Louisa May Alcott's Syracuse Connection

Louisa May Alcott’s uncle was Samuel Joseph May, an abolitionist minister who took part in the famous “Jerry” rescue in Syracuse in 1851.  Below is a brief biographical sketch of the man for whom the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society is named.

By Sonaite Debebe-Kumssa

Samuel Joseph May was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 12^th, 1797. May attended Harvard University from 1813-1817 and decided to become a minister during his junior year.  In 1820 May was ordained as a minster by the Boston Association of Ministers.  The following year May was preaching in Brooklyn, Connecticut and was invited to settle there by the congregation.  He declined and found himself in pulpits in New York City and Boston.  May received a request to reconsider heading the Connecticut congregation in 1822.  This time he accepted the appointment and worked to ease tensions between the Unitarian Society and the Trinitarian Congregationalists.  During his time in Connecticut he advocated for statewide school reform, the temperance movement, and became a fervent abolitionist after hearing William Lloyd Garrison speak in 1830. May worked with Garrison to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society.  In 1834 May’s home became a station on the Underground Railroad and he introduced integrated seating to his church in Brooklyn. 

In 1836 May left Connecticut to serve in the pulpit of First Parish in South Scituate (later Norwell), Massachusetts.  May left South Scituate in 1842 and served as the president of the Normal School (schools where teachers were trained) in Lexington, Massachusetts. He continued his participation in abolitionist activities and clashed with his board when he invited a young African-American woman to enter the Normal School.  He resigned from this post in 1844 and served as the temporary Unitarian minister in Lexington.

May came to Syracuse in 1845 to serve at the Church of the Messiah which was located at Burnet Avenue and Lock Street.  May continued helping escaped slaves flee to Canada by having his home be a stop on the Underground Railroad.  May’s work in the abolitionist movement was bolstered with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.  The act was a component of a set of bills known as the Compromise of 1850.  The balance of power between free states and slave holding states was precarious because of California’s desire to be admitted to the Union as a free state.  Ultimately, Congress decided to allow California to enter the Union as a free state but passed the Fugitive Slave Act to appease politicians who represented slave holding states.  This act required that citizens and law enforcement officials in all states help slave owners reclaim their escaped slaves. 

A group of abolitionists came together and decided that they would work to prevent the execution of the law in Syracuse.  They determined a bell signal and a meeting place where they would come together to plan the liberation of any captured slave.  May was included in this group and played a key role in one of their rescue attempts.  On October 1^st, 1851 May heard the signal and went to the meeting place.  He learned that William “Jerry” Henry had been arrested for theft at his place of employment.  Once federal marshals had Henry restrained they informed him that he was being arrested as an escaped slave in accordance to the Fugitive Slave Act.  That evening a large group entered the police station and overpowered the officers who were guarding Henry and helped him escape to Canada. 

 Nine years later May would deliver an address to a group of people celebrating the success of this heroic act.  The Daily Journal reprinted May’s address where he gave a rationale for the actions of the men present: “The Rescue of Jerry was not done in opposition to government, but in obedience to the highest authority, in resistance to tyranny, which is everywhere and always antagonistic to government.  It was not done in defiance of law, but in reprobation of an attempted outrage upon law.”  A monument commemorating this event stands in Clinton Square.

 May also continued to work for reforms in education, calling for the abolishment of corporal punishment in schools.   “It seems strange,” he wrote in a local paper, “ that our State and National legislators should have interposed their authority to prohibit the infliction of corporal punishments upon hardened, adult offenders, and left tender, unformed children still to suffer the lash, the cow-hide, or the ferule”.  He also believed that all children should have access to a good education.  He advocated for the creation of a reform school in Syracuse to educate children who for whatever reason weren’t doing well in public or private schools.  May believed that the creation of this school was of more importance than having a world renowned university because, He said, “our common schools are the people’s college.” May also worked with the Onondaga Nation to build a schoolhouse, secure an instructor, and sufficient funding from the superintendent of public instruction. 

May retired from his ministry in 1868 and several ladies of the parish presented their beloved pastor with a dressing-gown and a Government Bond worth 250 dollars to show their esteem.  When the laying of railroad tracks required that the Church of the Messiah move from its location on Burnet Avenue and Lock Street the church remembered their love for May, dedicating the church’s new home at 742 James Street as May Memorial Church in October of 1885.  The church moved to East Genesee Street during the 1960’s and the church was named May Memorial Unitarian Society since May’s message of racial equality was still relevant to the life of the church and its congregation.  The current iteration of the church’s name was to reflect the merging of the Unitarians and Universalists into one denomination and to keep May’s social activism at the forefront of the church’s consciousness.