Esperanza Mansion

Keuka Park, New York

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Esperanza (Hope)

A Fictional Narrative by Jonah Williams (student pseudonym)

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The forest floor was damp, yet the most comfortable surface I had slept on for years. The warmth of the other bodies around me prevented me from feeling the bones in my body and hearing the beating of my heart slow to an occasional thud. I shivered, teeth chattering as the unforgiving winds whipped my feet, all blistered and cracked. Is this what it means to pursue freedom? Is this better than sleeping on a pile of hay in my master’s barn?

The sun rose, and yet there was no consequence for not being in the fields working. Today, the sound of leather meeting skin did not wake me. This did not mean that today was going to be easy. Talk of leaving spread like wildfire throughout the plantation, but only a few dared to attend the secret meetings every Sunday about heading North. The women on the plantation were mothers to the children there. The children were yet to understand the suffering that was to come, except one. At the age of nine, Paul saw how his mother was lashed to a point of no return. Her last days on the plantation were spent on the cold floor, which didn’t allow the wounds on her back to heal. Why, Lord, did she have to die slow and painful like that? How could she know that refusing to lie with the master’s son would be the end of her? That’s when Paul, Mary, and I knew that we had to leave.

All these horrors sucked away our energy, which is why we had to be gone by the time there was morning dew. To stay in one place for too long was to let the white bounty hunters stop the journey to freedom in its tracks. We had to keep heading north by night when the sun could not expose us. Every step on the forest floor hurt just a little bit more than the step before. Anxious thoughts about where the next safe place would be kept surfacing. Poorly clothed, unfed, and shoeless, we ended up in front of a huge house. Mary, who could read a little, saw that the name of this house was “Es-pe-ran-za.” I stood in awe of Esperanza. Built so high and so wide, it could house one hundred of us, Two high columns hold the house up tall and strong. This house on the road to freedom, though, still tasted bittersweet. How could such fine structures exist to house so few white people, while people on the white man’s land down south are worked, starved, beaten, unclothed, raped, and lynched? And they call themselves Christians. Is this what the good Lord told them to do?

As I thought about all of this, we waited in the shrubbery surrounding the house, waiting for a sign of life, a sign of anything. Suddenly, smoke came out of the chimney, and then a small white woman appeared from the side of the house and beckoned us forward. I could feel my heart pounding hard and fast against my ribcage, almost as if something told me to be wary of this little woman. I stood in front of her, close enough to inspect her appearance. Her hands, just like her size, were small, and they were worn. Her nails were yellowing and ragged. She wore a stained black dress, almost as if she had spent nights sleeping on the forest floor like us.

“Come. Come quickly,” she said.

“Make no noise. If you are to make the slightest of noises, your chances of making it out of here tomorrow are slim to none,” and with that, she quickly shut the attic door.

We sat in silence, nibbling the cornbread we brought, making sure to save enough for the journey ahead.We lay down huddled together, by instinct at this point. While I heard their gentle breaths as they slept, I couldn’t help but worry. Did fear fill the pits of their stomachs like it did mine? As I lay down, a small mouse ran past my face. Looking up, there were spider webs everywhere, and the stench of urine overpowered the smell of the damp forest floor on our feet. The cold bit at my feet. I lay there shivering and taking in my surroundings, observing every candle-lit marking on the wooden floor, every speck of dust, every squeak of the mouse.

Through the small cracks in the attic roof, the sun’s rays began to peep in, slowly warming up my feet to mark the start of a new day. My stomach growled for more cornbread, for more of anything, but I knew I had to pay it no mind. As what seemed like hours passed, Paul, Mary and I sat in silence. Looking at them in the light, their cheeks were hollowed. Their dark skin, once rich and warm, was now greying and cold to the touch. As I gently soothed my blistered and calloused feet, the attic door opened, and a small white hand motioned us forward once again.

We walked through the attic door, trying not to make a noise for fear of the unmentionable. The inside of Esperanza looked completely different in the daylight. Floors and ceilings were joined by high walls, golden in color and cool to the touch, as if no one lived here. The house felt cold and unfamiliar. We followed this small woman for what felt like miles until we were led into a smaller room with mostly brown clothing on an armchair and old leather shoes on the ground, =. On the floor was a bucket with warm water and a washcloth. The door was shut behind us,

“Wash up. Put these on and knock on the door when you’re done. Quietly,” she said.

We did just that., it felt like the cleanest I’d been in a long time. I looked at myself in the mirror on the small desk. The suit, while stiff and itchy, would keep me warm. I wriggled my toes inside the shoes and tried to feel the floor or just to feel something but the leather around them was so tight. I looked down and my feet were no longer touching the floor. They were in the soft insides of my leather shoes. Mary, dressed from head to toe in a long, brown dress, twirled around the room with a smile on her face.

