Austin Steward 1793-1869
Austin Steward, a freed slave, settled in Rochesterville in 1817, where he opened a butcher shop. In 1818, he constructed a two-story building on this site for his expanding grocery and dry goods store. Steward was a strong advocate of temperance and refused to sell alcohol. In an 1827 newspaper article he was described as "an industrious, respectable African."
Steward served as a trustee of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. As an ardent Abolitionist, he participated in many anti slavery conventions. His autobiography, published in Rochester in 1857, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, Forty Years a Free Man , provided a rare portrait of the experience of black Americans before the Civil War.
Marker is at the intersection of Main St. E. and St. Paul, on the right when traveling west on Main St. E..
Courtesy hmdb.org
