7/14/2026
Auburn struck us as a very pleasant small city—historic, attractive, and easy to explore. Its downtown has beautiful older buildings, tree-lined streets, public art, and several inviting parks, while the surrounding neighborhoods are filled with well-kept 19th-century homes. With its strong connections to Harriet Tubman, William Seward, abolition, and the equal-rights movement, Auburn offered a wealth of history without feeling at all touristy. It seemed like a comfortable, lived-in city that takes genuine pride in its remarkable past.
Auburn’s Story of Equal Rights
Before visiting the Harriet Tubman Home and the Seward House, we stopped at the New York State Equal Rights Heritage Center in downtown Auburn. The center serves as an introduction not only to Auburn’s history but also to the broader struggle for freedom and equality across New York State.
Auburn was home to an extraordinary group of reformers, including Harriet Tubman, William and Frances Seward, and women’s-rights advocate Martha Coffin Wright. Their lives often intersected, and together they helped make this area an important center of abolitionism and the early fight for women’s rights.
The exhibits explore several movements for equality, including abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and LGBTQ rights. Rather than presenting them as isolated chapters, the center shows how one generation’s struggle often helped inspire the next.
Outside the center stands a striking bronze statue of Tubman walking forward with determination. It seems especially appropriate that she is shown in motion.
The center is not large, or even really a museum, but its strength is in helping us visitors understand how Auburn’s individual historic sites fit together. This was a worthwhile stop and a good reminder that the movement toward equality was never the work of a single person or a single moment. It was—and continues to be—a long effort carried forward by people willing to challenge the accepted ideas of their time.
Seward House Museum
A visit to the Seward House Museum gave us a much fuller understanding of William H. Seward, one of Auburn’s most important historical figures. We knew him primarily as Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State and the man associated with the purchase of Alaska (Seward’s Folly!), but the house revealed a far more complicated and interesting life.
Seward lived here with his wife, Frances, and their family for many years. Because the house remained in the family for several generations, it still contains an extraordinary collection (our guide said 99%) of original furnishings, books, paintings, documents, and personal possessions. Rather than feeling like a restored historic house filled with period reproductions, it felt like a family home that had simply been preserved.
Our guided tour led us through rooms filled with objects connected to Seward’s long political career. He served as governor of New York, a United States senator, and secretary of state under both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. He had once been considered a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, but Lincoln won it in 1860 and later appointed Seward to his cabinet.
One of the most dramatic parts of Seward’s story occurred on the same night Lincoln was assassinated. Seward was recovering at home from injuries suffered in a carriage accident when another conspirator entered the house and attacked him with a knife. Seward survived, although he was badly wounded.
Seward is also remembered for negotiating the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia. Critics mocked the acquisition as “Seward’s Folly,” but the purchase eventually proved to be one of the most significant territorial expansions in American history. Maps, souvenirs, and objects from Seward’s travels help illustrate the breadth of his interests and influence.
The tour also emphasized Frances Seward’s strong opposition to slavery. The Sewards’ Auburn home was connected to the Underground Railroad, and the family supported abolitionist causes. William Seward later sold nearby land to Harriet Tubman, helping her establish a permanent home in Auburn. Visiting the Seward House after touring the Harriet Tubman site really helped connect the stories of these two remarkable people.
This tour was outstanding—truly one of the best we have ever had. And then, quite suddenly, I decided to add a little drama to the experience. I started feeling faint…and down I went. 😂😂
The EMTs were called and strongly suggested a trip to the hospital, but we declined, fairly certain this was another episode of the vasovagal problem I’ve experienced a couple of times before. Why did it happen that day? Who really knows—but dehydration was probably the culprit once again.
In my defense, it was an extremely hot day in Auburn, the historic house was not air-conditioned, and we had already walked about a mile to get there through air that looked very orange from the Canadian wildfires. Apparently, my body finally decided, “That is quite enough history for one morning!”
So… below is a memory video I put together of the few pictures I got before the incident!
