Many of the Underground Railroad stations in New York State were located on land owned by the white abolitionist Gerrit Smith. Smith was frustrated by the failure of the 1846 New York State referendum to gain unrestricted voting rights for black males. He set aside 120,000 acres—primarily in the Adirondacks—to carve up into 40- to 60-acre lots to give away to impoverished black Americans, between the ages of 21 and 60. Under the state property qualification for black men, this would qualify them to vote. One section in the town of North Elba, Essex Country, among the highest peaks of the Adirondacks, evolved into a small community that become known as “Timbucto.” Timbucto and the other black colonies established on Smith's land made headlines in newspapers, and drew support from the likes of Frederick Douglass, John Brown and a number of black leaders who toured the state recruiting black men and doling out property.

Brown moved to Timbucto in 1849, after meeting Smith in Peterboro. And at least one fugitive slave, John Thomas, received and settled on Smith’s land in Franklin Falls in Franklin County, New York. Based on other reports, it is likely that there were other fugitive slaves among the 100 blacks who tried their hands at farming. The harsh climate and difficulty farming brought Timbucto to halt by the mid 1850s. The soil was simply too poor for cultivation and the harvesting of wood too expensive. In 2010, the Washington Post reported on the ongoing excavation of a nineteenth-century African American settlement called “Timbuctoo” in New Jersey. This long-buried community, was founded in the 1820s “by freed blacks and escaped slaves” who bought the land from Quaker abolitionists. Perhaps Smith’s Timbucto was building on an established tradition among free black Americans and fugitive slaves to build experiments in emancipation.