New York Slavery

Chapter One

2007-08-18T21:48:00.000-07:00

BORN TO RUN: The Slave Family in Early New York, 1626 to 1827

Dr. Vivienne L. Kruger. MA., M. Phil., Ph.D.

The following text is an exact transcription of a Ph.D. thesis completed at Columbia University, History Department, New York, New York in 1985 by Dr. Vivienne Kruger, Ph. D. My dissertation sponsor was Professor Alden Vaughan, and the chairman of my dissertation committee was Professor Eric Foner, both of the History Department. This thesis was given the highest possible grade of pass on the day of the dissertation defense and was accepted as is for immediate deposit in the Dean’s Office. It was originally typed in Wordstar program , and subsequently changed into a Microsoft Word format. As a result, many of the tables and appendices are out of proper column alignment and many are missing. All chapters, text, and footnotes are in their original condition. The bibliographical essay and bibliography are completely intact. Only the secondary sources section is incomplete: it stops at the alphabetical letter “h” and entries from h to z are missing. Interested scholars and readers can order a copy of the full complete, original doctoral dissertation (Publication number 8523186) from Proquest (formerly University Microfilms) at www.il.proquest.com. Telephone: 1800-521-0600. The original Ph.D. thesis is also available for reading in a hard copy paper format permanently on file in Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA. www.columbia.edu telephone: 212-854-2271.
This Ph.D. thesis has not yet been published as a book, and inquiries from mainstream or academic university publishers are welcome.
The author, Dr. Vivienne Kruger, can be contacted at newyorkslavery@yahoo.com

BORN TO RUN: the slave family in early new york, 1626 to 1827
Dr. Vivienne L. kruger. Ma. M. Phil., Ph.D.
C 1985

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Chapter

1.

SLAVE FAMILY HISTORIOGRAPHY
3

PART I. SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE FAMILY

2.

DUTCHMEN AND AFRICANS: SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE FAMILY IN NEW AMSTERDAM, 1626 TO 1664
32
3.

THE IMPLEMENTATION AND GROWTH OF A SLAVE LABOR SYSTEM IN BRITISH NEW YORK
61
4.

DEMOGRAPHY AND THE SLAVE FAMILY
116
5.

CANDLES IN THE WIND: SLAVE FAMILIES IN CRISIS
185

PART II. THE SLAVE LIFE CYCLE

6.

SEEKING SHELTER FROM THE STORM: SLAVE CHILDHOOD
236
7.

HUNGRY HEARTS: SLAVE MARRIAGE
274
8.

THE TIES THAT BIND: SLAVE PARENTHOOD
354
9.

FIRE AND RAIN: OLD AGE FOR SLAVES AND FREEDMEN
430

PART III. THUNDER ROAD: THE LONG JOURNEY TOWARD FREEDOM

10.

SLOW GROWTHOF A FREE BLACK COMMUNITY, 1644 UNTIL THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
521
11.

UPHEAVAL AND FREEDOM: BLACK NEW YORK DURING THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
559
12.

TRANSITION TO FREEDOM: PRIVATE VOLUNTARY MANUMISSION, 1785 TO 1827
634
13.

THE GRADUAL EMANCIPATION PROGRAM, 1799 TO 1848
715
14.

HOMEWARD BOUND: THE NEWLY EMERGING FREE BLACK FAMILY, 1785 TO 1848
776

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
883

BIBLIOGRAPHY
911

APPENDICES
990

ABSTRACT
BORN TO RUN: THE SLAVE FAMILY IN EARLY NEW YORK, 1626 To 1827
Dr. Vivienne L. Kruger, Ph.D.
This study of slave families in the southern six counties of New York covers an early era in which many blacks were African immigrants or first or second generation Afro‑Americans. The central feature of New York and northern slavery was that most slaveholdings were small and contained only from one to five slaves. Because of the small size of the holdings, slave family members were usually owned by separate masters and forced to live apart. Slavery created artificial black demographic conditions in New York: a small overall black population, low black population density, unbalanced adult sex ratios, and a random rather than familial distribution of slaves into white households. A distinctive Afro‑American life cycle developed under these circumstances of enslavement. New York slaves experienced childhood, marriage, parenthood, and old age in ways that were radically different from free blacks or whites. In contrast to sudden, total emancipation in the South, New York slaves were freed voluntarily and gradually between 1785 and 1848. Separate ownership guaranteed separate manumission of relatives and severe family disruption as husbands, wives, and children were freed individually, often many years apart.
This study breaks new ground in the location and use of manuscript and primary sources appropriate to the study of slavery and the slave family in small northern holdings. Hard, mass quantitative data on thousands of slaves was compiled from censuses, church records, wills, estate inventories, bills of sale, runaway slave advertisements, laws, town records, manumission documents, registers of the births of slave children, overseer of the poor rolls and state comptroller's records for the support of abandoned slave infants, and ship registers of blacks evacuated with the British in 1783. As a social historian, I utilized and unearthed new manuscript, archival, printed primary, and secondary sources to reconstitute and explore a previously unstudied population group. To complete this original, large-scale, demographic research project, I collected, interpreted, arranged, catalogued, and ranked thousands of pieces of information. This study developed groundbreaking methodologies never before used to study the slave family in a small Northern slaveholding setting: it traced the slave life cycle and family phases and explored the impact of revolution, manumission, and gradual emancipation on family cohesion. This dissertation has a wide focus by virtue of its topic: it necessarily encompasses the multi-faceted social, familial, cultural, economic, demographic, and legislative aspects of slavery in New York from 1626 to 1827.

