Ulster County’s early white landowners enslaved thousands of Black people to operate their businesses, farms and households. They made up a powerful pro-slavery voting group in the state Legislature and worked together to re-capture people who sought to escape enslavement.
But other Ulster County residents played a major role in helping end enslavement. Sojourner Truth, born in Hurley in around 1797, sued her former enslaver after he illegally sold her 5-year-old son away to Alabama. Remarkably, she succeeded in getting him back. With her 1850 memoir, she became a leading anti-slavery advocate.
After enslavement was abolished in New York in 1827, free people like Judy Jackson stayed in Ulster County and built their own communities.