2008 - 2009 Union College and the Abolitionist Movement
As part of a number of campus projects designed to complement Founders Day this year, students, faculty and staff members are researching the life of Viney, an escaped slave who came to Schenectady and was employed by the College.
Union College will be honoring Moses Viney at our 2009 Founders Day program. We have scheduled historian James McPherson to discuss Union College’s role in the abolitionist movement. A painting of Moses Viney, designed by Simmie Knox, will also be unveiled. Knox, a well known portrait painter has painted the portraits of both Bill and Hilary Clinton, to name a few.
Eliphalet Nott, a known abolitionist and President of Union College took in Moses Viney, a runaway slave, as his employed coachman and messenger. During the Fugitive Slave Law Act of 1850, Viney’s slave owners came to Schenectady County in search of him. At that time President Nott paid for Viney to travel to Canada and gave him a substantial amount of money for his expenditures until he could buy back Viney’s freedom. In 1852, Viney returned to Union College and continued to assist Nott during his last few years of life. Nott suffered from a series of paralyzing strokes from 1859 – 1864. Nott died in 1866 after serving 62 years as Union’s president. Moses Viney cared for President and Mrs. Nott until their deaths and was given a substantial inheritance from their wills. Moses Viney is buried in the Ancestral Burial Ground in Vale Cemetery, Schenectady NY.
Just like many of the individuals in the plot, Viney does not have a grave site marker. He is one of the many individuals buried in the Ancestral Grounds that students are encouraged to do research on, including Corporal Jared Jackson who served with the 20th Regiment of the US Colored Troops of the Civil War and Bartlett Jackson an escaped slave who fled the South when the confederation collapsed. In the Spring 2009, Union College students plan to fund raise to assist the Cemetery in designing makers for Moses Viney, his wife and the many other individuals in the African American Ancestral Burial Ground. Union College and Schenectady High School faculty have used the ancestral site for historical documentation, archeological and historical classroom field trips, and community service clean up and planting projects. Having the Ancestral Burial Ground as part of the Underground Railroad Network to Freedom will allow the historical connection of escaped and former slaves and African Americans to be documented and analyzed from birth to death.