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: SLAVE FAMILY HISTORIOGRAPHY
Scholarly research on slavery has traditionally focused on the profitability of the institution, master treatment of bondsmen, such forms of slave resistance as running away and large‑scale rebellion, and the legal framework of the slave system. The slave was a passive object in this historical inquiry; he was described as either a fortunate student in a beneficent white acculturation university1 or an infantilized inmate in a closed institution.2 Slaves were fed, clothed, cured, worked, punished, whipped, sold, and Christianized at the discretion of a host of master types and in a plethora of plantation settings. Most historians saw the slave as an independent actor only when he ran away or resisted in a mass uprising. The "social history" of the slave population consisted of sentimental anecdotes about favored house slaves, tales of exploitive miscegenation, or heartrending descriptions of families sundered at the auction block.
The slave family was studied in 1939 by E. Franklin Frazier, whose interpretation remained the standard until the revisionist works of the 1970s. Frazier insisted that the African's societal patterns had been totally destroyed in his transition to American slavery. Culturally set adrift, the slave family on plantations was a temporary phenomenon characterized by loose sexual mating illegitimacy, parental indifference, absent fathers, and disruption by sale. Only the large group of partially white mulattoes and the small group of favored slaves who lived in close contact with, and under the supervision of white masters on small farms adhered to and emerged from slavery with stable white‑imposed family patterns and values. Another small group of hardworking antebellum freed blacks also was able to maintain familial integrity. For the vast majority, however, slavery had meant plantation life in quarters far removed from the elevating moral influence of constant owner supervision. At emancipation blacks had an anarchic matriarchal family system; fathers were without a role or authority, and affectional bonds between spouses and between parent and child were weak. Frazier asked: "What authority was there to take the place of the master's in regulating sex relations and maintaining the permanency of marital ties?"3 Once again, the slave was seen as a victim of his circumstances‑‑either fortunate enough to absorb white values or left to flounder in a morass of irregular black behaviors.
Kenneth Stampp devoted nine pages to the slave family, carrying forward some of Frazier's interpretations. Stampp continued the master‑dominated perspective on slave family relations. Marital and familial patterns were either scrupulously set and enforced on some plantations or slaves were left to their own questionable practices on others. The slave family was neither protected in law nor was it a functioning economic unit under the head of a male. Fathers were unable to provide for or protect their charges, and parental authority was subjugated to the ultimate power of the master. The family was unstable due to the constant threat of separation by sale. This all resulted in casual attitudes toward marriage, lack of deep affection between spouses, parental indifference toward children, promiscuity, and a matriarchal organization of black society. Stampp admitted that some slaves did manage to develop familial attachments: witness grief at forced separations. But in general Stampp's family was a frail entity, determined by the actions and attitudes of individual masters and by the phenomenon of enslavement itself.4
The new social history of the late 1960s reflected the political and social values of historians and the deeply changing society around them. Historical concerns shifted away from political institutions, military events, and elite classes toward the study of broad, hitherto ignored population groups. Fresh techniques in demographic research, computer technology, and newly rediscovered source materials encouraged historians of slavery literally to stampede into the virgin territory of the black family in the 1970s. With history being rewritten from the bottom up, the slave was no longer a mere reactor to stimuli from above; black familial patterns and an autonomous slave culture were "discovered" for the first time. The resulting reinterpretations of the slave experience stressed the black side of slavery, with a diminution of the master's input. The new research revealed the retention of African customs among slaves. It was seen that black religion and music nourished a separate slave culture and that black community and family life seemingly survived without the direction or even knowledge of white masters.
Several important articles appeared. Russell Menard assessed the possibilities of family life in terms of sex ratios, dispersed ownership patterns, and the relative abilities of fresh African and acculturated creole women to reproduce naturally the black population. Allan Kulikoff analyzed African importations, slave household formation, size, and composition, black population density, and kinship ties and structures in the eighteenth century Chesapeake. Herbert Klein and Stanley Engerman examined the rates of natural increase of slaves on mainland North America and in the West Indies. Lower slave fertility in the islands was explained in terms of malnutrition, overwork, owner behavior, epidemiology, or retention of the African custom of prolonged breastfeeding of infants which delays conception.5
Three major works dominated the debate on the slave family. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman advanced a model of the plantation as a rational business enterprise based on the assembly line, complete with efficient workers ad enlightened managers. The interests of master and slave often converged. Slaves accepted the capitalist work ethic, spurred on by such incentives as job mobility from field hand to artisan to slave driver and material rewards equivalent to wages. The family was the basic unit of social organization under slavery. The economic interests of planters encouraged them to feed, clothe, and house slaves well, and to preserve the stability of their "workers'" families. In Fogel and Engerman's version of the slave family, males played the dominant role, with the division of labor within the family based on gender. Slaves abandoned the African family form as dysfunctional in the new setting and adopted a nuclear structure. Not only did slaves adopt their masters' family forms, but they incorporated their prudish Victorian sexual morals as well. Childspacing patterns, breastfeeding schedules, and the average age at birth of the first surviving child all suggested white rather than black patterns of sexual behavior.6
Fogel and Engerman's findings on the slave family ran counter to the research conclusions of the main body of slave historians. Eugene Genovese provided a more convincing interpretation of slave society. Instead of a capitalist collaboration, Genovese presented a precapitalist seigneurial society based on a mutual recognition of customary rights and privileges between master and slave. This paternalistic compromise entailed concessions on both sides and gave the slave quarters enough breathing space to form its own thriving cultural and familial system. A strong, cohesive slave community existed; slaves asserted their rights within the system and enjoyed folk culture, religion, and mores. Genovese described a black culture with strong African carryovers. Family ties and values were paramount, with distinct black sexual practices regarding premarital sex, marital fidelity, and divorce. Slaves valued two‑parent, male‑centered households, even if this was often difficult to realize.7
