About another Onondaga Central(and Syracuse University Whitman School of Management MBA) grad Latavius Murray, NFL Player Motivated to Create Opportunities for Youth:
https://www.syracuse.edu/stories/lat...urray-whitman/
Onondaga Central is a small school district with maybe 1000 kids in total and Nedrow(cdp), is a small community of about 2200 is where the bulk of the black population in the district lives just south of the Syracuse line/Valley neighborhood. It is about 12% black and actually has a few churches of the AA worship experience, with a similarly sized Native American population due to being just north of the Onondaga Nation. Much of the district is rural, with some outer portions of Onondaga Hill in the district being more suburban in character(i.e.-Tabitha Creek development).
It is also one of the SD's outside of Syracuse to have a visible black student population. For instance, you can see some scattered in this 1958 yearbook from its Jr./Sr. HS:
https://www.classmates.com/siteui/ye...170658?page=24
From 1955, which includes elementary students at the time, where some are scattered in as well:
https://www.classmates.com/siteui/ye...215193?page=31
Some may have come via migrant farming, as there are some apple orchards in the Route 20 corridor portion of the town/school district.
It also has a long time history in the area of Makyes Road, where a community of people of African descent resides in the 1800's...
"The tour continues north on Makyes Road, veering left onto Abbey Road.
Another of our lost hamlets was right in this area. In an 1858 social note in the Syracuse Standard newspaper, this area was referred to as “Little Africa”, likely because of the settlement of Days and DeGroats and Talbots who settled here. One of the most interesting cemetery finds in the town was in the early summer of 1993 Jane Tracy and 3 friends broke through a thicket of brush on a hillside off Makyes Road, just past this intersection. They found the little cemetery where the DeGroats and Days buried their dead under fieldstones stuck upright in the soil, about 150 years ago, with the year 1846 etched crudely on one. The ancestors of the DeGroats and Days were folks who had likely been slaves, some who had married into the native Indian tribes, and also some of the Dutch soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. The Talbots lived along this side of the area and Epsilom Talbot had a blacksmith shop on Abbey Road. The Talbots buried their dead in a small cemetery "in a point" near their home. These 2 cemeteries are believed to be the first black burial grounds identified in the county. When the old census records were searched, Jane found the families clustered across the farmland that became Makyes Road. There was John DeGroat, mulatto, farmer with his wife and 5 children, next to the Abbeys, who had Philanda DeGroat, Indian, listed in the household. Down the way was Jacob Bakeman, mulatto. His large family was listed and also Albert and Peter Day, servants. James Bakeman was nearby. He was a shoemaker. Farmers James Cornell and Daniel Day lived side by side. Both were listed as mulatto, as was their neighbor, an older Peter Day and his family. Another neighbor was Absalom Talbott, mulatto, a blacksmith. Farmers Benjamin Bakeman and his son Oliver, lived next door to the blacksmith. Benjamin, son of Henry, a Revolutionary War vet who settled in the Mohawk Valley, came to Onondaga from Oswego Falls, now Fulton. Seventeen slaves were listed in the town of Onondaga records in 1810. The census that year also carried 4 "exclusively colored households" of 29 people, headed by Solomon Day, William Day, William S. Day and James DeGroat."
Source from the Town of Onondaga Historian site:
http://www.onondagatownhist.org/bustour.htm
A street view of that area:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9513...7i16384!8i8192
A couple of those families, the Days and DeGroats, likely have ties to the Hudson Valley and may be affiliated with what are now known as the Ramapo Mountain Indians in Rockland County NY and Bergen County NJ around Mahwah, which have a similar history of Dutch surnames with African and Native ancestry mixed in as well.
District information:
https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000040932
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.ph...d=800000040932
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?...d=800000040932
Website:
https://www.onondagacsd.org/
Street view of school:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9307...7i16384!8i8192
Homes in the district:
https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...ct-06194292421
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
More from…
