FRANKLIN — One year after the renaming of John Thomas Brook, formerly N***o Brook, locals are working to rename the nearby N***o Hill after the Murrys, a 19th Century family of Black Adirondack farmers who owned land on the hill, a hill currently bearing a derogatory term aimed against them.

The 1,903-foot hill sits to the west of John Thomas Brook, named after one of the “Black pioneers” who lived in this area in the 1800s. Many maps leave the hill unlabeled rather than printing the offensive word. The hill used to be known by an even more offensive name — “N***** Hill.” Decades ago, it was changed to N***o hill. There’s been a desire for decades to call the brook and the hill by better names.

“These racist names that are on old maps, I think it’s important to understand why they are called what they were, and then correct them to honor the people who were taunted by these names,” Franklin town Councilman Rich Brandt said.

Last year, after Paul Smith’s College natural science professor Curt Stager successfully led an effort to rename a brook bearing the slur he asked Brandt to follow suit with the hill. Stager said he didn’t know who to name the hill after at first. But after digging around in the historic record, he learned that the Murry family owned property on the hill, granted to them by the abolitionist Gerrit Smith, and were successful farmers for several decades on land nearby, in the same neighborhood as the Thomas family.

While many of the roads and geological features around the area are named after people or families — bearing last names and such — this hill was named after the color of the skin of the people who owned it, and not in a kind way. The Black people living in the area were free, but they were not treated equally as people by many local white residents, and the land’s slur of a name represented that.

More than 100 people came to a plaque unveiling commemorating the renaming of the brook in honor of John Thomas last September.

On Wednesday, locals will again have the chance to contribute to the complicated history of the region at a petition signing event at Hex and Hop Brewery in Bloomingdale at 5:30 p.m. Stager will speak about the history of the land and Adirondack Diversity Initiative Director Tiffany Rea-Fisher will speak about the importance of the name.

After the presentations, signatures will be collected in support of the Murry Hill renaming request to be sent to the U.S. Board of Geographical Names.

“Our community has righted a long-standing wrong by honoring a fellow Adirondacker in the naming of John Thomas Brook,” Stager said in a statement. “Now it’s time to finish the job. Let’s give the adjacent hill a more appropriate name that acknowledges the African American family who owned part of it rather than just their skin color.”

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To change a name

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As anyone who has changed their name for marriage or any other reason knows, it is an arduous process that involves a lot of paperwork. Even more so for a geological feature. Each application to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has taken months of research.

USBGN officials previously told Stager that changing the name of place named after a person name is much harder. Since the brook was named after a slur and not a person, it was easier to change. The same should go for the hill, he said.

In fact, during a call with USBGN about the brook renaming, they stopped him before he hung up and asked if they were going to change the name of the hill, too.

“It’s clearly a justified change,” Stager said.

Brandt said he is following Stager’s template and expects the request to be successful.

He’s been gathering letters of support from government organizations like the Franklin Town Council, state Department of Environmental Conservation and Adirondack Park Agency. At Wednesday’s event, people will be able to put down their signature to tell the federal government they’d like to see the hill renamed. The goal is to show the USBGN broad, reputable support for the name change.

Brandt said he was “completely unaware” of the Black history in his neighborhood before Stager started sharing his research. He said Stager has dug up an “unwritten history” of this corner of the Adirondacks. Several years ago, it was not widely known that significant portions of local towns were owned by Black families, who were granted the land by the white abolitionist Gerrit Smith, giving them the right to vote and a place to settle in the buildup to the Civil War.

Many of these people simply owned the property for its voting value. But some moved here, started families, farms and lives in the community. And many are buried in the Union Cemetery in Vermontville, where this spring, college students used radar to search for unmarked graves.

Stager said there were likely many more Black people here than were counted in the censuses. With the Fugitive Slave Act legalizing bounty hunting of Black people, who had no right to go to court, many did not want to be found and lived in relative obscurity. This danger to being known and fear of being found made documentation of their history here scarce, and Stager said much of that history has been lost to time.

Brandt said local author Amy Godine is trying to track down living relatives of the Murrys.

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Meet the Murrys

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It is unclear if the Murrys ever lived or farmed on their property on the hill. It is presumed they lived and farmed at a larger property on the corner of corner of Muzzy Road and Oregon Plains Road, near John Thomas’ farm.

Stager said census records show the Murrys grew potatoes and wheat, raised livestock and tapped maple syrup at that larger property.

Wesley Murry was born around 1819. His wife, Phebe Murry was born in 1826. Phebe and Wesley moved to Vermontville in 1855.

Around 1846, Wesley received 40-acre lot from Gerrit Smith on the northern slope of the hill. They had two sons — James and John.

While they were successful with their agricultural endeavors, life was hard at times.

James died in 1860 at the age of 8, five years after their move to the area. In the same year, John Thomas’ son Richard died. Stager imagines it must have been a tragic time.

Wesley died relatively young in 1867. His gravestone in Union Cemetery says he was 48. After Wesley’s death, Phebe continued to farm the land with John and a new son. Several years later, Phebe moved to Malone about 1875, and later to Brunswick, New York. But her records are unclear after that.

Today, the hill they owned a piece of is pretty inaccessible. It sits in a remote area hemmed in by several key connector roads, but there is not much directly around the hill and it is not a common recreation spot. Stager said it is mostly used by hunters. He’s made two attempts to bushwhack in, but has not been successful so far. He said hunters he knows say there’s evidence of farming on the hill. If that is the Murrys or not, is impossible to tell now. To read more about Thomas, go to tinyurl.com/3njphk67.