Pencil sketch by Mary Ann Barr 2021
Town Hall, 1830 Danby Road, Ithaca, NY 14850
From Mary Ann Barr, the Danby Town Historian:
Please take a moment to read about the extraordinary life of Mr. William Simms, who, after escaping slavery, made a life in Danby. This account was recorded by his contemporary, Mr. Arthur Charles Howland.
The Town of Danby sits on the traditional & ancestral land of the Gayogoho:no’ (Cayuga Nation), one of the five nations to first form the Haudenosaunee. Indigenous peoples were largely forced out of Upstate New York by the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition in 1779. The land that would become the Town of Danby was a part of the Watkins and Flint Purchase, a 336,380 acre patent granted by New York State to numerous eastern investors in 1794.
