(Tribune News Service) — Growing up, sisters Jo Anne Bakeman, of North Syracuse, and Barbara Fero, of Onondaga Hill, knew little of their family’s history.

It was a subject that was difficult to bring up when they were young.

Bakeman remembers that if they, or their brother Willard, raised questions about their past, their father “lifted his eyebrows and the conversation ended.”

“Nobody talked about that there were Black ancestors in the family,” she said.

Fero recalled being at a local historical society with her father and saw “Bakeman” listed in Census records as “Mulatto.” Her father said, “They are not ours.”

Both Jo Anne and Barbara are certain that their family left behind “clues,” which would take the sisters on a decades-long journey for their family’s story and heritage.

Visits to old graveyards and scraps of newspaper lit a fire, which turned out to be a decades-long search, that brought them into contact with relatives around the country they never knew they had.

Their research led them to the family patriarch, Henry Bakeman, a Black American Revolutionary War soldier, and one of Oswego County’s earliest settlers.

“Here we all are,” Jo Anne Bakeman said of her great, great, great grandfather, “because of him.”

Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 8,000 men of African descent served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and thousands more served in state militias and at sea.

Both free and enslaved Black men joined to fight in what would be the last integrated American military force until 1948.

Henry Bakeman was one of them.

He was born in Rocky Hill, N.J., on Jan. 1, 1765. When he was three, he moved with his father to the Mohawk Valley, first close to Schenectady and then to the German settlement at Stone Arabia in 1776.

On Oct. 19, 1780, that community was destroyed by 900 British Regulars and Loyalist soldiers during Sir John Johnson’s invasion of the Valley.

New York Gov. George Clinton chose Col. Marinus Willett to lead the state militia to defend the area. Desperate for manpower, in 1781 the State Legislature decided that any enslaved man who enlisted for three years would be freed.

Sixteen-year-old Henry Bakeman signed on at Stone Arabia on April 17, 1781.

There is no evidence he had ever been a slave.

According to his pension application Bakeman did not see “any battle of any note” but had “many skirmishes with the Indians and Tories.” He also acted as a scout and courier.

The closest he came to combat was during the final campaign of the American Revolution.

In the winter of 1783, while peace negotiations had already begun, Gen. George Washington hoped to ensure American control of western lands by recapturing Fort Ontario.

Washington tasked Willett and 500 men with a surprise attack on the fort on the morning of Feb. 11, 1783.

“Who would attack the fort in February?” Barbara Fero asked, answering her own question with, “only a Southern person, George Washington,” she thought would be foolish enough to try it during a Central New York winter.

After becoming confused and disoriented in a lake effect squall, the small force had to return to Fort Herkimer. They had no food and three men died.

Henry Bakeman’s feet froze while crossing icy Oneida Lake during the doomed campaign and he suffered from the disability for the rest of his life.

“He was very courageous,” Fero said. “But his lifelong disability did not slow him down.”

Nor did the outright racism he faced after the war.

After being discharged at Poughkeepsie in June 1784, Bakeman settled in Montgomery County and married a woman of Dutch ancestry, Joan Christianse. They had at least five children.

Joanne Bakeman said that Henry was denied what other Revolutionary War soldiers were promised — a piece of land for their service.

“He never got a land grant from Congress,” she said. “So, he saved his money and bought another man’s.”

“I always picture him as an outspoken Black man who would not have anything put over him.”

In 1800, Bakeman returned to what would become Oswego County to settle down.

Purchasing part of “Military Lot Four” on the west side of the Oswego River, Bakeman took advantage of the rushing water by setting up his own prosperous ferry service.

Bakeman acquired so much property that he soon owned half of what today is the city of Fulton.

Jo Anne Bakeman figures he must have been one of the largest Black landowners in the state.

“We are all here because of him,” she said.

During the Depression of 1819 Bakeman had to sell much of his land. According to the 1820 census, he was living in Granby at the head of a household of “ten free people of color.”

In September 1834, Bakeman was finally granted a pension for his Revolutionary War service. In his application, he wrote that he was a cooper.

He received one payment before his death on Feb. 6, 1835, at the age of 70.

His family’s legacy continued throughout Central New York.

One son, Jacob, owned 26 properties, including two mills in Granby.

“A colored man who owned mills was thought to be something of a phenomenon, and attracted considerable attention,” Crisfield Johnson wrote in his 1877 history of Oswego County.

Jo Anne Bakeman believes Jacob was a member of a local anti-slavery church and was active in the Underground Railroad.

He later moved to Onondaga Hill where his brother, Benjamin, was living.

Benjamin Bakeman purchased about 45 acres of land in the town of Onondaga in 1828. He married into the Day family when he married Rachel and together with members of the DeGroat and Talbott families created a small community of free Black people.

Little is known of this small community of farmers and tradespeople.

Barbara Fero says they were successful and brought their products to market.

“We don’t know who came first or what brought them there,” she said. “We can’t figure it out.”

In 1998, Town of Onondaga historian L. Jane Tracy told The Post-Standard that the community was “agriculturally based” and its residents “were very good citizens of the town.”

Census records from 1855, show that Onondaga had 78 Black residents, second only to Syracuse in Onondaga County. That is roughly 31 percent of the county’s population of Black residents. The area was sometimes referred to at the time as “Little Africa.”

Looking back at their family’s legacy, both Jo Anne Bakeman and Barbara Fero are proud of what they have discovered.

“We have withstood so much poverty and loss,” Bakeman said. “but in the end here we are.”

“I see that spirit of Henry Bakeman in us.”

jcroyle@syracuse.com

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