Earlier this month, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Board of Geographical Names officially approved the renaming of Negro Hill to Murry Hill, changing the name from a slur to the last name of a Black family who owned a portion of the hill around two-and-a-half centuries ago.

“The fact that we got the news during Black History Month was just dope,” Adirondack Diversity Initiative Executive Director Tiffany Rea-Fisher said. “Black history is happening in real time. It’s not just in the past. The fact that we got this news in February was just really wonderful. … My heart is just so full.”

There’s been a desire for decades to call the hill by a better name.

Many maps leave the hill unlabeled rather than printing the offensive word. It used to be known by an even more offensive name — N***** Hill. Decades ago, it was changed to Negro Hill.

Murry Hill is seen from state Route 86 in Gabriels in this 2023 Google Street View image. (Provided photo — Google Maps)

Two years ago, Paul Smith’s College natural science professor Curt Stager led an effort to change the nearby former Negro Brook to John Thomas Brook, named after a Black farmer who lived near its banks.

Last year, Franklin town Councilman Rich Brandt and local resident Dave Filsinger led an effort to do the same for the hill, after Stager unearthed more of an interesting and overlooked history of this part of the Adirondacks.

In the 1840s, the abolitionist Gerrit Smith granted 120,000 acres in Franklin and Essex counties to 3,000 Black New Yorkers, giving them the right to vote in the years between New York abolishing slavery and the Civil War. In fact, at one point, Stager found that half of the land in the towns of North Elba, Franklin, Bellmont and St. Armand were Black-owned in the 1800s.

The Murry family — Wesley, Phebe and their two sons James and John — were one of these families. They were granted a 40-acre lot in 1846 on the northern slope of the hill.

It is unlikely that the Murrys ever lived or farmed on their property on the hill. But the family moved to the area and lived and farmed at a larger property on the corner of Muzzy Road and Oregon Plains Road, near John Thomas’ farm.

Murry Hill, as seen from John Thomas Brook on Bigelow Road in Bloomingdale. (Provided photo — Curt Stager)

For years, they grew potatoes and wheat, raised livestock and tapped maple trees there, finding success despite the rough Adirondack conditions. Census records show the Murry family farm was valued at $600, more than twice what was needed to vote.

“Allowing geographical features to carry racist names meant to humiliate these hard working families, and for these slurs to be printed on maps, is a stain on our history which we can correct by honoring the people who were pioneers on a challenging landscape,” Brandt wrote in the application to the USBGN.

First, they checked to make sure there wasn’t an indigenous name already. There wasn’t.

Today, the hill the Murrys owned, 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.

Rea-Fisher said names are important — they signal our values, now, and to all future generations.

Paul Smith’s College student Nick Granone stands near the summit of Murry Hill in the fall as he looks for any signs the Murry family lived or farmed on the hill. The hill in Franklin was recently officially renamed after the Murry family. (Provided photo — Curt Stager)

“At a time when we’re trying to figure out what our identity is, as a nation, as a community; to have something like this pop up was just a big, beautiful win,” Rea-Fisher said.

“Frankly, I was thrilled,” Brandt said on Monday of the USBGN approval, which the board approved on Feb 13.

The petitioners had been a bit concerned that with the new presidential administration’s termination of diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the application would be paused or rejected. Filsinger said he felt they got it done “right under the wire.”

“It’s just a wonderful feeling to know that something that’s so central to the story of the Adirondacks has now been brought to people’s attention,” Stager said.

He points out that many of the brooks and hills in this area are named after the white settlers of the region, adding that the history of the Black settlers was erased.

Franklin town Councilman Rich Brandt stands on Murry Hill in the fall as he looks for any signs the Murry family lived or farmed on the hill. The hill in Franklin was recently officially renamed after the Murry family. (Provided photo — Curt Stager)

Rea-Fisher said she felt confident going into this renaming request after seeing the success of John Thomas Brook’s renaming. There was less mystery this time around — people know the history, the petitioners knew what to do and USBGN had shown precedent for approving these changes. Still, she said the petitioners put in a lot of work and the renaming is a testament to the power people can have.

Murry Hill is on state-owned land and is visible from state Route 86 — to the north side of the road, near Mountain View Cemetery, over the fields of Childstock Farms, far to the right.

They plan to hold a gathering to commemorate the renaming sometime in the spring. Filsinger, who also owns the Trestle Street music space in Saranac Lake, said he’s been talking with a singer-songwriter who is writing a song about Murry Hill and the Black Adirondack settlers. They’re also trying to track down any living ancestors of the Murry family to invite them.

There’s a semi-common reaction to renaming efforts that doing so is “erasing history.”

“We’re not erasing history. We’re recovering history that was erased,” Stager said last year.

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To change a name

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USBGN officials previously told Stager that changing the name of a place named after a person is much harder. Since the hill was named after a slur and not a person, it was easier to change. USBGN also emphasizes local support for name changes.

