Adirondack hill renamed to honor 19th century Black settlers

Murry family members travel to take part in the renaming of Franklin County landmark once known by racial slur

By David Escobar

On a stormy spring afternoon, more than 60 people gathered at Kate Mountain Recreation Park in the hamlet of Vermontville to celebrate the renaming of a nearby Adirondack hill once marked by a racial slur.

The remote ridge, which is tucked away a few miles off Route 3, has been renamed “Murry Hill” in honor of a 19th-century family of early Black settlers. The change, approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in February, follows a grassroots campaign by local residents and historians to replace the former name, “Negro Hill,” with one that reflects the Adirondacks’ overlooked Black history.

“Striking these racist names from our town’s map, it’s been long overdue,” said town of Franklin council member Richard Brandt during the ceremony. “And what better thing to do than to name it for the Black settlers.”

Records show that Wesley and Phebe Murry, along with their two sons, were among hundreds of Black New Yorkers who came to the Adirondacks in the mid-1800s as part of a land redistribution initiative led by abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Smith, a wealthy landowner and political reformer, gifted parcels of his property to freed Black men so they could meet New York’s property requirement to vote. Several families, including the Murrys, settled around the towns of North Elba and Franklin, establishing farms and homesteads in harsh and remote terrain.

Recognizing early Black settlers in the Adirondacks

Murry Hill now joins another recently renamed landmark: John Thomas Brook, a stream that runs adjacent to the hill. That brook, like the hill, previously bore the same racial epithet. Paul Smith’s professor Curt Stager led the 2023 campaign to rename the stream in honor of John Thomas, a Black farmer who once lived near the Murrys.

“We’ve got a brook and a hill carrying the names of Adirondackers who should have had their family names on those before, instead of their skin color,” said Stager. “Just like Lyon Brook and Norman Ridge, right? We know those. So now we’ve got John Thomas Brook and Murry Hill.

Historian and author Amy Godine, whose book “The Black Woods” documents the lives of early Black settlers in the Adirondacks, said these changes are part of a long-overdue effort to shed light on the region’s Black history.

“It shows the story doesn’t end ever with any one project,” she said. “It continues, it gets richer, it gets bigger, it gets more inclusive.”

The process for changing a name

The process to rename geographic features is long and arduous, requiring historical research, community input and a formal petition to the federal government. Stager said the renaming effort for Murry Hill is part of an ongoing effort to renounce racist landmark names, and he said the Murry’s story challenges the long-held notion that Adirondack history belongs solely to white settlers.

“One thing that defines us as Adirondackers is the stories we tell about ourselves and where we’ve come from,” said Stager. “And the story that passed for Adirondack history for too long was just incomplete and not welcoming to anybody but the white settlers.”

Saranac Lake resident Sunita Halasz said the name change is “a point of pride,” affirming the Adirondacks as a more welcoming place.

“It gives us a sense of America as this diverse and neighborly place,” she said. “And we all get to be part of the story.”

Murry descendants travel for event

In addition to dozens of Adirondack locals, Tanya and Lauren Jones traveled from Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., to attend the ceremony. The sisters’ great-great-great-grandfather Edward Weeks was the brother of Phebe Murry. While Weeks eventually settled in Westport, Phebe remained in Vermontville, where she and her husband, Wesley, established their home.

Lauren Jones said seeing her ancestral land in Vermontville helped her reclaim a piece of her identity.

“I anticipated I’d feel connected to the land,” said Lauren Jones. “Not because my ancestors were free, but just because they lived here and they toiled the land here.”

The Jones sisters said they are considering buying property in the area. Lauren said seeing their family name on the map will help her descendants feel more rooted in the Adirondacks — and more welcome. For both sisters, the renaming of Murry Hill revises a racist name on a map, and also affirms their family’s place in Adirondack history, nearly two centuries after their ancestors first arrived.

“They’ll be more comfortable here now that the name has been changed from the N word,” she said. “And then to be like, wow, that’s actually my family member. I’m a descendant of the people that Murry Hill is named after.”

David Escobar is a Report For America Corps Member. He reports on diversity issues in the Adirondacks through a partnership between North Country Public Radio and Adirondack Explorer.