History will never be able to restore Sojourner Truth’s childhood to her. When she was a young girl known as Isabella, growing up as a slave in the Hudson Valley, she worked day in and day out for several owners, sustained terrible beatings, and lost almost all her brothers and sisters because slave owners sold them away. Nothing, however, could extinguish her spirit. Finally as a young adult, she escaped by walking out the door in the pre-dawn darkness one morning and trudging many miles, carrying her infant daughter Sophia and only a few belongings. At various times in her life, she spoke of how others had stolen her childhood from her.

After this month, a new bronze memorial statue is sure to mean that others will know much more about what Truth endured as a child. The sculpture in the Town of Esopus, just south of Kingston, will bring attention to the experiences and hardships of her early life as a slave in Ulster County, N.Y. Moreover, its physical presence and qualities will capture the strength and dignity of this young girl who later escaped slavery and became an abolitionist, lifelong activist, and champion of human rights.

The Town of Esopus will unveil the statue in a ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 21, at 2 p.m., at the Sojourner Truth Memorial, located at the corner of Route 9W and Salem Street, Port Ewen. The unveiling caps an ambitious initiative over several years by a dedicated group of Ulster County residents. Truth was born in nearby Rifton around 1897 and grew up as a slave in the Hudson Valley, and this effort aims to increase public knowledge about her beginnings. It also brings home that slavery survived well into the 19th century in New York State. Furthermore, those behind the sculpture intend that it reminds others that children, as well as adults, remain enslaved in parts of the world today.

The goal of the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee in Esopus “is to draw attention to her early life in Ulster County,” says Anne Gordon, the Ulster County historian who as head of the local committee has played the leading role in this initiative. “Three out of four people say to us, `We had no idea that she was born here.’ “ As the veiling comes off of the statue, so, too, will the covering fall further from a child’s life that unfolded in several Ulster County stone houses and along its lands and roads. As Gordon explains, “We want more of the story to be out, to be acknowledged, and to be correct.”

“I’m so thrilled that we accomplished this,” Gordon says.

The sculpture is the only statue to show a slave child at work, according to Gordon, who has done extensive research on the subject. As such, it will not only memorialize Sojourner Truth’s life but also educate those who see it. As Gordon notes, “Children will be able to see and know, `Yes, children were enslaved here.’ ”

Recent Revelations

The memorial is a small space that could well draw major attention once people know about the statue. During her life, Sojourner Truth found quiet places where she would reflect and talk to God. Her mother had taught her that God lives in the sky and to talk to the Divine when she needed help. Thus, it’s fitting that the Town of Esopus has created a memorial to her at a small corner plaza that is a somewhat of a respite in this busy village. It lies in the same area as the tavern house where she lived and next to the roadways she walked. During the unveiling at the Sojourner Truth Memorial, the audience will not only see the new sculpture but also a refurbished, weatherproof large sign with information about Truth. The sign sums up Truth’s life and early days in Ulster County and describes the local places of her slavery, escape to freedom, and accomplishments that foreshadowed her lifelong work. The memorial also offers an excellent point to set off on an exploration of Truth’s history in the Hudson Valley.

Human rights will be a theme of the unveiling. Nancy Giles, Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and an on-air contributor to CBS network’s Sunday Morning, will be the featured speaker. The Amadou Diallo drum ensemble and other musicians will perform. (The town is encouraging attendees to bring lawn chairs. Parking is available on nearby town streets.) New York State Assemblyman Kevin Cahill obtained a capital grant for major funding of the statue and park. Local businesses, organizations, and individuals also contributed to the memorial’s creation.

It isn’t that Truth’s life or contributions to history have been invisible in the Hudson Valley. The SUNY New Paltz library is named Sojourner Truth Library, for example, and it contains a large, vivid mural of Truth as an adult. Markers exist in some parts of Ulster County telling of her birthplace, history, and accomplishments here, such as one in front of the Ulster County Courthouse in Kingston, where then-Isabella fought successfully in court to secure the freedom of her son Peter.

The increased visibility of Truth’s early life is due to several reasons. Biographer Carleton Mabee, among others, shed more light some two decades ago onto her life in the Hudson Valley. In recent years, historians such as Gordon and other scholars and citizens have uncovered much more detail to fill out the experiences that Truth had described in her narrative, such as living at the Jug Tavern.

Thanks to this research and work, you can now trace more of Truth’s approximate 30 years as a slave here, from her birthplace in Rifton and a stone house where she dwelled and worked as a slave in Port Ewen to what some have documented to be the escape route through the woods and countryside that she walked in 1826. (In a three-part series in 2012, Mindfulwalker.com explored this history and ways to explore it in Ulster County via walking and driving; the links are below.)