In July, a petition-signing event was held at Hex and Hop in Bloomingdale. The petition campaign garnered 122 total signatures.

The petitioners also gathered letters of support from a slew of state officials, local governments and cultural organizations.

Gov. Kathy Hochul voiced strong support for the name change in her letter, calling the previous name “deeply wrong and rooted in a shameful legacy of oppression, discrimination and exclusion.”

Adirondack Park Agency Executive Director Barb Rice and board Chair John Ernst called it a “proper tribute.”

State Department of Environmental Conservation Regional Director Joseph Zalewski, Historic Saranac Lake Executive Director Amy Catania and Franklin County Legislator Lindy Ellis also wrote letters.

“The name of the hill has been troublesome with our organization for many years,” Six Nations Iroquois Cultural Center Director David Fadden said in his letter. His museum is in Onchiota, near the hill and right on the shore of John Thomas Brook.

Franklin town Supervisor Dot Brown said the hill name had been an “embarrassment” to the town and that renaming it after the Murry family was a way to reclaim history.

“These families, many members who were former slaves, struggled for decades to survive and should be recognized as individuals and not just for the color of their skin,” St. Armand town Supervisor Davina Thurston wrote in her letter. “I believe it is imperative that we honor those individuals who survived the circumstances that brought them to our small corner of the world.”

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More Murry history

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New York officially abolished slavery on July 4, 1827, but the state implemented a law requiring Black men to own $250 in property to have the right to vote here.

Gerrit Smith’s land granting was a way to sidestep these racist laws denying Black Americans the right to vote and giving them land to own in the years before the Civil War.

For decades, the story about the Black Adirondack farmers had been told as a story of failure. In Alfred Donaldson much-read book, “A History of the Adirondacks,” he claimed the Black settlers failed to farm.

“They did nothing for themselves or for their own land,” Donaldson wrote. “As a negro colony it was a failure and soon dwindled away.”

Recent research has revealed that several Black families, who lived and farmed in this area on granted or purchased land, had successful farms for the time and lived in a largely integrated community.

While many of the grantees simply owned the property for its voting value, some moved here to start families, farms and lives in the community. This part of the region’s history was overlooked for decades.

The Murrys moved to Vermontville, had several sons, bought new property and developed a farm.

The land on the hill was not good for farming. It’s on the northern-facing side and is on a steep, rocky slope. In the fall, Brandt, Stager and Nick Granone, one of Stager’s Paul Smith’s College students, climbed the hill looking for any evidence of people living on or working the land, and didn’t find any.

“It was a real, old-time Adirondack bushwhack,” Stager said of their 5-mile hike in.

Census records show the Murrys grew potatoes and wheat, raised livestock and tapped maple syrup at their Muzzy Road/Oregon Plains Road property.

Wesley Murry was born around 1819. His wife, Phebe Murry was born in 1817. Phebe and Wesley moved to Vermontville in 1855, eight years after Smith granted them the land on the hill. While they were successful with their agricultural endeavors, life was hard at times.

Their son James died in 1860 at the age of 8, five years after their move to the area. In the same year, their neighbor John Thomas’ son Richard died.

Wesley died relatively young in 1867. His gravestone in Union Cemetery in Vermontville says he was 48. After Wesley’s death, Phebe continued to farm the land with John and a new son.

“(It’s) what I see as a partnership of man and wife, that, back then, was not as prevalent,” Filsinger said.

Several years later, Phebe moved to Malone around 1875, and later to Brunswick, New York. But her records are unclear after that.

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History in the making

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They’re still working to fill in the gaps in the Murry family story — things like finding Phebe’s grave or whether Wesley was born in slavery. He was born in Maryland around 1820, at a time and place where slavery was still active.

As history is still being uncovered, it is still being written. Maps are still being updated. The old maps carry the slur, more recent maps carry the tamer term, and all future maps will carry the names of the Murry family and of John Thomas for the hill and the brook.

But this takes a bit. USGS and Apple Maps now carry the John Thomas Brook name. The county GIS tax maps have not changed the name of the brook yet. Google Map does not have a name for the brook. Maps will need to update the hill name, too. Currently, USGS has the new name, though their interactive maps currently carry both the old and new names.

At the petition signing event in July, Ezra Schwartzberg said when he started creating the Green Goat maps for local hiking, fishing, skiing and boating in 2018, he left the hill and brook names off. The latest version of the maps include a label for John Thomas Brook and in July, Schwartzberg said he plans to add the hill’s new name now that it is accepted by the USBGN.

A search for the name “Negro Hill” on USGS nets 44 results. Almost all of them previously carried the more offensive term. The first nine have had their names changed — mostly renamed after the Black residents who actually lived there, or the Black Buffalo Soldiers who died at those locations during the Civil War. But there are still 35 hills bearing the name, including six in New York, and one in Essex County, off the Adirondack Northway between New Russia and the Dix Mountain Range.