Isaac and Amy Post home - stop on the Underground Railroad

This site later became the home of the Hochstein School of Music
Amy and Isaac Post personified the dedication to temperance, abolition of slavery and women's rights that distinguished Rochester as a center of freedom in America.
Hicksite Quakers Amy (1802-1889) and Isaac (1798-1872) Post lived on this site from the 1840s to 1889 when Amy died. As conductors on the Underground Railroad, they personally assisted scored of fugitives from slavery including as many as 15 on one occasion. Isaac Post's apothecary was on Exchange Street near Buffalo Street (Main) in the midst of Abolitionist activity in the city. Impatient with the hesitant involvement of the Quaker Church in the Abolitionist movement, Isaac resigned from the Quaker Church in 1845 and became converted to Spiritualism by Margaret Fox in 1848.
"Amy your family was always dear—very dear to me, you love me and treated me as a brother before the world knew me as it 'now' does."
Frederick Douglas to Amy Post April 28, 1846
Frederick Douglass stayed in the Post home before he was encouraged by them to move to Rochester in 1847 to publish his abolitionist newspaper The North Star, later Frederick Douglass' paper. His funeral, held in the Central Presbyterian Church at this site in 1895, brought him full circle to the place he first stayed. He is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery. A statue of him stands at Highland Park no far from one of his homes.
Susan B. Anthony was a close friend of the Posts and attended the second 1848 Women's Rights Convention in Rochester that Amy Post helped to organize. The Central Presbyterian Church erected their building next door to the Posts in 1858 and added on to the church on the Post's lot a year after Amy's death in 1889. The church reached out to the poor and undereducated families on the nearby Erie and Genesee Valley canals whose transient lifestyle created a distinct culture. Anthony's funeral was held in this Central Presbyterian Church in 1906.
In the mid-1970s the Central Presbyterian Church merged with the Brick and First Presbyterian Churches to become Downtown United Presbyterian Church. Continuing its historic mission to the community, the Church donated their building and land to the Hochstein School of Music which was founded in 1920 as a musical school for underprivileged students. David Hochstein, for whom the school was named, was the nephew of "Red Emma," radical social activist, Emma Goldman (1869-1940). An accomplished violinist, Hochstein enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps to fight in "the Great War." He was killed October 15, 1918. The Armistice was signed on November 11.

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Morning of February 18, 1861

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