urban workers like cooks, barbers, and domestic servants becoming landowning farmers. He aimed to empower individuals and cultivate a new form of citizenship, one grounded in land and permanence, resilient enough to endure the forces of political exclusion.
Turning deeds into working farms proved far more difficult than Smith anticipated. The wilderness was dense, the soil poor, and few of the grantees had the tools or training to make the land yield.
The recipients, many of whom had never held a plow, were expected to clear forest, build shelter, and wrest a harvest from stony ground with minimal support. The land, though abundant in acreage, was sparse in utility, thin-soiled, remote, and unforgiving. Worse still, the grants were scattered across a wide region, preventing the formation of a unified community. Without neighbors to rely on, or farming knowledge to draw from, most of the settlers struggled to survive their first seasons.
And as the trees fell, another barrier rose: the social hostility of white residents who did not welcome Black landowners in their midst. Racism, isolation, and environmental hardship combined to make even free land feel costly.
Smith had tried to subvert a racist law through an act of radical generosity. But his vision of emancipation by farmland soon collided with the realities of geography, labor, and the unyielding structure of systemic exclusion.
The dream wasn’t broken. But the land did not bend easily to it.
Into the Forest
The land was rugged and unwelcoming. Instead of open fields, it offered thick forests, rocky slopes, and difficult terrain. The soil was shallow and scattered with stone, and the few flat areas were often wet or wind-exposed. Even in summer, the air carried a chill, and winter came early, bringing cold that tested the strength of both settlers and the shelters they built.
Much of the terrain consisted of glacial till and granite outcrops. What soil existed was shallow, acidic, and stubborn, reluctant to yield even the hardiest crops. Streams cut unpredictable lines through the woods. The few open spaces were often wetlands or wind-battered clearings, unsuitable for planting. And yet this was the acreage deeded to the recipients, many of whom had never held a shovel outside city streets.
The growing season stretched thin, just a sliver of time between frost and frost. What could be coaxed from the earth had to be done quickly, with strength and precision most of the grantees had never been taught.
The land parcels themselves were scattered, some nestled deep in the wilderness, others hidden behind ridgelines or accessible only by footpath. In total, they stretched across 600 square miles of wild terrain, a fractured geography that made true community almost impossible. There were no clustered villages, no mutual aid circles, no shared barns or churches. Every settler was alone in their clearing, if they got that far.
Most recipients hailed from cities, New York, Albany, Troy, men and families accustomed to the rhythm of urban labor. They were cooks, barbers, tailors, porters, domestic workers. Literate. Resourceful. But wholly unfamiliar with the brutal arithmetic of frontier farming. Very few had the tools or training to fell trees, clear stumps, split logs, or plant in unyielding earth. Fewer still had the means to transport themselves and their families to a place where even the roads gave out before the horizon.
Some never saw the land they were granted. Others made the journey, stood among the trees, tried to stake a future, and left within the year.
By 1850, census records show only thirteen Black families still living in North Elba. By 1871, that number had fallen to just two.
Of the 3,000 who received deeds, the vast majority were erased by time, hardship, or distance. What was offered as a foothold on freedom too often became an isolated struggle against nature, poverty, and the weight of expectations unmet.
And yet the dream had existed. That, too, matters.
What do we lose when we light up the night?
Restoration Obscura’s Field Guide to the Night is a journey through darkness, natural, historical, and psychological. From Cold War bunkers and vanished stars to blackouts, bootleggers, and the silent watchers of the sky, this book uncovers the hidden histories that only reveal themselves after dark. It’s part field guide, part cultural excavation, and a reminder that some truths are only visible when the lights go out.
The Weight of the World
Farming in Timbuctoo wasn’t just hard, it was punishing. The work began with the axe. Towering trees, many centuries old, stood thick and unrelenting. Every clearing came at the cost of blistered hands and splintered muscle. Beneath the forest floor, the earth was littered with stones and glacial debris, stubborn obstacles that had to be pried out before a seed could even touch soil. Settlers labored to construct their own shelters, rough-hewn log cabins assembled from whatever timber they managed to cut, sealed with mud and moss to keep out the Adirondack wind.
Once shelter was raised, the next battle was cultivation. The soil was thin, rocky, and acidic, refusing to yield to novice hands. The growing season was unforgiving, brief, volatile, and often ruined by early frost or unexpected cold snaps. A failed harvest meant hunger, and there was no nearby market, no general store, no backup plan. These weren’t fertile farms, they were survival clearings scratched from forest and stone.
But the land wasn’t the only adversary. The settlers faced a more insidious force in the form of social isolation and racial hostility. There were no churches or schools within walking distance, no doctors, no communal barn-raisings. White neighbors, when not openly hostile, were quietly dismissive. Black land ownership disrupted the social order, and that disruption was met with resentment. In a place already defined by physical remoteness, the psychological toll of bigotry and exclusion only deepened the silence.
And then there was the burden of cost. Even “free” land came with obligations. Taxes had to be paid in cash. Tools, seed, and food had to be bought or bartered. For many, just reaching their assigned acreage had drained what little money they had. The promise of ownership often collapsed under the weight of its hidden expenses.
