Just steps from the building where Owen Corpin’s formerly enslaved great, great, grandmother managed the housekeeping of the Ann and Gerrit Smith home in Peterboro, NY, Corpin will light a freedom fire in solidarity with the fires that were ignited one hundred sixty-two years before.
On the night of December 31, 1862, enslaved and free African Americans gathered, many in secret, to ring in the new year and await news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect.
Just a few months earlier, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the executive order that declared enslaved people in the rebelling Confederate States legally free. However, the decree would not take effect until the clock struck midnight at the start of the new year. The occasion, known as Watch Night or “Freedom’s Eve,” marks when African Americans across the country watched and waited for the news of freedom.
On January 1,1863 Lincoln did issue the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the enslaved persons in the states of rebellion.
In 1864, at the urging of Secretary of State William Seward, Lincoln donated the draft emancipation document of September 22, 1862 (the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation) to the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which raffled it off at the Albany Relief Bazaar to help raise money for the United States war effort.
Abolitionist Gerrit Smith won the raffle after buying 1,000 tickets at $1 apiece. Smith then sold the document to the New York State Legislature, with funds going to the Sanitary Commission.
The legislature, in turn, deposited the document in the New York State Library, where it remains today. The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation is the only surviving Proclamation document in Lincoln’s own hand.
Owen Corpin was an honor graduate of Morrisville-Eaton High School and went on to be an honor graduate and Trident Scholar from the United States Naval Academy. He spent over twenty years in the Navy as a Naval Aviator flying fighter aircraft making over five hundred carrier landings during six deployments in defense of the United States.
Corpin was an NROTC instructor and earned a Masters degree from Central Michigan University. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of Commander, he returned to the local area and worked as a substitute high school teacher for three years.
He then joined Morrisville State College as an EOP advisor for seventeen years until he retired. During this period, he served on the Madison County Head Start board and the local library board before joining the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum (NAHOF) Cabinet of Freedom in 2012.
Corpin is the facilitator and host of the Thirteenth Annual Peterboro Watch Night commemoration beginning at 10:00 am on Tuesday, December 31, 2024 with history announcements, military stories, and lunch at the Smithfield Community Center (5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro NY 13134) followed by the ignition of a watch fire at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark (5304 Oxbow Road, Peterboro NY 13134) at which time the Emancipation Proclamation will be read.
A facsimile of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a gift from the New York State Museum, will be on exhibit at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum.
The public is encouraged to participate in all or in part of the free program. For more information visit www.NationalAbolitionHallofFameandMuseum.org, email NAHOFm1835@gmail.com, or call (315) 308-1890.
For status of the program, due to weather, call (315) 308-1890 after 1 pm Monday, December 30, 2024.
Photo of emancipation readers on Watch Night provided.
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