What’s the history of Juneteenth?
Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when news that slavery had been abolished reached Galveston, Texas.
Rebecca King, North Jersey Record
- As a lead-up to the Juneteenth celebrations, Paterson will pay tribute to four bloodlines — still present in town — that can trace their histories back to the 19th century.
- “By being able to trace these families and their lineage, that’s really about what Juneteenth represents,” said Jimmy Richardson, the Paterson historian who organized the event.
- Family Legacy Day will be celebrated at 9 a.m. June 14, Huntoon-Van Rensalier Underground Railroad Memorial Site, 125 Broadway (Martin Luther King Blvd.) in Paterson.
A building that goes back far enough becomes a landmark.
A tree that goes back far enough becomes a natural wonder.
A family that goes back far enough — in some cases, further back than June 19, 1865, the original “Juneteenth” — becomes, this month, a fit subject for celebration on Paterson’s June 14 Family Legacy Day.
“By being able to trace these families and their lineage, that’s really about what Juneteenth represents,” said Jimmy Richardson, the Paterson historian and author (“Slavery at the River’s Edge”) who put together the program honoring four Paterson families with deep roots in the city.
As a lead-up to the Juneteenth celebrations, Paterson will pay tribute to four bloodlines — still present in town — that can trace their histories back to the 19th century.
The ceremony, beginning at 9 a.m. at the Huntoon-Van Rensalier Underground Railroad Memorial Site at 125 Broadway (Martin Luther King Blvd.), will include a brief presentation by Richardson, and a symbolic tree planting to represent “the root, the tree, the leaves and the seeds of a dream,” Richardson said.
Family first
What makes the Wimberly family, the Ellerbee family, the Kline family and the Van Rensalier family an especially fit subject for a Juneteenth tribute is the nature of Juneteenth itself.
America’s newest national holiday (2021) commemorates the traditional last day of slavery — the date when General Gordon Granger of the Union Army arrived in Galveston, Texas to declare emancipation to one of the few remaining communities that hadn’t yet gotten the good news.
And what was the first thing freed African Americans did? Flee North? Sign up for their promised — but seldom delivered — 40 Acres and a Mule?
No, says Richardson. The first order of business, for most people, was look for their families — because one of the most painful repercussions of slavery was the wives, husbands, children and parents who were sold away to new owners, often hundreds of miles away. Family, no less than freedom, is at the heart of Juneteenth.
“One of the first things they did was look for their families who were displaced, or even ran away,” said Richardson, himself a lifelong Paterson resident. “The first thing they did was put their families back together.”
Family legacy is key to Juneteenth. And families with a legacy of many generations in one city are — in an increasingly rootless America — something to celebrate.
Across the generations
“In this day and age there are very few families like that,” said Senator Benjie E. Wimberly, one of Paterson’s best known residents.
This year he was elected New Jersey senator (35th district). Previously he’d been in the New Jersey General Assembly (2012 to 2025), and before that, he was a city councilman. He’s also recreation director of the city of Paterson, and head coach of the Hackensack High School football team, and — previously — coach at Paterson Catholic High School.
And watching his progress, from up above: six generations of Paterson ancestors.
His family’s Paterson roots go back to the 1860s; his Bergen County roots even further.
His great great grandmother Cornelia Loudie was born in 1832. Records show her marrying an Anthony Benson of Mahwah, and living at the Harry Hagerman estate in town (the house is now the residence of the Ramapo College president). Whether Cornelia Benson was enslaved or not is unclear.
In 1862, the Bensons left Mahwah and moved to Oakland, then Franklin Lakes. Their children moved to Paterson. In 1925, Edna Benson Thomas married Henry Wimberly. They were the parents of Benjamin Wimberly Sr. — Benjie’s father — who married Arlene Carroll Cotton — Benjie’s mother.
“I take great pride being from Paterson and carrying on the legacy on both sides of our family, the Wimberly side and the Cotton side,” he said. “And the one thing I’ve always prided myself in is continuing the legacy of making civic contributions — through the many churches we’ve been connected to, though athletics, through education.”
Now he and his wife Kimberlynn want to pass on those traditions — and that pride — to their own four sons. Especially now, in today’s political climate, when some things having to do with African American history are upsetting some powerful people.
“I think regardless of ethnicity, you have a little more pride in yourself when you know your history,” Wimberly said. “The fact that we’re talking in 2025 about erasing history and banning history is probably the worst American nightmare that can be.”
Famous forebear
Some of that history was made in Paterson. And Dale “Skip” Van Rensalier’s great great grandfather helped make it.
“Obviously, I’m extremely proud,” Van Rensalier said.
The Van Rensalier name, he points out, has always been a prominent one in town. His mother, Alfreida Van Rensalier, was a well-known teacher who served in the Paterson School District for 44 years; she was dean of girls for John F. Kennedy High School by the time she retired in 1992. “She was one of the pillars of the community,” he said.
He himself was school social worker at Eastside High School during the years when the colorful, controversial Joe Clark — subject of the 1989 film biography “Lean on Me,” starring Morgan Freeman — was principal. Two of his children have Broadway careers.
But Van Rensalier, who still substitute-teaches for Paterson, is sometimes asked by students about another Van Rensalier. A famous Van Rensalier. A Van Rensalier who has his statue on Broadway, and is featured in a painting at the public library. Abolitionist William Van Rensalier. Is he related?
He is.
“He was involved in a crusade, if you will, to free the slaves or help the slaves to freedom,” said Skip, his great great grandson. “To have somebody in my family lineage who did that — maybe not to the extent of Harriet Tubman — but had a part in assisting people to freedom, is something to puff my chest out about.”