Adding to this was Gerrit Smith’s moral stipulation: total abstinence from alcohol. While rooted in 19th-century reformist ideals, the requirement imposed a further constraint, an expectation of moral conformity that felt paternalistic, especially in an environment where hardship was constant and comforts were few.
The dream of enfranchisement had been bold. But for many settlers, it became a daily negotiation between survival and disillusionment, a relentless contest not just with the land, but with a system that demanded strength while offering little support in return.
The Epps Legacy
Among the few who stayed was the Epps family, fugitives from slavery who made the journey north from Troy, New York, seeking not only safety but the chance to shape a future on their own terms. While most grantees were forced to abandon their claims due to hardship or hostility, the Epps family endured. In doing so, they became the human anchor of a vanished place.
Lyman Epps Sr. was more than a settler, he became a steward of the fledgling community that tried to take root in the shadow of the High Peaks. Though he had fled bondage, he brought with him more than survival instinct. He brought education, conviction, and vision. A music teacher by trade and calling, he taught shape-note singing and spirituals in a region where Black voices were rarely welcomed, let alone amplified. He also kept sheep and tended his land, building a life from rock and root where others found only resistance.
But it was Epps’s civic contributions that resonate across time. He helped establish one of the region’s earliest Sabbath schools, a critical resource in a place where children had few educational options. He was instrumental in founding the Lake Placid Library and served in the early formation of the local Baptist church. These institutions were more than buildings; they were lifelines in a region where Black settlers had to make their own systems of support from scratch. Through Epps, Timbuctoo became not just an experiment in survival, but a space of cultural and spiritual presence, however fleeting.
His son, Lyman Epps Jr., carried that legacy forward. Born into the margins of a nation still struggling with its moral identity, he lived to be 102 years old. He was the last living person known to have attended the funeral of John Brown in North Elba, placing him squarely between two worlds: the fading frontier of Timbuctoo and the mythic gravity of one of abolition’s most enduring martyrs. Where the forest closed over others, Epps Jr. remained, a living memory of what was attempted and what was lost.
Today, his grave stands quietly at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site. It is modest in size but towering in meaning. There are no surviving cabins, no chimneys, no fences or footpaths to show where the people of Timbuctoo once lived and worked. But that headstone holds the weight of all of it.
Lyman Epps Jr. is buried there, but his grave represents more than a resting place. It stands at the edge of what has been forgotten and what is still remembered—a quiet marker of a story that might have disappeared without him.
John Brown’s Quiet Revolution
In 1849, radical abolitionist John Brown arrived in North Elba and purchased land adjacent to the scattered parcels of Timbuctoo. At first glance, his move might have seemed incongruous, why would one of the most militant voices in the fight against slavery retreat into the remote forests of the Adirondacks? But for Brown, North Elba was not a retreat. It was a proving ground.
While history would immortalize him for the raid on Harpers Ferry and the fiery speeches that preceded the Civil War, Brown’s time in the Adirondacks was quiet, deliberate, and intensely practical. He came not with rifles, but with tools, an ox team, plow, and grit. He sought no audience. Instead, he offered instruction. He taught the basics of farming to those settlers who had arrived from cities like Albany, Troy, and New York, most of whom had never planted a seed or felled a tree.
Brown believed deeply in the Timbuctoo experiment. Where others saw a doomed social project, he saw something sacred. The land, to him, was not merely soil or timber. It was possibility. It was a tool of liberation, an inheritance too long denied to Black Americans, now offered as both refuge and rebuke to the political order that withheld the vote.
He built a rough cabin, raised sheep, and worked the unforgiving Adirondack soil with the same tools and effort as his neighbors. More than anything, he showed up—not as an outsider offering advice, but as someone willing to live the life himself. He shared their hardships, their cold mornings and long silences. He cleared brush, taught what he knew, and stayed long enough to understand. His presence wasn’t symbolic—it was practical, physical, and real.
Brown’s belief in Timbuctoo never wavered, even as the project faltered. While many settlers left under the weight of environmental hardship and social hostility, Brown remained, convinced that the idea was sound even if the execution faltered. His presence offered something the grantees rarely received elsewhere: a white ally who stood beside them in labor and in land, not above them in charity.
That belief would come to define the final chapter of his life. Though he would leave North Elba to wage direct action in Virginia, his body would return. After his execution in 1859, Brown was buried at his homestead in North Elba, not far from the forgotten boundaries of Timbuctoo. In death, he became what he had been in life to the settlers: a sentinel of conviction.
Today, John Brown’s grave is marked and preserved, unlike those of most Timbuctoo pioneers. Yet the stories remain entwined. The myth of Brown the martyr is rooted, in part, in this northern soil, fertilized not just by his ideals, but by the quiet, often unseen efforts he made among the Black farmers trying to carve out a home in a land both hostile and hopeful.
Timbuctoo’s myth does not exist without him. And Brown’s legacy, in full, must include these years among the evergreens, where freedom was measured not in speeches, but in acres and sweat.
