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‘Cuffee Voorhees!’: Timberlane Students, Descendants, and Community Unite to Honor a Life Once Lost to History

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By Seth Siditsky on MercerMe.com on

For more than a century, the life of Cuffee Voorhees—an enslaved man turned Union soldier—remained largely hidden from the historical record. But on Friday, Timberlane Middle School students, together with his descendants and community leaders, gave his story a place of honor in the Hopewell Valley.

The occasion was the district’s fourth annual Witness Stones Project ceremony, held at the historic Old School Baptist Meetinghouse in Hopewell Borough. Part solemn remembrance and part celebration, the event featured the unveiling of a brass Witness Stone plaque honoring Voorhees—soon to be installed in Hopewell Borough as a permanent public memorial.

“This year’s ceremony is another historic moment here in Hopewell,” said Timberlane Social Studies Supervisor Darren Lewan. “This is a day of redemption and hope.”

Learning Through Witness

The Witness Stones Project is a national initiative that helps students research and commemorate the lives of enslaved individuals in their own communities. Timberlane Middle School was the first school in New Jersey to join the program and has participated for four consecutive years—previously honoring Friday Truehart, Frost Blackwell, and Nance.

According to the student website, the goal is to “acknowledge the humanity and contributions of enslaved people throughout America” by creating personal narratives that restore voice and dignity to those long excluded from history. Students organize their research using the Five Themes of Slavery—paternalism, dehumanization, economics of slavery, treatment of the enslaved, and agency and resistance.

For Cuffee Voorhees, the students explored how he was dehumanized through the assignment of his first name and surname by his enslaver, Peter Voorhees; how paternalism framed even the act of emancipation in 1828; how Cuffee’s labor continued to enrich others after his freedom; and how he resisted through his service in the Civil War. They also examined how his wife Jane Voorhees sought justice after his tragic death—an act of agency met with legal indifference.

A Life Rediscovered

Among the student contributions was an essay by Timberlane eighth grader Caroline McCollum, centered around the history of Cuffee Voorhees and providing a look at his life in ways that most didn’t know before. Drawing on census records and historical newspapers, McCollum traced Voorhees’ story from slavery through freedom, military service, and his untimely death in 1873. She recounted how he was killed by a train while crossing a bridge with a team of mules, a tragedy she suggested may have been made worse by racial discrimination. Afterward, his wife Jane Voorhees appeared before a grand jury seeking justice—an extraordinary act in an era of entrenched racism and sexism. McCollum described Voorhees as a freedman, father, and veteran who served the Union cause and endured the racism of the time, noting that although his death was tragic, “his impact was not.”

Voorhees’ name, long missing from traditional textbooks, now stands as a symbol of memory and recognition, thanks to the research and storytelling of Timberlane students.

Tracing a Family Line

Among those hearing his full story were members of Voorhees’ own family. Wanda McNeill, a descendant who lives in Ewing, described how family genealogy, aided by DNA tools, led them to an 1880 census showing that her ancestor William Voorhees was the son of Cuffee and Jane Voorhees. “In 1870 they were living in Pennington. Unbelievable,” she said. The revelation, and subsequent discoveries about Cuffee’s life and death, brought long-sought clarity—but also new questions.

“We still don’t know how he made a way out of no way,” McNeill said. “But we can remember that he lived here, he loved, he struggled… and he contributed to this place that we still call home.”

Andrea Moody, another descendant, told the audience, “My family and I are of Mr. Cuffee Voorhees’ DNA. We are kind, good-hearted, faithful, hard-working, appreciative, fun-loving, talented, educated people.” She called the ceremony a “factual, fascinating story that shall carry on in our families forever,” and closed her remarks by asking the crowd to join her in saying his name aloud—twice, and loudly: “Cuffee Voorhees!”

Art and Music Add Depth

100 in 10: In-Article

The emotional power of the day was heightened by the students’ original art and music. One piece, a mixed-media collage by eighth grader Ada Akinti, used layered pastels and cut paper to reflect the piecing together of Cuffee’s story through fragments of records and imagination. “I made it my goal to embody Cuffee’s story that has yet to be revealed,” Akinti said, “even if we never find all the details of his life.”

