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Freedom, Fortune, and Family: Remembering the Abolitionists Quaker Hannah Pugsley and Black Hannah Pugsley of New Rochelle, New York, Part 1

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I dedicate this blog post to the memory of those Quakers who strove to uphold their principles of neutrality during the Revolutionary War, a time when taking sides meant everything. I also dedicate this blog post to all my ancestors who literarily built this country out of muck and mire.

This article reclaims a long-overlooked chapter in New York’s abolitionist history by reexamining the intertwined lives of two extraordinary women: Quaker Hannah Pugsley (1760-1831) and Black Hannah Pugsley (1866- ?) of New Rochelle. Drawing on oral history and uncovered documentary sources, I argue that Quaker Hannah Pugsley—whose moral convictions and courageous actions have yet to be formally recognized—must be considered an abolitionist. Her commitment to Black freedom extended beyond rhetoric: she provided financial support for the founding of the Colored African Methodist Zion Church in 1840, a sanctuary built by New Rochelle’s free Black community that would later become St. Catherine’s AME Zion Church. This support placed her among a small but powerful circle of white allies who worked in tandem with free Black abolitionists. Black Hannah Pugsley and her family, for their part, played a critical role in rescuing Quaker Hannah from a violent mob during the Revolutionary War, a moment of interracial solidarity preserved in oral tradition.[2] Their shared legacy reveals early Underground Railroad activity in New Rochelle and underscores the collaborative resistance of families such as the Pugsleys, Francis, Browns, Serringtons Bonnets, among others, and Rev. John Dungy—founders of institutions that sustained the Black freedom struggle well into the 19th century. In recovering this narrative, we reshape our understanding of abolitionism in Westchester County, grounding it in community, mutual aid, and radical faith.

[1]In Westchester County, including New Rochelle, the term “Free Blacks” always included people of African, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous descent. Descendants today self-identify as “African American, Native American, mixed race or “White.”

The full article can be read here by clicking on the link: AAHGS-NE-Newsletter Spring 2025- Freedom Fortune and Family

Part 2 will be published in the next issue of AAHGS-NE Newsletter.