Notable Gates Hall Speakers
Gates Hall didn’t originally have a stage as it does today, but it had galleries on each side and in the back of the building. It has hosted many lectures and meetings by local residents and others from afar on social, moral and religious issues of the day and the evils of alcohol and slavery. Some of the topics addressed by notable speakers include:
Giles Badger Stebbins
Photo Credit: Find-A-Grave
Frederick Douglass
Spiritualism
Government & Affairs of the Nation
Temperance
Phrenology
Abolition
SPIRITUALISM
1867 – J. W. Seaver
1869 – Samuel C. Cuyler of Pultneyville
1869 – G. W. Taylor from Buffalo
GOVERNMENT & AFFAIRS OF THE NATION
1863 – Giles Badger Stebbins of Rochester on “Hatyou Government” and antislavery
1864 – E. W. Cooper, Editor of the West Branch Bulletin published in Williamsport, PA
1864 – Lewis H. Clark, late principal of the Sodus academy and his private, select school in Pultneyville, “James River and its Historic Association.”
TEMPERANCE – WHILE TALKED ABOUT… NOT ALWAYS PRACTICED IN PULTNEYVILLE!
1869 – S. B. McIntire of Palmyra lectured on the topic
PHRENOLOGY
Orson Squire Fowler who also originated octagon houses
ABOLITION
Perhaps the most notable of all to lecture at Union Church, now Gates Hall, was Frederick Douglass, influential abolitionist, on the topic of Slavery. His interest as a former slave himself, was to strengthen the Anti-Slavery Movement. He visited Pultneyville on three documented occasions in 1849, 1853, and 1861.