The Timberlane choir, directed by Dr. Lynnel Joy Jenkins, performed a stirring medley titled “Can You Hear Freedom Calling,” followed by a hopeful, harmony-rich rendition of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” Introducing the song, students Parker Hamilton and Layla Arbanas reminded the audience that while slavery’s story is painful, this project is about reclaiming stolen identities and building a better world. “By honoring these people,” they said, “we hope to make the world a better place. When this happens, it will finally be a lovely day.”

A Commitment to Truth

The event also drew leaders from across Hopewell Valley. Hopewell Borough Mayor Ryan Kennedy, speaking on behalf of Pennington and Hopewell Township, praised the students for choosing to share their research with the broader public. He told them future generations would not only reflect on their work but see it “set in stone forever.”

Superintendent Dr. Rosetta Treece closed the ceremony with a strong affirmation of the district’s commitment to truth-telling in education. “If we forget these stories again,” she said, “we’re destined to repeat the ills of the past. So we’re going to continue to teach real history in this school district.”

Treece also recognized Dennis Culliton, co-founder of the national Witness Stones Project, who is retiring this year. She credited local historians Elaine Buck and Beverly Mills for bringing the initiative to Hopewell, and expressed deep gratitude to Culliton for helping make the district the first in New Jersey to participate. “You’re always a Bulldog,” she told him, “and I hope you stay in touch.”

A Lasting Impression

As the program drew to a close, Timberlane Principal Chris Turnbull reflected on the day’s emotional arc. “You take a moment like this,” he said, “and it just… fills your soul again.”

Inside the Meetinghouse, the brass Witness Stone bearing Cuffee Voorhees’ name was unveiled for everyone to see. Though not yet installed, the plaque represents a permanent commitment to remembering his life—and the lives of others once omitted from the record. No longer just a footnote in scattered documents, thanks to work by the 8th graders at Timberlane, his story will soon stand in Hopewell—remembered, reclaimed, and honored.

Two Enslaved Longmeadow Residents Remembered

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Brass plaques set in the lawn outside First Church of Christ in Longmeadow to remember two enslaved people from the 1700s.
Reminder Publishing photos by Sarah Heinonen

by Sarah Heinonen in The Reminder on June 4, 2025

LONGMEADOW — In 2024, the Longmeadow community remembered two enslaved people who lived and died in the town. Two stone markers, inscribed with the names of Phillis and Peter and information about their lives, were embedded in the ground in front of the First Church of Christ. On May 29, the lives of two more enslaved people were honored with their own stones.

The Witness Stones Project is a middle school curriculum created by Dennis Culliton that teaches students how to research and honor people enslaved in the United States. Culliton was inspired by Stolpersteine, brass plaques set into the pavement in front of the last address of people known to have been murdered in the Holocaust. Like many who died in the Holocaust, there are few stone grave markers to remember the resting places of enslaved people.

In Longmeadow, The Witness Stones Project is a collaboration between First Church of Christ of Longmeadow, the Historical Society and Longmeadow Public Schools. While last year’s Witness Stones were paid for with a Mass Humanities grant, this year’s project was funded by the Longmeadow Educational Endowment Fund.

Teachers at Williams Middle School led their seventh graders in researching the lives of the two enslaved people by using primary sources, such as census and church records, private letters and diary entries. Rev. Stephen Williams, Longmeadow’s first minister and the person for whom Williams Street is named, was Nicholas and Peter’s slaveholder. He was meticulous in keeping a diary, providing fertile research material for students three centuries later.

Nicholas was the first person known to be enslaved in Longmeadow, while Peter was the last. They, along with Phillis and Peter, are only four of the 16 individuals known to be enslaved by Williams and several other influential families in colonial Longmeadow during the 18th and 19th centuries.

First Church of Christ vocalists Wycliffe Acquah and John Thomas sing “Wade in the Water” during the Witness Stones Project ceremony. Reminder Publishing photos by Sarah Heinonen

Various students read information about Peter and Nicholas and a poem expressing the emotions they may have felt. Nicholas was a child, thought to be about 8 years old and separated from any family. Williams began writing about Nicholas less than a year before selling him in 1718. In that time, Williams’ diary entries showed that Nicholas was an ill child that Williams thought of as lazy and disobedient. Williams wrote that he sold Nicholas “to a master that would keep him to business,” which Melissa Cybulski, Historical Society member and liaison for the Witness Stones Project, said was a reference to the child’s next enslaver, delivering even more harsh, physical abuse.