Beyond politics, the house offered us a glimpse into family life, travel, reading, art collecting, and the social world of a prominent 19th-century household. There was so much to see that it was easy to overlook small details: books lining the walls, gifts from foreign diplomats, family portraits, and souvenirs gathered during Seward’s travels around the world.
Despite the interruption, Seward House Museum was one of the highlights of our time in Auburn. It brought national history into a very personal setting and helped us see William H. Seward not simply as the man who bought Alaska, but as a central figure in the political struggles and transformations of the Civil War era. And after learning more about the man and seeing the life he built around him, it is easy to wonder why the Alaska Purchase was ever mocked as “Seward’s Folly.” There seemed to be very little folly in Seward at all! He was intelligent, forward-thinking, politically courageous, and remarkably willing to look beyond the world as it existed to imagine what it might become.
Since we missed the last 2/3 of the tour, I did some research on some remarkable things that we missed. I hope we can return and finish the tour!
1. The bloodstained sheet from the attempt to assassinate Seward. On the night of April 14, 1865 — the same night Lincoln was shot — conspirator Lewis Powell entered Seward’s Washington home and attacked him in bed with a knife. Seward had recently been badly injured in a carriage accident and was wearing a metal jaw splint; remarkably, that likely helped protect him. The Seward House collection preserves a strip of the actual linen bedsheet, showing knife slashes and dried blood from the attack.
2. Flowers from Abraham Lincoln’s casket. Seward couldn’t attend Lincoln’s funeral because he was recovering from his own injuries. The museum has an 1865 memorial engraving decorated with pressed flowers taken from Lincoln’s casket, which were later given to Seward…an extraordinarily intimate connection between the two men.
3. A photograph of Lincoln signed by Lincoln himself. The collection contains a personally signed photograph of Abraham Lincoln, dating to about 1860.
4. The carriage Seward shared with Lincoln. The museum preserves the Seward family’s horse-drawn carriage, used by both William Seward and Abraham Lincoln in Washington during the Civil War.
5. Seward’s Alaska material. After negotiating the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia, Seward traveled there and acquired Native Alaskan artifacts. A substantial collection remains at the house. So the Alaska story isn’t represented merely by interpretive panels; some of what Seward himself collected is still there.
We did see the plaster bust of Abraham Lincoln that, according to Seward family tradition, stood in Seward’s Washington residence before being brought back to Auburn. Hopefully, we will make it back to Auburn again in our travels to finish the tour!!!
A Tiffany Treasure in Auburn
One of Auburn’s most unexpected treasures is the Willard Memorial Chapel, a small historic chapel with an interior designed almost entirely by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company. From the outside, the red-brick building is attractive but fairly restrained. The real surprise comes when you step through the doors.
Inside, nearly everything works together as one complete Tiffany design—the stained-glass windows, chandeliers, mosaic details, decorative woodwork, and furnishings. Rather than feeling like a collection of separate artistic pieces, the chapel feels carefully composed, with color, light, pattern, and craftsmanship flowing throughout the room.
The chapel was built as part of the former Auburn Theological Seminary and was dedicated in memory of Dr. Sylvester Willard and his wife, Jane Frances Case Willard. Their daughters helped fund the building, which was completed in the 1890s. Today, it is considered one of the few surviving religious interiors in the country designed almost entirely by Tiffany’s company.
The stained glass was especially beautiful. Tiffany was known for using layered, textured glass to create depth and variation, allowing the windows to glow differently as the light changes. Even without bright sunlight streaming through them, the colors appeared rich and luminous.
We also enjoyed seeing the smaller details—the unusual light fixtures, decorative borders, carved wood, and carefully coordinated furnishings. It is the kind of place where the longer you look, the more you notice.
Willard Memorial Chapel is not a large attraction, but it was a memorable stop in Auburn. After visiting sites connected with Harriet Tubman and William Seward, the chapel added another dimension to the city’s history. Auburn may be best known for its important political and abolitionist connections, but it also holds this remarkable example of American decorative art.