ALBANY — Staff from a museum in the Adirondacks are in Albany this weekend, seeking feedback on its proposed new exhibit, “Black Experience in the Adirondacks.”
The museum, Adirondack Experience, has been doing archaeological work at the site of a free Black settlement in Lake Placid. Using LiDAR, a laser technology, they are trying to locate Timbuctoo homesteads.
Abolitionist Gerrit Smith gave land to 3,000 free Black New Yorkers to meet the state’s voting laws. From 1821 to 1870, the state would not let Black men vote unless they owned $250 worth of land. Smith donated 120,000 acres to help 3,000 people vote. There is still dispute over whether the land was valuable enough to meet the voting requirement, and in many cases, farms were not successful in the rural area, according to historians. Adirondack Experience is looking for evidence of homes or fields…