The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark (GSENHL) buildings in Peterboro NY will be closed for the 2020 season due to COVID19. The exterior exhibits on the grounds of the Estate will remain open each day from dawn to dusk for persons practicing social distancing and respecting the properties. GSENHL management encourages people to take a fresh air walk of as many steps as possible around three acres of the landmark as they engage with spaces where enslaved persons found freedom  and abolitionists walked and talked. Exhibit signage describes the buildings and the people in those buildings during the 19th Century.

Visitors are invited to take a picture of themselves on the national landmark and send it to info@gerritsmith.org with names to demonstrate that “I FOUND PETERBORO!”- and permission to place the picture on the website – if you would like it to be included on this site.

The Estate can provide field lessons for home history classes by bringing notebooks, sketchbooks, pens, crayons, and phones for assignments! The Gerrit Smith Estate is a site on the Madison County Freedom Trail, one of two National Historic Landmarks in the county, one of twenty-two sites on the Heritage NY Underground Railroad Trail, a founder of the Underground Railroad Consortium of New York State, and an early designation to the National Park Service Network to Freedom, the national Underground Railroad path. 

Visitors are encouraged to peek through the laundry window to imagine Harriet Tubman sipping coffee with Viney Russell on one of Tubman’s trips, to stroll in the yard where John Brown walked with Gerrit Smith making plans to destabilize slavery in the South, to touch the door casement where the horses from the stable passed on their way north, to stand at the mansion site where Elizabeth Cady met Henry Stanton, and to feel a brick that Frederick Douglass may have touched on his many entries to the Land Office to get social and monetary support from Gerrit Smith.

See PETERBORO EVENTS for the latest updates

The Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark updates:

The Peterboro Mercantile is undertaking a make-over but can still take online orders for books, buttons, jewelry, magnets, stationery, tee shirts, and other articles related to Peterboro. 

For more information: www.gerritsmith.org, info@gerritsmith.org, 315-308-1890