LAKE CARMEL- Linda Paris, founder of Putnam County’s Black Heritage Experience, described 2026 as “quite a year.”
Paris led Putnam’s 4th annual Juneteenth celebration at Arts on the Lake in Lake Carmel Friday, that was preceded by a ceremony at the Putnam Veterans Memorial Park when Putnam County Historian Jennifer Cassidy joined County Executive Kevin Byrne in unveiling a tribute to Anthony “Tone” Waring, a Black American Revolutionary War veteran with ties to Putnam County.
Cassidy commended students at Brewster High School for raising funds several years ago to install one of the county’s first Black history markers at the site of Tone’s Pond in Southeast.
Cassidy said the marker was “among the first in our region to incorporate the word ‘enslaved’ in interpreting local history and serves as a reminder of both the reality of slavery and the triumph of freedom.”
Cassidy added: “His story and service are now permanently recognized as part of our shared local history.”
At Arts on the Lake, Paris reflected how Juneteenth commemorated the end of slavery in the United States.
The holiday’s name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, referring to June 19, 1865, the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the Civil War.
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