Herbert Gutman's work provided a fresh and compelling model of the process of slave family formation. Blacks adapted to slavery by developing distinctive domestic arrangements and complex kin networks which coalesced into a new Afro‑American culture during early contact between Africans and Anglo‑Americans in the period 1725 to 1775. This uniform Afro‑American culture was spread over the entire South by the migration of upper South slaves to the lower South. Based on African patterns of kin obligation, slave familial customs included exogamy, intensive naming for blood kin, and fictive kin relationships when real kin were missing. Slave children were socialized by the black slave community, passing on preferences for two‑parent households, a low voluntary divorce rate, and a toleration of premarital sex and pregnancy but not of adultery.8
Fogel and Engerman, Genovese, and Gutman all use plantation slavery as the focus of their studies. Large plantations may have been either capitalist factories, seigneurial manors, or the setting of complex kin networks and communities, but the experience of slaves who lived on small units was ignored in these models. The 1790 census indicates that four out of five United States slaves lived in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, where "one in three was owned in units of less than ten and another three in ten in units ranging in size from ten to nineteen."9 In South Carolina one out of three slaves lived in units of fewer than twenty blacks. Overall, 63.3 percent of the slaves in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, and 33.3 percent of the slaves in South Carolina lived in units containing less than twenty slaves. The proportion of slaves who lived in very small units was even larger in the earlier years of the eighteenth century. The familial organization of the slaves who lived in units of less than ten slaves is particularly intriguing. They were a minority of southern slaves, albeit a weighty one‑‑a third or more of the black population in the colonial period. Gutman contended that although the familial arrangements of slaves who lived in small holdings on farms and in towns and cities is largely unknown they also enjoyed opportunities for long marriages and expanded kin networks. His only evidence was that "the percentage of North Carolina ex‑slaves reporting long slave marriages in 1866 was the same in farm and urban settings as in plantation settings."10
Historians of slavery in general and of the slave family in particular have concentrated on the large southern plantation environment in the nineteenth century. While some recent studies help correct the gap in colonial slave history,11 the experience of the urban or small farm slave remains largely uninvestigated. Two works deal with the urban slave in the South but only marginally with the slave family. Thad W. Tate's study of eighteenth‑century Williamsburg found that in the 1780s the average slaveholding per white family was five or six blacks. They were housed in small outbuildings, second‑floor rooms above the kitchen, or on the floor somewhere in the master's house, affording less familial privacy than on larger plantations with specific slave quarters. While plantation owners preferred and could enforce their wish that slaves marry other slaves on the plantation, in cities large numbers of slaves who belonged to different owners lived in close proximity to each other, facilitating black social life, meetings, and marriages. The small size of the average urban holding almost insured that most marriages would involve separately owned spouses, increasing the chance of marital rupture through sale or a master's relocation and also the incidence of runaways.12
Richard Wade concluded that southern urban slave attachments were impermanent, that promiscuity was rampant, and that miscegenation was common. Marriages often involved separately owned partners, leading to difficulties in visitation and separately domiciled family units. Local ordinances tried to accommodate visiting spouses: Louisville's watch was ordered to "arrest all slaves found away from home without a pass or a good excuse (except a slave found at his wife's home)."13 Individual masters, though, could prevent their married slaves from seeing their spouses and children, as in the case of one slave who was "never allowed to see them; he would be beaten within an ace of his life if he ventured to go to the corner of the street."14 Urban slaves enjoyed less privacy than plantation slaves because of the constant presence of and observation by the master's household.
Wade and Tate described the probable effect of urban slavery on the slave family; small holdings meant separately owned families, weak family ties, and increased risks of permanent separation and alienation. Fathers could neither provide nor protect, and mothers invested little emotion in their children‑‑the institution of the family was swallowed up by the institution of slavery. Urban slaves were denied the social and physical breathing space which enabled black culture to flourish in the slave quarters of large plantations as well as the opportunity to live on a big plantation over long enough periods of time to develop either nuclear or complex kin networks. To be sure, slave social life, contacts, and entertainments abounded illegally in cities for slaves who were able to slip away from their masters' premises. Men and women loved each other, marriages took place, and children were born, but no study to date has adequately investigated the chances for sustained family and community life for slaves in small holdings, both urban and rural.
As a slavery laboratory, the northern version of the institution illuminates the experience of the small holding; most northern slaveowners possessed fewer than five slaves. Slavery in the northern colonies and states has received sparse historical attention compared to the massive research efforts expended on the South. Part of the reason is numerical: out of 694,207 slaves listed in the 1790 federal census, 40,086, or only 5.8 percent, lived in the nine northern states.15 Slavery was either abolished or gradually phased out in the North by 1827; it was thereafter a uniquely southern institution except for New Jersey. But if the number of slaves in the North was relatively small, and the institution ended earlier, slavery did exist in the North for approximately 230 years, from the 1620s through 1860.
