Three years before Auburn turned from village to city, and part of the reason it did turn, a great famine began overseas in Ireland. A blight wiped out the potato crops that supplied most of the poor farmers their only meal. These 'potato people' rented their small plots from absentee Engish landlords, giving a percentage of their crops in order to stay on the land. Living in tiny fieldstone houses with dirt floors, straw mounds for beds, and little furnishings, they were a happy, carefree people until the blight hit. Without the means to pay rent and no food, many moved to the cities where the English had set up workhouses and soup kitchens. The Society of Friends, called Quakers because of their tendency to shake, or 'quake' when caught up in relious fervor, formed a large part of the relief effort.
The winter of 1846 was one of the worst ever recorded in the history of Ireland, drifts covered entire valleys and more farmers were forced into the cities. Disease was the next phase of what many called the Irish holocost, as many as a million died from stavation and disease. Crime was rampant, the prisons soon filled and the government started shipping prisoners to Australia for crimes as small as stealing a pig. Of course, the sale of a pig could bring enough shillings to cross the Atlantic to America, and many farmers and thieves did just that. Two million Irish immigrated to the New World during the famine years.
The first boat people, often in disease-ridden 'coffin ships', landed in New York City and in Canada. Said to be lower than slaves, they were given the most dangerous jobs and the lowest wages. They migrated inward to get away from the crowds and to find land to farm once again, land to call their own. When a group of Irish named Whalen reached Auburn and found a peaceful, simpathetic Quaker community, they stayed.
Perhaps the most famous Quaker was William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Through his philosophys and his political power, Pennsylvania was the first state to condemn slavery. The underground railroad had it's beginnings in Philidelphia but the tracks criss-crossed New York state like a spiderweb.
Further south, slavery was a common business, blacks were being bought and sold, treated like animals, and killed for minor violations. Through the courage and determination of freemen,(freed slaves), and those few whites who believed that all men were created equal, the underground railroad was formed to bring those slaves North to Canada. This 'railroad' traveled through swamps and forests, and up the rivers by boats which traveled only in darkness. A group of slaves could make about thirty miles a night before needing to rest, many of these rest stops were nothing more than abandoned cabins or sheds, but some were hidden rooms in big mansions or barns. One such stop was in Auburn, the house of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who made many trips down south to lead over three hundred people to freedom. I don't know for sure if the Irishmen or the Quakers helped to hide the slaves but I'm sure they didn't reveal their neighbor's secret life.
I also haven't found the link that proves Mom's ancestors came from there, but if Grandpa Whalen was any indication of the early Irish of Auburn, they would not only have Not revealed Ms. Tubman's secret, they would have provided the potatoes that strengthened her friends and family for their final run for the border.