Williams wrote about Peter beginning in 1750. In that year, he attempted to escape captivity but was caught and put in prison before Williams again took ownership of him. He worked in Williams’ home, Longmeadow fields and Williams’ farm in Somers. Williams included Peter in his will as property, to be split between two of his sons. In 1773, Peter successfully escaped his bondage. An advertisement seeking Peter’s return shared that he was in his 30s, literate and played the fiddle. These details reflect more of the person that Peter was than any of Williams’ diary entries.

“This history is in danger of being forgotten,” First Church of Christ Reverend Doug Bixby said of the lives of enslaved people in New England. Bixby said the ceremony honoring Nicholas and Peter was designed to remember the enslaved with “humility, honor and respect.”

The school chorus sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” often referred to as the Black national anthem. Two church vocalists, Wycliffe Acquah and John Thomas, sang “Wade in the Water,” a traditional spiritual. Bixby noted that the song is thought to have had a coded meaning for those escaping captivity to travel through water to obscure their scent trail from dogs.

The students and those who had gathered for the event moved out to the church’s lawn, where flowers were placed by the witness stones of Peter and Nicholas, set in the ground next to those of Phillis and Peter. The church is raising money to install a plaque explaining the significance of the witness stones. After the ceremony, attendees were invited to view the students’ art projects, exploring the lives of Peter and Nicholas. The mediums ranged from posters and two-dimensional art to models and shadow boxes.

Former Connecticut state Rep. Patricia Wilson Pheanious, whose ancestors were among the first to be remembered by the Witness Stones Project, addressed the students. “You resurrected their lives,” she said, adding that what they had learned about Peter and Nicholas were “stories of resilience [and] bravery.” As a wider lesson for the students and those who attended the event, she said, “Inclusive knowledge of our history can only strengthen and heal us.”

Lancaster City Witness Stones to Teach about Local Enslaved People

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From the left front, Tyran London, Makayla Ressel and Hasset Tesfaye Desalgn, all McCaskey students, had the honor of placing the three Witness Stones in Penn Square under the watchful eyes of Rev. John A. Knight and Pamela Stoner, second form the right, project manager, and long-time volunteer at Historic Rock Ford, during the celebration of the Witness Stones in Penn Square on Tuesday, May 27, 2025.
SUZETTE WENGER | Staff Photographer

By Sarah Nicell on LancasterOnline.com on June 1, 2025

Historians don’t know much about Susan, Robert, Bet and Frank, who lived in Lancaster in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Their ages, heights, births and deaths are inconsistently recorded. There are no last names to track because they likely had none.

That’s because Edward Hand, an Irish-born American general, physician and Lancaster politician, enslaved them, the first three at his Lancaster city home on the southwest corner of Penn Square and Frank at his plantation.

Staff at Historic Rock Ford, the preserved mansion in southeastern Lancaster city where Hand once lived, acknowledge its history with slavery. But three years ago, Rock Ford leaders wanted more: to memorialize Frank, the only known enslaved person who lived there.

“Most people who come into the house who hear that there was an enslaved man on the property are shocked,” longtime volunteer Pamela Stoner said. “Minds go to Pennsylvania being a Northern state. It’s a common misconception.”

Then, Stoner stumbled upon the Witness Stones Project: a Connecticut-based initiative to restore the history and humanity of local enslaved people.

On Tuesday, McCaskey High School students placed 4-by-4-inch stones into the brick ground at the corner of South Queen and West King streets. McCaskey’s Voices of Freedom choir sang over the rushing sound of cars.

One stone honors Sue, another Bob and another Bet. Although the exact address of Hand’s first Lancaster city residence is unknown, this spot is close. Frank’s stone will soon lower into the ground at Rock Ford.

The stones feature only a few lines, as many as will fit on the tiny surface area — and in some cases, that’s all the biographical information that exists. Hand’s name is not included.

“Robert, born circa 1766. Courier during war for American independence. Blacksmith. Enslaved here. Fate unknown.”

“Susan, born circa 1753. Skilled in domestic arts. Enslaved here. Escaped to freedom in 1779. Captured and returned.”

“Bet, born circa 1768. Skilled in domestic service. Enslaved here as a child. Age 12. Fate unknown.”

“Frank, born circa 1772. Carriage driver. Multi-talented worker. Enslaved on this farm. Self-emancipated in 1802.”