The black slave and free population of the northern states has never been fully studied. The best work on New England slavery remains the 1942 study by Lorenzo Greene. Greene's chapter on the slave family emphasized the influence of Puritan thought on slave marriage in Massachusetts. The Puritan concept of the well‑ordered family under a patriarchal head insured that owners would enforce a uniform morality upon their wives, children, servants, and slaves. Wedding banns had to be published for slaves as well as for freemen. Owners enforced proscriptions against non-marital sex and adultery. Slave marriages were lawful as early as the 1650s.16 As of May 30, 1705, masters were legally prohibited from denying their slaves the right to marriage with another negro.17 While Greene's study stressed Puritan control over slave marriage and morality, he also conceded that slave marriages were disrupted severely by sale and noted the undermining of parental rights, separate ownership of families, and the giving away of unwanted slave children who were considered burdensome to small slaveholders.18 In another northern study, Gary Nash found that slave reproductive rates in pre‑revolutionary colonial Philadelphia were suppressed by unbalanced sex ratios and by the small size of slaveholdings. About twenty percent of Philadelphians held slaves in 1767 and 1775 enumerations; most owned only one or two adult slaves. "Sexually mature male and female slaves infrequently lived together under the same roof," inhibiting regular contact and negating the possibility of sustained family life for slaves.19
New York was the largest slaveholding colony and state in the North; it provides a fresh demographic context within which the slave family's existence can be analyzed. Both as the Dutch colony of New Netherland and later as an English colony and a new state, New York was heavily involved in slaveholding. In 1640 and 1650, New York had the largest number of blacks of any colony, but by 1660 it was surpassed in numbers by Maryland and Virginia. Between 1700 and 1730 New York had the fourth largest number of blacks among the mainland American colonies, after Virginia, South Carolina, and Maryland. New York remained the fifth largest slaveholding colony from 1740 through 1780, behind Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland, and North Carolina.20 By the first federal census in 1790, New York State's black population was the sixth largest in the United States in both the number of blacks and the number of slaves‑‑exceeded by Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia.
In terms of the proportion of the total population that was black, Maryland in 1704 (12.8 percent) and Virginia in 1699 to 1703 (13 percent) were comparable to the figure for New York in 1698 (12 percent). New York was soon eclipsed; by 1710, Maryland's population was 18.6 percent black, with New York at 13 percent in 1712 to 1714. All of the other southern colonies had much higher proportions of blacks. By 1750, from 33.3 to 60 percent of the populations of the southern colonies were black.21 In 1790 New York had the ninth largest proportion of blacks in its total population‑‑exceeded by South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Delaware, Kentucky, and slightly by New Jersey.22 Although New York generally had fewer blacks and a smaller proportion of blacks in its population than the southern states, it had the largest number of both blacks and slaves of any northern colony or state from 1630 through 1790. It was the main repository of the institution of slavery outside the South.23 In 1790 New York alone had 25,875 blacks while the New England states combined had 16,822 blacks: Rhode Island (4,442), Connecticut (5,419), Massachusetts (5,369),New Hampshire (787), Vermont (269), and Maine, which was part of the state of Massachusetts (536). New York still had 21,193 slaves compared to New England's 3,763 slaves. New Jersey (14,185 blacks, 11,423 slaves) and Pennsylvania (10,238 blacks, 3,707 slaves) had the next largest numbers of both blacks and slaves in the North after New York.
The black family was either ignored or interpreted as non‑existent in New York slavery scholarship; the available primary source materials were hardly used. Edwin Olson's traditional institutional study regarded slavery as a patriarchal system in which negroes were seen as inferior members of the white owner's family. He devoted two pages to the slave family: "Among themselves, slaves had 'heathen marriages' which were loosely regarded, because when a 'married couple' were separated‑‑geographically speaking‑‑by sale, both parties often 'married' again. . . ."24 Samuel McKee's 1935 study, Labor in Colonial New York,1664‑1776, concerned New York's varied labor force and only incidentally mentioned the slave family. He asserted that "it may seem like an extreme analogy, and yet it is probably true, that the owners viewed the unions and subsequent reproduction of slaves as they did similar activities among livestock. The idea of family life among the slaves rarely appears. . . . It is difficult to conceive of the casual mating which resulted from their being together in a household as marriage. . . ."25
Edgar McManus's work is the only major published body of research on New York slavery. In his thesis, McManus argued that urban slave marriages lacked permanence. Artisans and tradesmen needed skilled slave labor, not the service of entire families. Blacks had difficulty maintaining marriages; most marital relations were "necessarily transient and polygamous."26 His published study primarily dealt with the economic profitability of slavery, the slave trade, slave controls, revolts, runaways, and the antislavery and gradual emancipation movements. He spent four pages on the slave family, relying on the interpretations of Frazier and Stampp and on a small body of evidence‑‑newspaper runaway slave ads, a missionary tract by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a town record, and a small number of abstracted wills. He argued the following:27
For most of the slaves family attachments were casual and impermanent. The slave system was simply not structured to support slave families and no amount of good will could surmount this fact or mitigate its effects. Slave families that were somehow kept together inevitably burdened slaveholders with costly and unmanageable numbers of slave children. Another difficulty was that the typical slave family was divided among several owners. . . . Since it was economically unfeasible for slaveholders as a class to subordinate their buying and selling to the stability of the slave family, it was inevitable that families should disintegrate. . . . Such conditions created a bad climate of sexual morality. Most slaves regarded monogamy as an aberration when they regarded it at all, for spouses who might be separated at any time by sale were not likely to develop deep emotional loyalties to one another.
Later research by McManus continued to stress that "slaveholding was so widely diffused on a petty scale that most bondsmen had to form their friendships and family attachments outside the premises of their masters."28 The most recent lengthy work on New York slavery is Thomas Davis's 1974 Columbia University dissertation on "Slavery in Colonial New York City," which focused on the problems of maintaining order and social control over the slave population. Davis's brief treatment of the family concluded that even though members lived apart and marriages were unstable, the slave family definitely existed as a system of meaningful relationships between people. Arthur Zilversmit's excellent and important study of the abolition process in the northern states covered the philosophical, political, and legislative maneuvers in each state which resulted in freedom for the enslaved population. He incidentally mentioned that the slave family "was a precarious institution subject to the needs and wishes of the master. .. Although [some] individual masters tried to preserve family ties, the slave family was unprotected by law, weakened by insecurity, and easily destroyed. The weakness of the family encouraged casual sexual relationships rather than permanent bonds."29
