With every time, era and journey, there is a chain.

Each link has a different story — connecting us to both the past and present.

In the era leading up to the Civil War, the very chains that held people of African descent in bondage symbolize the journey that made them free.

"It becomes sort of a lightning rod nationally in the midst of what becomes a bloody decade in the United States,” said Robert Searing of the Onondaga County Historical Society.

It was October 1, 1851 —a year after the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, “which greatly expands the power of the slave-owners’ power to catch slaves,” Searing said. “I use that term in quotation marks because generally speaking they could have picked up any African-American man or woman and said that they were a slave."

Local abolitionists formed a vigilance committee to stand up against any attempt to enslave African-Americans.

Their signal? Ringing the church bell.

That fall, barrel-maker William Henry, known as Jerry, was taken, chained and awaiting trial to be sent into slavery.

But the bells rang.

"By the evening, you have a crowd of about 2 to 3,000 people outside Clinton Square. There's a series of great speeches made,” Searing said.

The crowd broke Jerry out, sending him North to freedom.

But perhaps the most unseen links of this historic rescue are the lives of two prominent figures.

The first was Samuel Ringgold Ward, the very man believed to have cut the shackles from Jerry's feet.

"He gives what is largely credited by people who were there as sort of the speech that gets the crowd...on-board with the idea of breaking Jerry out.”

Ward escaped slavery in Maryland, settled in Cortland and moved to Syracuse in 1848.

“Starts to publish the Impartial Observer which he's the first Black publisher in Syracuse. His skills as an orator are recognized by his contemparies for sort of the incredible nature that he is,” Searing said.

One of his admirers ended up being abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass.

"Douglass actually says that Ward was the greatest of...he was the greatest of us in terms of oratory,” Searing said.

After his involvement in the Jerry Rescue, Ward was on the run — as were many others in this chained event.

Jermain Wesley Loguen was known as the King of the Underground Railroad.

“Often you'll see things in local newspapers sort of reporting with great pride on Reverend Loguen's ability to help ten fugitives this week,” Searing said.

Loguen escaped slavery in Tennessee and settled in Syracuse in 1841, becoming a founding member and pastor of the AME Zion Church.

He traveled throughout Upstate, setting up schools and churches for Blacks, giving speeches and helping more than a thousand to freedom.

"Jermain Loguen's former slave-owner wanted him to buy his freedom,” said Susan Keeter, an artist, Author for the Upstate Medical Marketing Department. “They even dangled ‘we will free your mother if you free yourself,’ and on this moral principle that everyone is born free and would not dignify this immoral institution by buying his freedom when it's a God-giving right."