What Remains
By the mid-1850s, most of Timbuctoo’s cabins had been abandoned. Smith’s vision struggled against the realities of harsh weather, poor soil, deep-rooted racism, and the lack of practical support for the settlers. For years, historians treated the project as little more than a failed gesture—well-meaning, but unrealistic.
But calling it a failure misses the point.
Timbuctoo was a challenge to injustice. It confronted voter suppression head-on, long before the Civil War, by turning land into a tool for political inclusion. It showed that bold ideas could push against the system, even if they didn’t overcome it.
Today, the land bears few visible traces. But in historical records, in the quiet ground, and in the effort to remember, the story is beginning to grow again.
Resurrecting Timbuctoo
Archaeologists, led by Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron of SUNY Potsdam, have been carefully excavating the site since 2009. Their work has uncovered traces of hearths, artifacts, and household items, small but powerful windows into a hidden past.
At the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, the exhibit Dreaming of Timbuctoo tells this story anew. Curated by Amy Godine, it weaves together land grants, census records, letters, and family lore into a narrative as rich as the forest it vanished into. The annual Blues at Timbuctoo festival, hosted at the same site, offers another kind of remembrance, one of rhythm, resistance, and reunion.
Timbuctoo was not a place destined for permanence. But that doesn’t diminish its purpose. It was an act of rebellion through real estate. It was a prayer carved into the pines of the North Country. Its settlers came not because the land was good, but because the law was unjust.
They left not because they failed, but because they were abandoned by a system that had always preferred them powerless.
Today, Timbuctoo is remembered not as a lost village, but as a living lesson. It tells us that enfranchisement is not a gift. It must be claimed, defended, and sustained. It warns that even the noblest intentions cannot flourish without confronting the full weight of structural inequity.
And it reminds us that some stories take longer to surface, especially when they begin in the wilderness.
Documentation
Documentation and Additional Reading
Godine, Amy. Dreaming of Timbuctoo. Exhibition curated by the John Brown Lives! project, John Brown Farm State Historic Site, Lake Placid, NY, 2001–present.
Kruczek-Aaron, Hadley. “Archaeologies of Freedom: Exploring African American Homesteads in the Adirondacks.” Historical Archaeology 46, no. 1 (2012): 94–117.
Smith, Gerrit. Speech on Land Reform and Suffrage to the Liberty Party Convention. Peterboro, NY, 1846.
New York State Archives. Gerrit Smith Land Grant Records, 1846–1851. Series A0453. Albany, NY.
Dumas, Malinda Maynor. “African Americans and the Adirondacks.” In The Adirondack Atlas, edited by Jerry Jenkins and Andy Keal, 124–127. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. (Context on Black land ownership and urban labor transitions.)
Reynolds, David S. John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. New York: Vintage, 2006.
Weissman, Steve. Abolition and Its Aftermath in the North Country. Plattsburgh, NY: North Country Books, 1997.
Epps, Lyman Jr. “Letter to the Editor.” Lake Placid News, August 12, 1895. (Reprinted in several regional anthologies.)
Stauffer, John. The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Additional Reading & Resources
Books & Articles
Amy Godine, “Freedom’s Trail: Rediscovering the Lost Black Settlements of the Adirondacks.” Adirondack Life Magazine, March 2001.
Kellie Carter Jackson, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster, 2018. (Context on Black abolitionist thought in NY.)
Peter Eisenstadt, Rochester Reform Trail: Gerrit Smith and the Politics of Land, Liberty, and Race. SUNY Press, forthcoming (check academic previews).
Amy Godine, The Black Woods, Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier. A comprehensive history of the antebellum Black farm settlement in the Adirondack mountains that brought abolitionist John Brown to the region and inspired civil rights activists then and today. Cornell, 2023
Archival & Museum Sources
John Brown Farm State Historic Site, Lake Placid, NY – permanent exhibit “Dreaming of Timbuctoo” and Blues at Timbuctoo festival materials.
SUNY Potsdam Timbuctoo Archaeology Project, led by Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron.
https://www.potsdam.edu (Search: Timbuctoo archaeology)
Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark, Peterboro, NY. Collections include original land grant documents and abolitionist correspondence.
New York State Archives, Albany – extensive records on the 1846 suffrage law, Smith’s land patents, and grantee maps.
Documentaries & Audio
Searching for Timbuctoo (2022), dir. Paul Miller. A documentary based on Amy Godine’s research. [Available via PBS affiliate screenings and educational use.]
Blues at Timbuctoo (North Country Public Radio coverage). A musical and cultural celebration held at John Brown Farm that revives the memory of the settlement.
Maps & Visual Material
1846 Timbuctoo Land Grant Maps, New York State Museum Collection.
US Federal Census, 1850–1870, Essex and Franklin Counties, New York – useful for tracing the remaining Black residents by surname.
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Great story. I've been camping several times in the Lake Placid/Adirondack area having lived in NY state. [Orange and Delaware counties.]The farmers around us had a number of sayings; "Two stone for every dirt", and, "We have two seasons, winter and the 4th of July".