Last updated: March 31, 2022
Place
The Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence
Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence, Albany, NY
Quick Facts
Location:
Albany, NY
Significance:
Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence served as a meeting place for the Albany Vigilance Committee in the mid-1850s, where they assisted hundreds of freedom seekers with resources.
Designation:
National Register of Historic Places, National Underground Railroad Network To Freedom Site
Amenities
2 listed
Accessible Sites, Restroom - Accessible
The Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence served as a center for Underground Railroad activity in Albany, New York. The Albany Vigilance Committee, an abolitionist organization dedicated to helping freedom seekers, met at the home of powerful Black Abolitionists Stephen and Harriet Myers throughout the 1850s. Furthermore, they Myers used their home as a place to shelter individuals on the Underground Railroad.
A document called “The Vigilance Committee Flyer,” recorded assistance to 287 freedom seekers in a 10- month period and dramatically tells the story of a group of 16 receiving help as they passed through Albany on July 13, 1856. This flyer provides an address that is the same location as the discovered Myers Residence. It also features Stephen Myers as the leader of the Committee.
The Record of Fugitives, a journal authored by Sydney Howard Gay of the National Anti-Slavery Standard newspaper, lists 250 freedom seekers and the guidance Gay provided them to reach other safe houses. He referred fifty of them to the Myers Residence. For example, Gay provided a freedom seeker named Benjamin Wilson money to travel to Albany and instructions to receive help from Stephen Myers. After leaving the Myers home, Mr. Wilson went on to Canada. Other freedom seekers such as Catherine Brice, whose story is documented in William Still’s book The Underground Railroad, found work and a home in Albany.
After 1854, Harriet Tubman chose an Albany route for her rescues. In an interview with Wilbur Siebert, the first academic historian of the Underground Railroad and professor at Ohio State University, she explained that she went “to Albany, where Stephen Myers looked after her and her charges.”