This study explores the difficulties the slave family faced in the small holdings of urban and rural New York. The persuasive models of black community and family life advanced by historians of southern plantation slavery do not fully work when transplanted to New York. The separate black culture, religion, and social life enjoyed in the slave quarters of large plantations was denied to New York slaves who were segregated from other blacks in small households in close daily proximity to their masters. Slaves in the big plantation counties of the South lived in areas of dense black population; they could often live with or near immediate and extended kin for long periods of time. Where real relatives had been sold away, members of the large resident black community could serve as surrogate family. In contrast, New York blacks ordinarily lived apart from both close family members and distant kin and with from only none to one or two other blacks; the thin concentration of the black population further increased the isolation experienced by slaves in their individual households.
* * * * *
This study analyzes the slave and free black population of the southern six counties of New York: Kings, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, New York, and Westchester.30 As table 1 shows, the black population in the southern six counties of the state represents a large proportion of all blacks in New York‑‑from 90.9 percent of them in 1698 down to 52.9 percent by 1830. The slow relative loss of black population in the southern six counties to the northern counties was caused by white population movement in the eighteenth century up the Hudson and away from the early centers of population in New York City and Long Island.31 This original area of white and black settlement, however, continued to include a high proportion of the state's blacks, enabling this study to cover comprehensively both enslavement and freedom in New York. During the important 1785 to 1827 transitional period of widespread voluntary manumission, gradual emancipation, and the end of legal slavery in New York State, the six‑county sample illustrates the freedom process for a weighty 50 percent of the state's blacks. INSERT TABLE ONE HERE.
This study of the New York slave family breaks new ground in the field of slave scholarship in several ways. Slavery in New York was unique in that it was the only mainland American slave system that evolved out of two colonial powers‑‑Dutch and English. The short tenure of the Dutch left little imprint on the legal structure of slavery instituted by the British, but the Dutch left behind a small free black community which stood in contrast to almost universal black slavery under the new, rigid, British slave system; almost no manumissions took place for the next hundred years. The multicultural origins of New York were also reflected in the sharply different slaveholding patterns and attitudes toward slavery of Dutch and English whites for over 150 years after New Netherland became New York. Much as the Dutch‑descended Afrikaners in South Africa became diehard proponents of racial oppression and apartheid, so the Dutch in New York became vehement supporters of slavery to the very end.
Unlike most southern plantation studies, this work concerns an earlier time period during which slave importations were legal and much of the population under investigation were immigrants or first or second generation Afro‑Americans. New York's slaves came either directly from Africa or indirectly via the Caribbean from points along the 4,000 mile‑long African coastline from the Senegal River in the north to the southern limit of Angola as well as the island of Madagascar. Traces of recently‑arrived African culture can be seen in slaves' names, tribal body marks, African language, black religious rites and beliefs, songs, the forms followed at public festivities, and in customs surrounding childbirth.
This study provides a rare look at urban slavery in both New York City and in the nearby rural counties which existed in the city's urban orbit. It can serve as a new model for American slavery in both the urban and the small slaveholding setting. The main feature that differentiates slavery in the North from the South is the preponderance of small slaveholdings. Except for some modestly sized (by southern standards) plantations in the Narragansett region of Rhode Island, most northern slaveowners possessed only between one and five slaves. Whereas historians of southern slavery rely on the records kept by large plantation owners and Union Army data on ex‑slaves as source material for the study of the slave family, historians of northern slavery must mine different manuscript and primary sources left behind by small households. Sources for the study of slaves in small holdings in New York are abundant and voluminous and have never before been used to study this particular historical population: censuses, church records, wills, estate inventories, bills of sale, runaway slave advertisements, laws, town records, manumission documents, registers of the births of slave children, overseer of the poor rolls for the support of abandoned slave infants, state comptroller's records for the support of abandoned slave infants and superannuated freedmen, and ship registers of blacks evacuated with the British in 1783.
Historians of southern urban and northern slavery have previously noted the destructive effect of small holdings on the slave family based only on small numbers of examples, court cases, legal statutes and pass laws, and runaway slave advertisements. This study, for the first time, uses large data bases32 to prove conclusively that most slave families were unable to live together in the small slaveholdings of New York. Slaves were randomly distributed rather than familially grouped into white households. Historians are not mathematicians; while the use of sophisticated statistical techniques must not be allowed to overshadow the human quality of our past, judiciously used hard, mass, quantitative data‑‑the analysis of thousands of slaves bequeathed in wills or thousands of slaves manumitted by their owners rather than only a few cases‑‑enables historians to make more soundly based arguments about the past than ever before. These large data bases provide concrete information on such widely diverse questions as the size, age, and sex composition of slaveholdings, what happened to individual slaves and the slave family at the death of owners, the care afforded to elderly slaves, whether slaves were freed singly or at different times from other family members, how far away in miles slaves were sold, how often slave women gave birth to children, and whether ex‑New York slaves were evacuated alone or in family groups by the British at the end of the Revolution.