How Witness Stones work

Stories like these span the Northeast, even as historical accounts focus on the American South.

That’s why former Connecticut middle school history teacher Dennis Culliton started the Witness Stones Project in 2017, inspired by small memorials across Europe — Stolpersteine, or “Stumbling Stones” — commemorating lives taken by the Nazis during World War II.

Lancaster city’s Witness Stones, funded through summer 2027 by local donors, are the first in Pennsylvania, according to Witness Stones Executive Director Patricia Pheanious. School districts and historical institutes have installed nearly 300 stones across Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California.

Rock Ford, in collaboration with the African American Historical Society of South Central Pennsylvania and the School District of Lancaster, plans to install 25 stones annually for three years, a total of 75 stones by 2027.

Most stones will find homes embedded in the brick area between the concrete sidewalk and the curb on the first two blocks by Penn Square, on King and Queen streets.

Rock Ford already has contacted all parties who could see a stone placed in front of their homes or businesses, and anyone can decline the installations.

We have so far been very encouraged by the support we are receiving from businesses and property owners,” Christina McSherry, executive director, said by email.

Culliton provided the city with the first four stones, engraved with the names and biographical facts of the people the Hand family enslaved. But local volunteers and businesses will manufacture the remaining 71 markers, though the exact groups aren’t definite yet.

Addressing Lancaster city’s wrongs

“It is a reckoning,” Nelson Polite Jr., African American Historical Society of South Central Pennsylvania president, said at Tuesday’s ceremony. “A reckoning with the past.”

Pennsylvania didn’t require slaveholders to register the people they owned until the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act in 1780. Even after, surviving records are scarce.

Still, between 1780 and 1830, University of Iowa history professor Cory Young said that slaveholders registered at least 1,048 people as property on the land that is now Lancaster County. His research focuses on slavery in the American North, which made him a valuable resource for Rock Ford’s project.

A fifth of those people, 209, lived in what is now Lancaster city.

“It’s the details that are lost to us,” Young said. “We’re never going to be able to know as much as we want about particular enslaved people.”

For this project, local researchers tracked around 400 enslaved people living in the city during its first century, according to Rock Ford’s Stoner, though the real count is likely much higher since Lancaster Borough existed decades before the Gradual Abolition Act.

“Obviously this project could go on well beyond three years,” McSherry said.

A 19-member advisory council oversees the Lancaster project, with representation from local groups including Rock Ford, the African American Historical Society of South Central Pennsylvania, McCaskey High School, LancasterHistory and the Witness Stones Project. The council has yet to decide which of the 400 people on record will have priority for the remaining stones.

A high school curriculum

Todd Mealy, a history teacher and football coach at McCaskey High School, sat to the left of the podium at Tuesday’s ceremony. About 25 of his students sat in white foldout chairs in the audience, and four waited beside him, prepared to speak.

Mealy, who has published works about slavery in and out of Pennsylvania, was recruited to the Witness Stones project last summer, after Rock Ford reached out to implement a Witness Stones curriculum, a staple of the project in several states. It took one meeting to get him on board.

Students Tyran London, Makayla Ressel, Hasset Tesfaye Desalgn and Hana Rebek took turns at the microphone sharing the biographical information they had collected about Susan, Robert, Bet and Frank.

Tesfaye Desalgn described Susan’s harrowing stillborn childbirth during her detention in Philadelphia.

“Her story is about a woman who tried to save her child,” Tesfaye Desalgn said, “who tried to save herself.”

This year, 35 of Mealy’s students researched the four enslaved people in his International Baccalaureate History of the Americas class, an advanced-placement African American Studies course and the Leon “Buddy” Glover Public Service Project program that Mealy oversees.

Since January, his students have examined primary and secondary documents about slavery in Lancaster and beyond. They read church records, inventory lists, letters and runaway advertisements, or ads offering compensation for people who captured and returned escaped slaves, in the Lancaster Intelligencer.

Then, the students worked alone or in teams on a personal project commemorating the lives of those enslaved by the Hands.

“Any observer watching these students would be moved knowing they’ll be future leaders in their community,” Mealy said.

The projects vary by medium. One group is producing a children’s book with an academic publishing company. Others prepared documentaries, museum exhibit panels, original music and wood carvings.