William Van Rensalier, a so-called “free Black,” came to Paterson in 1850 from Spring Valley, New York. He was seeking work — and Josiah Huntoon, a coffee merchant and white abolitionist, had an opening.
Huntoon took Van Rensalier on as an apprentice, and — impressed by the young man’s mechanical ability — sent him to Canada to learn the coffee trade. The two became friends as well as business associates. Van Rensalier came to live in Huntoon’s house; it was later bequeathed to Van Rensalier as a wedding present. But the two men were partners in another enterprise as well.
A light in the dark
“Back in the day during the time of slavery he was assisting the slaves to freedom,” Skip said. “He was an engineer in the Underground Railroad.”
The story goes that Huntoon, when the coast was clear, would put a light in a cupola on top of his house.
Fugitive slaves, hiding on Garret Mountain overlooking Paterson, would be led by Underground railroad “conductors” — including Van Rensalier — to the city three miles below. There they could be hidden, until it was safe to travel to the next stop.
On Broadway, across the street from Passaic County Community College, there is a monument called “On the Wings of Freedom,” sculpted by artist Ed Dwight. It depicts Huntoon and Van Rensalier, lanterns in hand, leading the fugitives to safety. Several Van Rensalier family members, prominently Dolores Van Rensalier, have been working to keep the abolitionist’s memory alive. It is partly thanks to their efforts that the monument was erected in 2014. It is the site of the June 14 ceremony.
“Every now and then one of the students will see that and say, ‘I know that name,’ ” Skip said. “A couple of times I’ve given them as much of the story as I know. Some are blasé. But some want to get my autograph.”
Family ties
Another family to be honored on the 14th, the Ellerbees, have Paterson roots that are not so much deep as broad.
The family’s history, in the town, appears to go back only to the 1920s. William Ellerbee Jr., who is taking his place with Van Rensalier and Wimberly on the podium, can trace his own Paterson roots to his grandfather, Henry “Doc” Ellerbee Jr., who came to town in 1932.
Nevertheless, the Ellerbees go back a long way. And there are a lot of them.
Great grandfather Henry “Doc” Ellerbee came from South Carolina. His son, Henry “Doc” Ellerbee Jr., was born there in 1863 — the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. Henry Jr. had 20 children — 19 boys and one girl. And several of them, in the early 20th century, moved to Paterson.
Why? Ellerbee, growing up, didn’t get explanations. That was adult stuff. “It was like, ‘The grownups are talking, you can go to bed now,’ ” Ellerbee recalled. “But I know they owned property and farms down there. What I heard was they were pig farmers, and they didn’t like the work. so they got out of there.”
One of Henry Jr.’s sons was John Ellerbee, a Negro League baseball player who was for many years a fixture at Hinchliffe Stadium. His team was The Smart Set; he played alongside Larry Doby and Monte Irvin. John had moved there in 1928, and brought his father — William’s grandfather — up north to live with him four years later.
The Ellerbee relations include some celebrities: jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, late of Englewood, and a first cousin to Henry Jr., is one of them. Another is Preston Bruce, doorman at the White House for five presidencies, from 1953 to 1976. Also a cousin of Henry Jr.
It was Bruce who sat the distinguished guests for state dinners, and even designed a special “Bruce Table” for the distribution of guests’ place cards.
Ellerbee doesn’t make much fuss over his distinguished relatives. The way he sees it, he can’t take credit for their achievements — any more than he can take blame for the less commendable things done by some other relatives. “I can only do myself,” he said.
But Ellerbee Jr., born in Germany where his military father William Sr. and mother Catherine were stationed, does have one thing he’s proud to share with all the other Ellerbees, past and present: Paterson.
He came back to town for the fourth grade. He’s stayed ever since.
“I grew up here, I know a lot of people here,” he said. “When you retire, they say, go to Florida. No. Everything is here for me.”
By the side of Dr. King
Evelyn Kline feels the same way. “My roots are here in Paterson,” she said. “Paterson is my home. I’ll always love it, and never leave it.”
Her family has been in Paterson longest of all.
Her great great grandfather, John Kline, moved to Paterson from Hunterdon County in the early 1840s. He lived, as many African Americans did then, on the so-called “African Shore” — an area of River Street between Main and Straight Streets. He, too, was an abolitionist. Also a temperance reformer, and one of he founders of the Godwin Street A.M.E. Zion Church.
There have been Klines in Paterson ever since. Evelyn’s cousin William became first African American alderman of the 4th ward. He sat on the left hand of Martin Luther King Jr., when the civil rights leader visited Paterson’s Community Baptist Church of Love (now Bethel A.M.E. Church) on March 27, 1968. Evelyn never forgot that day.
“As a matter of fact, my mother lived right across the street [from the church],” she said. “We were outside, and we saw King when he came out of the church. It was exciting.”
It was a great moment for Paterson. And a great moment for the family that had been part of the city’s history since before the it was incorporated (1851).
“I’m so happy and proud,” she said. “All I can say is, I’m so proud to be a Kline.”
Roots, to repeat, is what Juneteenth is all about. Uprooting those roots would seem to be what some book banners and curriculum censors, these days, are all about.
But no one — let’s hope — can censor what’s said around the family table. That’s why, Senator Wimberly says, it’s important for kids to listen when these stories are told.
“This country was built on the backs of African Americans,” Wimberly said. “It’s important that we keep these reminders out, and also that our young folks sit at the kitchen table and hear the stories from their grandparents and their great grandparents.”
Go…
Family Legacy Day, 9 a.m. June 14, Huntoon-Van Rensalier Underground Railroad Memorial Site, 125 Broadway (Martin Luther King Blvd.)
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