The slave family in New York existed within a cohesive slave system whose laws, controls, and labor distribution methods were designed to fulfill local white need for bound black workers. The New York institution of slavery functioned profitably for whites while dealing as well as it could with the dependent and deviant groups of slaves present in all slave systems: young children, pregnant women, the elderly, runaways, arsonists, thieves, and insurrectionists. Aside from occasional private violence by slaves against masters, New York experienced relatively few mass uprisings: a 1712 conspiracy and a 1741 alleged plot in New York City, a 1753 plot by twelve blacks in Dutchess County, a 1761 plan by thirteen slaves to fire the town of Schenectady, and a 1775 escape attempt in Ulster County.
The black family and its needs were not taken into consideration in the planning of the slave system. Slaves in the urban households of New York City and the small family farms of the rural counties lived under artificial demographic conditions created as a by‑product of slavery: small overall black population, low black population density, unbalanced adult sex ratios, and the random rather than familial distribution of slaves through sale and purchase into white households. A distinctive New York Afro‑American life cycle developed under these circumstances of enslavement. New York slaves experienced childhood, marriage, parenthood, and old age radically differently than did freed blacks or whites.
The Afro‑American life cycle of New York slaves included a childhood during which a premium was placed on labor value rather than on personal development. Children grew up apart from their fathers and older siblings. They often only remained with their mothers until the age of six when their growing labor value increased the likelihood of separation by sale. Courtship and marriage were subordinated to the private and public control requirements of a slave system which restricted slave travel and communication with other blacks. White labor needs dictated that spouses could be sold at will and domiciled separately from each other with the ever‑present danger that one partner would be removed beyond visiting distance by sale. Parenthood, instead of completing the nuclear family unit, meant piecemeal separation from children and inability to direct their well‑being. Fathers rarely lived with their children, and mothers functioned as short‑term single parents until children were sold away; neither parent could expect to raise personally their offspring to adulthood or invest in their futures. The slave family could not support its elderly; once past useful labor to whites, slaves relied on their owners' good will for care in old age. Elderly slaves were burdensome to their owners; some received decent food, clothing, shelter, and medical care while others were abused or abandoned. In the lifelong absence of real parents, grandparents, spouses, siblings, and children, slaves in the same household must have often served as de facto kin, providing whatever love, comfort, companionship, friendship, and support they could for each other.
The slave family was unable to live together, jointly plan a future for all of is members, act as an economic unit, share each other's daily lives, or provide love, care, protection, and help on a continual basis. Traditional family roles and legal privileges between spouses and between parents and children were undermined by the slave's primary status as property. Property relations were protected in law at the expense of black family relations. In spite of all of these obstacles, the ideals of family love and obligation often survived within the black community.
Historians of New York slavery‑‑Olson, McKee, McManus, Davis, and Zilversmit‑‑all noted that small holdings meant that slave family members were divided among several owners. They incorrectly assumed, however, that this separation led blacks to value their families less deeply. To be sure, separate ownership, distance, and sales sundered ties that were already transitory or weak; serial relationships and marriages were undoubtedly common. Polygamy, adultery, and divorce must also have been more prevalent in the slave than in the free black or white population as a result of the involuntary physical separation of men and women. Relationships with siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and relatives through marriage, except where maintained through spontaneous affection or proximity, may have also been weakened by lack of contact. Such relatives were involuntarily kept apart for years or even for entire lifetimes.
For many slaves, however, separation over both distance and time did not end the love they felt for remembered parents, spouses, and children. We have forgotten that slaves were human beings with the same emotional and psychological characteristics that cause free men and women to love each other and their children. We ought not to assume that victims of tragic historical circumstances‑‑enslavement, war, internment in concentration camps, famine‑‑lose either their humanity or their connection to loved ones; difficult circumstances may in fact inflate love and longing to heroic proportions. It can be argued that victims of war or persecution may suffer only temporary forced isolation from family but that their socialization from childhood led them to expect family cohabitation and continuity as norms for childhood, marriage, and parenthood. Although slaves learned as children to expect that separation from family would be a way of life, separation may indeed have made the heart grow fonder.
Hard numerical data prove that the black family was physically separated by slavery but the black family was not demolished by the daunting New York slave system. Love and the frequency of family survival cannot be quantified but evidence of the persistent strong bonds between husbands and wives and between parents and children abounds in massive anecdotal case histories of thousands of slaves. It can be seen in the efforts of some owners to keep slave families together or permit visitations‑‑or sometimes to keep them apart‑‑because they knew of the deep attachments their bondsmen felt for each other. Slave autobiographies reveal the pain suffered at separation from loved ones and the endurance of such memories. Parents were frequently present at the baptisms of their children; they also passed on family given names and surnames to their children which would stay with them for life, wherever they went. Husbands and wives risked capture and severe punishment when they ran away to be together or slipped out of their masters' premises at night for covert reunions. Free husbands sought to purchase the freedom of their enslaved wives and children. Parents desperately tried to arrange for the liberty of their children; some hoped that baptism would entitle their offspring to freedom, while others tried to bargain with masters for their future manumission. After the American Revolution former slave women who were evacuated with the British widely claimed that they had been born free or had been freed prior to the war in an attempt to guarantee this status for their children.