While the curriculum will mostly remain the same for the next two years, the enslaved people whom students research will change as the city’s Witness Stones advisory council chooses which local enslaved people to focus on next.

“Never before have they appeared in the stories we tell about our own community,” Mealy said. “That ends today.”

The first four

The surviving historical records about Susan, Robert, Bet and Frank — Black adults and children enslaved by 18th-century Lancaster soldier and politician Edward Hand — are limited at best.

Nothing historians know was written by the four enslaved people. Accounts come from their captors and records mandated by the Pennsylvania government.

But here is the information researchers have gathered about them, from evidence scattered across primary and secondary source materials in Pennsylvania.

Susan
Susan, or Sue, arrived to serve Edward Hand’s wife, Katharine (“Kitty”), at their Lancaster city home during the summer of 1776, taken from Long Island, where Edward Hand led troops. Hand purchased Sue for 43 pounds, more than $12,000 today.

Three years later, Susan escaped, and Hand placed several advertisements in a Philadelphia newspaper offering rewards for her return. Hand described her as between the ages of 25 to 30 (depending on the ad) and between 5 feet, 2 inches and 5 feet, 6 inches tall.

She was dressed in a blue and white linen gown and petticoat, leading researchers to label her a seamstress. Hand believed Susan was either returning to Long Island or following the 4th Regiment of Light Dragoons, a mounted military branch in Philadelphia that had recently encamped in Lancaster, with a white woman named Captain Molly, or Margaret Corbin.

By this time, Susan was pregnant. Under her enslavement, her child, if born alive, would also remain enslaved forever. But by 1779, preserved letters indicate she was recaptured and detained in a complex for criminals in Philadelphia.

There, Susan endured a traumatic labor and gave birth to a stillborn child. Jasper Yeates, Kitty’s uncle, wrote that the childbirth had left Susan close to death. After receiving a pound of chocolate and a coarse pair of woolen stockings for her pains, the Hands seemingly re-enslaved Susan in their city household. Little else is known, though she likely didn’t accompany the Hands to their plantation at Historic Rock Ford.

Robert
Edward Hand purchased Robert, or Bob, a boy around 11 years old, in Long Island in June of 1776. Hand sent him to his wife “almost naked,” according to a letter to Kitty. Hand’s early letters called him Robert, until Hand hired a white courier during the Revolutionary War named Robert Wilson; then, Hand switched to “the Boy,” “Boy Bob” and finally, “Bob.”

“He is a fine smart boy and may be of use to you until you can get a girl,” Hand said in his first letter regarding Bob.

By the time the Hands had to legally register him as property in 1780, Bob was only 14 years old.

From Hand’s personal letters, Bob carried money and valuables from Hand during wartime to Kitty’s home in Lancaster.

Today, his Witness Stone refers to him as a wartime courier and a blacksmith.

Aside from a few more mentions of “Robert” and “Bob” in records, little else is known about him.

Bet

Historians today know the least about Bet. Her first and only reference comes in 1780, when the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act required the Hands to legally register the people they enslaved.

The record calls her “mulatto,” now considered an offensive term for a biracial person of white and Black ancestry. The name “Bet” was common among enslaved women as “the familiar form” of the name “Elizabeth,” according to Rock Ford’s website.

Frank
The first indirect mention of Frank, around 30 years old, came in 1800, when Hand was taxed for an enslaved person without reference to sex or name. Frank was the only person of the four enslaved by the Hands to work at Rock Ford. The Hands moved there from their city home in 1794.

Frank worked as a carriage driver, which brought him to St. James Episcopal Church. Hand and Frank likely attended as congregants, though Hand sat at the front and Frank was segregated to the balcony or the bench, according to a documentary directed by McCaskey High School student Hana Rebek for her history class.

But in March of 1802, historical records show Frank escaped from the Hands. In the months that followed, Hand placed advertisements in the Lancaster Intelligencer offering monetary rewards for his capture.

The ads continued until just after Hand’s death in September that year, when the debt faced by the Hand family became their priority. Rebek said the debt may have fueled Frank’s escape, since it meant his captors could have arranged an impending sale to slaveholders in the American South.

Rebek said Frank likely adopted the false identity of another Black man, Prince Wheel, and acquired Wheel’s freedom papers after his death to create a smoother escape.

There are no surviving records of Frank’s capture, so it is assumed he remained free.

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