Biography

Lazette Miller Worden House, 1856 2 Frederick Street
Auburn, New York
Significance: Home of Abolitionist and Underground Railroad Activist, The Lazette Worden House, known as Pisgah, after the biblical reference to the mountain ascended by Moses before the Israelites entered the Promised Land (Deut. 3: 17, 27) illustrates the importance of a women’s Underground Railroad network in Auburn. Lazette Worden, Frances Seward, and Martha Wright were close friends, and all three had all been influenced by Quaker ideals. While they were in Auburn, they formed a mutually supportive friendship that strengthened their radical abolitionist and woman’s rights views. It may have been this group, connected to Philadelphia abolitionists through Martha Wright’s sister, Lucretia Mott, that encouraged Harriet Tubman to come to Auburn in the late 1850s. Certainly, all three of them used their homes as safe houses on the Underground Railroad.
Lazette Maria Miller (November 1, 1803-October 3, 1875) was a daughter of Elijah P. Miller, judge in Auburn. With her sister, Frances, she grew up in the family home on South Street. Both Frances and Lazette attended a Quaker school in Aurora in 1817. Lazette Miller married Alvah Worden, and for much of her married life, she lived in Canandaigua. She spent many weeks of every year, however, visiting her sister and brother-in-law, William Henry Seward, in Auburn. In 1856, she returned to Auburn and built this house at 2 Frederick Street, on land inherited from her father.
After the death of Alvah Worden, Frances Worden returned to Auburn from Canadaigua and built a new house at 2 Frederick Street, a brick (probably stuccoed) Gothic Revival cottage that faced a large farm, on land inherited from her father, Elijah Miller. Her house was not far from one purchased the next year on Miller Street, along the Owasco outlet, by Harriet Day Bogart, Lizaette Worden’s former household servant, and her husband, Nicholas Bogart, who were still employed by William and Frances Seward.
The impact of Lazette Worden and Frances Seward extended beyond Auburn to Washington, D.C., where they continued to espouse their antislavery sympathies, becoming friends with Charles Sumner, abolitionist senator from Massachusetts.