Syracuse

Syracuse (pop. 148,620 per 2020 Census) is the county seat of Onondaga County. From its founding until after the Civil War, the city’s economy centered on commercial salt production. Even its name (adopted 1847) honored Syracuse, Sicily, also famed for salt. The Erie Canal bisected the city center, fueling both growth and social ferment.

Nineteenth-century Syracuse was a hotbed of radical reform. Abolitionists defied the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Prominent woman’s rights advocates called the city home. (Nineteenth-century practice was to use the singular, woman's, when referring to women as a class; later practice was to use the plural, women's.) Freethinkers including Robert Green Ingersoll, Mark Twain, and others declaimed from area stages. Syracuse is also the birthplace of Oz author (and freethinker) L. Frank Baum.