The staggered period of voluntary manumission and gradual emancipation, 1785 to 1848, placed the slave family under great stress as its members were freed individually, often many years apart. As opposed to the South, where the slave population was suddenly freed en masse by the Emancipation Proclamation, the advancing union armies, and the thirteenth amendment, freedom for slaves in most of the northern states came gradually in the years after the Revolution. Separate ownership guaranteed separate manumission and family disruption as the black population slowly emerged from slavery. Much comparative research needs to be done on the effects of sudden versus gradual emancipation on the black family and on the black population in the immediate post‑slavery periods.
Many newly freed New York blacks continued to live as dependent workers in white households after manumission‑‑still separated from their families. The expectation born under slavery that black families would live apart survived among the first generation of freedmen. While many freedmen found it difficult to support themselves and either lived with whites, relied on their old owners for help, or became paupers, others successfully established their own households and reunited their families. As slaves blacks had been able to perform every kind of skilled and unskilled labor in agriculture, artisanry, commerce, and household service. A population that had functioned well throughout society found sudden unemployment and job discrimination once free. It would take 150 years after slavery ended in New York for blacks to begin to regain entry into a broad spectrum of trades and professions, a participation they had ironically once enjoyed as slaves. The freedom process still continues.
1Ulrich B. Phillips, Life_and_Labor_in_the_Old_South (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1929; reprint ed. 1951), pp. 198‑201.
2Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A_Problem_in_AmericanInstitutional_and_Intellectual_Life, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968).
3E. Franklin Frazier, The_Negro_Family_in_the_United States, rev. abridged ed., with a Foreword by Nathan Glazer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. viii, 73, 360.
4Kenneth M. Stampp, The_Peculiar_Institution:_Slavery_in the_Ante‑Bellum_South (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1956), pp.340‑49.
5Russell Menard, "The Maryland Slave Population, 1658 to 1730: A Demographic Profile of Blacks in Four Counties," William_and_Mary_Quarterly 32 (January 1975): 29‑54; Allan Kulikoff, "The Beginnings of the Afro‑American Family in Maryland," in Aubrey Land, Lois Carr, and Edward Papenfuse, eds. Law,_Society_and_Politics_in_Early_Maryland, Studies in Maryland History and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 171‑96; Allan Kulikoff, "Tobacco and Slaves: Population, Economy, and Society in Eighteenth Century Prince George's County, Maryland," (Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1976); Herbert S. Klein and Stanley L. Engerman, "Fertility Differentials between Slaves in the United States and the British West Indies: A Note on Lactation Practices and Their Possible Implications," William_and_Mary_Quarterly, 35, no. 2 (April 1978): 357‑74.
6Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time_on_the Cross:_the_Economics_of_American_Negro_Slavery (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1974).
7Eugene D. Genovese, Roll,_Jordan,_Roll:_The_World_The Slaves_Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
8Herbert G. Gutman, The_Black_Family_in_Slavery_and_Freedom, 1750‑1925 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976).
9Ibid., p. 338.
10Ibid., p. 102.
11Gerald W. Mullin, Flight_and_Rebellion:__Slave_Resistance in_Eighteenth‑Century_Virginia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972; reprint ed., New York: Oxford University Press, paperback, 1975); Peter H. Wood, Black_Majority: Negroes_in_Colonial_South_Carolina_from_1670_through_the Stono_Rebellion (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1974).
12Thad W. Tate, The_Negro_in_Eighteenth‑Century_Williamsburg (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1965; reprint ed., 1972), pp. 29, 60‑62.
13Richard C. Wade, Slavery_in_the_Cities:__The_South_1820‑1860 (New York: Oxford University Press paperback, 1972), p. 118. Also see pp. 114, 117‑24.
14Ibid., p. 118.
15Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, A Century of Population Growth: From the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth 1790‑1900, History of American Economy: Studies and Materials for Study (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909; reprint ed., New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1966), table 105, pp. 201‑7.
16Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The_Negro_in_Colonial_New England, with a Preface by Benjamin Quarles, Studies in American Negro Life, August Meier, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942; reprint ed., New York: Atheneum, 1974), pp. 191‑93, 195.
17Ibid., p. 209. This was to prevent the occurrence of racially mixed marriages. Greene incorrectly gives the date of this law as December 1705/1706.
18Ibid., pp. 213, 216‑17.
19Gary B. Nash, "Slaves and Slaveowners in Colonial Philadelphia," William_and_Mary_Quarterly 30 (1973): 239.
20These figures, 1640 to 1780, are in U.S. Bureau of the Census, Social Science Research Council, Historical Statistics of the United States‑ Colonial Times to 1957: A Statistical Abstract Supplement (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960), Series Z 1‑19, p. 756. These figures are based on projected population estimates for each year; they are useful in comparing the black populations generally of each colony over time.
21Robert V. Wells, The_Population_of_the_British_Colonies_in America_before_1776:__A_Survey_of_Census_Data (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 266. Wells's figures for South Carolina were incorrect; it was 60 percent black by 1750.
22In 1790 New Jersey's population was 7.7 percent black while New York's was 7.6 percent black. The two states had equal proportions of slaves in the population‑‑6.2 percent. In terms of sheer numbers, however, New York had almost double the number of either blacks or slaves as New Jersey.
23Tables comparing the numbers of blacks and slaves in each colony and the proportions of blacks and slaves in their total populations are in app. 2.
24Edwin Olson, "Negro Slavery in New York, 1626‑1827" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1938), pp. 135, 176.
25Samuel McKee, Labor_in_Colonial_New_York,_1664‑1776, Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law No. 410 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935; reprint ed., Port Washington, N.Y.: Ira J. Friedman, Inc., 1963), p. 125.
26Edgar McManus, "Negro Slavery in New York" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1959), pp. 118‑19.
27Edgar McManus, A_History_of_Negro_Slavery_in_New_York (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1966), pp. 65‑66.
28Edgar McManus, Black_Bondage_in_the_North (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1973), p. 87.
29Arthur Zilversmit, The_First_Emancipation:__The_Abolition of_Slavery_in_the_North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 10‑11.
30Between 1698 and 1771, there were ten counties in New York, of which my sample covers six. Between 1784 and 1789, five new counties emerged from lands ceded by Albany‑‑Montgomery, Washington, Columbia, Clinton and Ontario counties.
31Wells, Population_in_America_Before_1776, p. 114.
32See app. 19 on the size of data bases used in this study.

