Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree around 1797, was enslaved for the first roughly three decades of her life on farms throughout Ulster County, including in what is now Esopus and Kingston, before freeing herself in 1826, a year ahead of New York's final abolition of slavery. Her Ulster County years, marked by forced family separation and the successful legal fight to recover her enslaved son Peter after he was illegally sold to Alabama, shaped the moral force of her later abolitionist and women's rights oratory. In 2022, New York State dedicated Sojourner Truth State Park along the Kingston waterfront in her honor.