”To See and Know”

The full-sized bronze sculpture is sure to become a powerful focal point of Truth’s early days and present a strong, evocative image of Truth as a child. It depicts the young Isabella at about 13 years of age. Sculptor Trina Greene, whose works have been in exhibits in the Hudson Valley, New York City, and elsewhere, has created the statue. At this time of her life, Truth recounted in her narrative, she lived a “wild, out-of-door kind of life,” as a slave for tavern owner Martinus Schryver. She had to hoe corn, carry roots and herbs for the making of beer, and carry heavy jugs of molasses or liquor from the town of Rondout. The statue shows Truth as a tall, strong girl at work, carrying jugs for the slaveholder.

It will likely open some eyes to the truth that slavery in the U.S. wasn’t solely a Southern evil. Slavery remained legal in New York State until 1827. In fact, nearly one in 10 persons was a slave in the Hudson Valley around the time of the Revolutionary War, Gordon notes. Born around 1797 as the daughter of slaves James and Elizabeth Baumfree, Isabella escaped slavery in 1826. She decided to make her escape after her slaveholder, John Dumont, went back on a promise to release her a year before New York would free the slaves in the state.

Gordon hopes the sculpture sends a compelling message. Truth spent just over the first three decades in this area before moving to New York City and other parts of the country. She devoted much of the remaining four decades crusading for human rights, at times facing hostile audiences. In Gordon’s view, the statue will say to those who see it, especially children, “look at what she did with her life.”

The sculpture will show the young Isabella holding two heavy jugs as she transports them for her slave holder. In the sculpture, Greene has sought to render the difficult, day-to-day reality Isabella endured performing physical labor and yet an inner, luminous spirit that helped her to survive, according to the artist in an interview last autumn. In her narrative, Truth described this time period as her “trials,” which included beatings at the hands of John Neely, a slave owner who purchased Isabella at an auction from her first owners, the Hardenbergh family. Later in life, Truth showed the scars from these beatings to audiences who expressed skepticism about slavery. Indeed, the sculpture has markings for some of her scars, in an opening of her clothing at the back of the neck.

Isabella’s Qualities

What Truth overcame almost defies comprehension. Slave owners sold her three separate times before she was 13 years of age. When a slave owner first sold her, it meant having to leave her parents. She endured beatings and had to do hard labor each day, such as trudging up and down the hills carrying large jugs between Port Ewen and the Rondout or working in the fields, as Gordon explains. In the nearby Jug Tavern, at Route 9W and River Road, where she was enslaved by Schryver, she lived and had to sleep in the stone house’s basement, a damp, cold place.

Out of this childhood, Isabella emerged as a serious, determined, and spirited young girl, which the sculpture intends to capture. “She is serious, but she is not beaten down. She is looking ahead,” Gordon says. Historical research and Truth’s narrative formed a basis for guiding the statue’s appearance, but ultimately the sculptor brought her shaping and vision to it. Truth’s parents had African roots. As a key source guiding what Isabella may have looked like, Greene used The People of Kau, German film director Leni Riefenstahl’s photographic monograph on the life of a group of people living in the Nuba Mountains in southern Sudan. The physical features and strong spirit of the Nuba peoples informed her creation of the young Isabella, Greene has said. She also consulted Truth’s pictures from later life.

Gordon is very excited about the event and the culmination of the committee’s work. For the historian, the unveiling will hold its own revelation. Though she has worked countless hours in leading the memorial committee, consulted closely with the artist, and seen a clay model, Gordon has chosen not to see the statue until its unveiling. “I’m going to be like everyone else there (at the unveiling),” she says.

A figurative light of illumination is sure to shine once the veiling comes off. Because of the work of Gordon, her fellow committee members, and others in the Hudson Valley, Sojourner Truth’s early life is certain to gain more attention. The statue is likely to make even more real what words have sought to capture. Children will see a sculpture of a child their age who was a slave but whose spirit and conviction overcame horror. In her gaze, they can draw their own lessons about a girl who kept moving forward, far beyond the harsh circumstances of her childhood.

The Series

Part 1: In Sojourner Truth’s Footsteps – Explores the Jug Tavern, where Truth lived and worked as a slave

Part 3: Statue to Show Sojourner Truth as a Child – Tells of the work to create a statue of Truth as a child and reveals the plans to make it the centerpiece of the Sojourner Truth Memorial in Esopus

This stone house, the former Jug Tavern in Port Ewen, N.Y., is one where Sojourner Truth was a slave. The house, on Route 9W, lies about a half-mile south of the Sojourner Truth Memorial, where the Town of Esopus will unveil a new statue of Truth as a child.