The door opened.

“My name is Emily Ford. The name of this house is Esperanza. Now let me get a look at you.”

We stood up tall, willingly—not like when they put me on the auction block. It was different this time. Emily Ford stood for a while staring at us before handing me a pouch with a small amount of money.

“Remember these names,” she explained. “You are to make your way to the train station. Look for a man with a wide-brimmed black hat to purchase the tickets for the morning train to Buffalo, and then to Canada. His name is Foley.” We nodded our heads.

“Don’t draw attention to yourself. Frederick and Mary, you are a married couple, travelling with your son Paul to visit family in Canada. When you arrive in Canada, you’ll see negroes who will tell you where to go. And remember, you are not free until you cross over the bridge to Canada.”

Just like that we were heading out of Esperanza’s back door. The heels of my leather shoes made a clicking noise with each step of our journey to the station. As we neared the station, the noise of groups of people bustling and buzzing around us grew louder. The white people’s darting eyes always seemed to land on us. Paths that were meant to cross with ours suddenly changed, met with pointed stares fueled with suspicion. We stood in the middle of it all, overwhelmed by the idea of being closer to freedom.

“Don’t draw attention to yourself,” I spotted a man with a wide-brimmed black hat in the corner standing tall with purpose. Forgetting to ask his name, I handed him the money given to me earlier on and received some coins and three tickets in exchange. “Morning train to Buffalo,” I whispered to myself. I looked for the entrance to the wagon for colored people and urged Paul and Mary to do the same. We entered the train wagon, which was mainly empty, except for a small light-skinned girl who anxiously sat tight under the firm arm of her mother. We took our seats and were pushed forward as the wagon pulled out of the station.

As we inched closer towards our freedom, the wagon door burst open, followed by a man’s voice shouting, “Tickets and papers! Now.” My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. Emily Ford did not mention this. She mentioned the train station, the money, the tickets, the morning train and Canada. There is no way we had the papers he was shouting for. Under my arm, Paul began to whimper while Mary comforted him. In an attempt to hide my face, I opened up my burlap bag and began rumbling through the spare change of clothes. At the bottom of my bag lay a piece of paper that I assumed, that I desperately hoped said something about my freedom.

Dry-mouthed, I handed the piece of paper over to the white man, and he read out the name “Peter Ford.” I nodded my head. “Don’t draw attention to yourself,”

“Wife and child?” I nodded my head in silence.

He crouched down to look at Paul in the eyes. Paul winced. I was certain he could see how tightly we were holding each other, how uncomfortable we were in our formal clothes, how we sheepishly looked around the wagon. He saw these things, turned, and walked away saying, “Sort out your papers.”

The wagon stumbled along the tracks, with Paul and Mary holding on tight to each other the whole way. As the wagon finally slowed to a halt, I started to feel my feet again. Mary read a sign aloud: “Buf-fal-o.” As we stepped off the wagon, we were lost again. “Look for a man with a wide-brimmed black hat,” Look. Look. I found him, another one! Again, I approached him, and he pointed to the bridge.

“That’s Freedom Bridge. Just walk over it and you’ll be in Canada. God be with you.”

So close to Canada, we gazed at the bridge that crossed over to freedom. Could it be that easy? Outside the station, we saw a black family walk past. The father smiled and with his head beckoned us forward. Strangers had beckoned us forward many times before on this journey, but this time it felt as though we knew where we were heading. Holding hands, we started walking, and even though the other side of the bridge didn’t look any different from this side, I knew that a new life in freedom was about to begin.

“Esperanza is an impressive 19–room Greek Revival mansion with two–story Ionic columns and 6,000 square feet of space, overlooking the bluff and the west branch of Keuka Lake. Construction was completed on July 3, 1838, by its owner, John Nicholas Rose, who purchased over 1,000 acres in Yates County in 1823. He built the mansion as a wedding gift for his bride. The name Esperanza is an adaptation of the Latin word for ‘hope.’ The walls are 27 inches thick. A large bake–oven hearth in the kitchen is one of the two that are ‘hidden.’ The columns were made by enclosing large tree trunks in brick and then covering the brick with stucco. According to oral traditions, it was a station on the Underground Railroad — probably the route from Bath to Penn Yan or Bath to Naples.”

Walter Gable. Uncovering the Underground Railroad in the Finger Lakes

Esperanza Mansion

3456 NY-54A, Keuka Park, NY