The Talman Family: from Enslaver to Abolitionist
Dr. John Talman is listed in the 1790 census as living with three white females (presumably his wife, Heroine Jenkins, and their first two children) and two enslaved individuals. We have not found any record of the enslaved persons or their situation.
The Talmans would go on to have eight more children including their son John Thurston Talman (1795-1850) who became an abolitionist.
John T. Talman married Mary Eleanor Fitzhugh, from the Fitzhugh family who helped found Rochester. John and Mary moved to Rochester around 1820. He served as cashier at the Bank of Rochester then at the Bank of Monroe. He was involved in promoting of Rochester as an industrial center. He served as a trustee of the Rochester Female Academy (1842) and School District #3 (1846). Talman was a member and vestryman of St. Luke's Episcopal Church.
He also managed the Fitzhugh Estate including the commercial buildings on the Fitzhugh’s 100-acre tract in Rochester. After John’s death, one of the buildings was named the Talman Building.
Rochester was a hotbed of abolitionist activity. Mary Eleanor and her sisters, Elizabeth Potts and Ann Carol, were all active in the abolition movement as were their husbands. Ann and her husband Gerritt Smith’s home in nearby Peterboro was a station on the Underground Railroad and she had an enclosed carriage in which she would travel with veiled fugitives to Canada.
Frederick Douglass moved to Rochester with his family in the late 1840s. Mr. Douglass’s North Star printing office was on the second floor of the Talman Building.