History is a slippery thing. It can be tempting to accept local lore as fact or take the written word as gospel, especially when the same snippets have been recorded in multiple sources. But the past remains unknowable, and its recorders have more in common with scientists than transcriptionists. Some theories are indisputable (think: gravity) and some, like dark matter, remain educated guesses. Still, taken together, a historian’s tools—documents, physical evidence, even generational memory and other less reliable sources—can get us close to the truth.
Take one of the stories that Tom Calarco, author of , uncovered in Edinburg. The tiny community a couple dozen miles northwest of Saratoga Springs—itself a hive of antislavery activity—boasted a strong abolitionist bent in the years leading up to the Civil War.