PART I
SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE FAMILY

Chapter Two

2007-08-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 2
DUTCHMEN AND AFRICANS: SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE FAMILY IN NEW AMSTERDAM, 1626 TO 1664

The [Dutch West India] Company will endeavor to supply the colonists with as many blacks as it possibly can, on the conditions hereafter to be made, without however being bound to do so to a greater extent or for a longer time than it shall see fit.
Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions (June 7, 1629)
The Dutch arrived on the African coast in 1592. In 1612 they built Fort Nassau at Mouri on the Gold Coast. Five years later, they purchased the island of Goree from local natives, built two forts on it, and established a trading center (factory) at Rio Fresco on the nearby mainland. These two endeavors gave the Dutch early access to both the Gambia River and Gold Coast regions. When the Dutch West India Company was chartered in 1621, it received a monopoly on all African trade and the right to develop Dutch possessions in the New World.
The Dutch West India Company established settlements in Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1624; in New Netherland in 1624; and on the New World islands of Curacao, St. Eustatius, and Tobago in the 1630s. The great demand for slaves in their Brazilian and Caribbean possessions spurred the Dutch to expand their activities in the slave trade. The Dutch West India Company also found it lucrative to ship slaves from West Africa to Curacao and then smuggle them into the Spanish colonies. Emboldened by the prospect of increasing trade and profits, the Dutch broke the Portuguese stranglehold on the West African coast between 1637 and 1642. They took over the Portuguese forts at Elmina, Axim (Fort St. Anthony) and Shama (near the mouth of the Pra River) and temporarily occupied Angola in 1641. These conquests made the Dutch the dominant European power in the Gold Coast region.1
The Dutch diverted only a small stream of their African slaves to their colony at New Netherland before the 1650s. Most of the slaves brought between 1626 and 1652 were captured Spanish or Portuguese prizes or blacks carried under foreign flags rather than slaves supplied directly by the Dutch West India Company. The first blacks to arrive in New Amsterdam were Paul d' Angola, Simon Congo, Anthony Portuguese, John Francisco, and seven other males in 1626. Their names indicate that they may have been slaves on Portuguese or Spanish ships captured at sea. Three women were brought in from Angola in 1628. The Reverend Jonas Michaelius, first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church of New Netherland, gave his opinion of their value as maid‑servants: "the Angola slaves are thievish, lazy and useless trash." These fourteen blacks formed 5.2 percent of the 270‑person population of New Amsterdam in 1628. The next three blacks to enter New Amsterdam were purchased by the Director of the Dutch West India Company from a Providence Island ship captain in 1636. A French privateer, La Garce, arrived with slaves in 1642, and Tamandare put into port from Brazil in 1646 with a cargo of slaves. A Spanish slaver, St. Anthoni, captured in 1652 by a Dutch privateer, provided New Amsterdam with forty‑four confiscated slaves: twenty men, ten women, two adults of unknown sex, and twelve children. Some were sold to the Dutch West India Company while others were vended to private residents.2
In the 1650s the Dutch West India Company began to supply New Amsterdam directly with slaves. In 1652 it also gave the inhabitants of New Amsterdam permission to sail to the coast of Angola and bring back slaves. They were forbidden, however, to trade anywhere along the entire west coast of Africa from Cape Verd to Cape Lopes de Gonsalve since these areas were the preserves of the Dutch West India Company. The Dutch West India Company's slaver Witte Paert brought slaves directly from the Bight of Guinea in 1655; most of this shipment of slaves, however, was re‑sold to other colonies. In December 1659 Sphera Mundi transported slaves from Curacao to New Amsterdam for the use of Director Peter Stuyvesant and Commissary Van Brugge. The four males and one female (one died before arrival) had only landed in Curacao from Africa in August. The Eyckenboom brought slaves in 1660, as did New Netherland Indian on each of its two trips in 1661 (one cargo contained thirty‑six slaves from Curacao). The slaves from both ships were sold at public auction to private buyers by the Dutch West India Company.3
A large number of slaves arrived in New Amsterdam in the last months before the colony fell to the English. The slave cargo of Sparrow (Musch) which arrived in May 1664 consisted of forty blacks; the Dutch West India Company kept six males and five females for its own use and sold twenty‑nine slaves to private buyers (eighteen males, ten females, and one child). On August 14, 1664, Gideon delivered 290 slaves to New Amsterdam from Guinea and Angola via Curacao. Some of the blacks on Gideon had been brought directly from Africa, although most were seasoned slaves who had spent a period of time in Curacao. Seventy‑two of the blacks were sent to the Company's Delaware colony while 218 (115 men, 103 women) were sold to the inhabitants of New Amsterdam before the arrival of the British on September 8, 1664.4
The Africans who were brought to New Amsterdam between 1626 and 1664 came from various regions in Western and Western Central Africa. The African origins of New Amsterdam slaves are suggested by their last names listed at baptism or marriage in the records of the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam from 1639 to 1664: Angola, Cape Verde, Loango (northern Congo), Congo, and the Cape of Good Hope. The majority of slaves who reached New Netherland during these years were probably from Angola. The first Angolan blacks to reach New Amsterdam were captured cargo taken from Portuguese and Spanish slavers. Although Portugal monopolized the Congo and Angola slave trade throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,5 beginning in the 1650s the Dutch West India Company sent its own ships to Angola and permitted New Amsterdam vessels to sail directly to Angola to obtain slaves.
Although Dutch slave trading forts were concentrated in the Gambia River and Gold Coast regions, by the 1650s and 1660s Dutch West India Company ships procured slaves along the entire African coastline from Cape Verd to Cape Lopes de Gonsalve in addition to Angola. In 1659 Eyckenboom was chartered to sail from Holland to Cape Verd, then proceed all along the coast to the Dutch factory at Elmina on the Gold Coast, on to the Bight of Guinea, and deliver its slave cargo to the islands of Curacao, Bonaire, and Aruba; it was then to stop at New Netherland before returning home to Amsterdam. In 1659 the slaver St. Jan purchased 219 slaves destined for Curacao at Bonny, a village near the mouth of the New Calabar River in the Bight of Biafra. In 1663 Gideon was chartered in Amsterdam to make a stop at Elmina and then to take on a full complement of 275 slaves at Loango (Congo) and stations in Angola which was to be disposed of at Cayenne (French Guiana), Curacao, and New Netherland.6
Blacks who were sold to or stolen by European slave traders at these coastal depots came from a wide variety of ethnic groups and spoke many different African tongues. Slaves brought to New Amsterdam from the Senegambia region (including Cape Verd and the Dutch fort at Goree) belonged to Pular‑speaking or Malinke‑speaking (Mandingo) groups, Bambara (from the interior), or were Wolofs, Fulbe, or Fulani. Slaves gathered along the Gold Coast were Akan‑speaking peoples and Ashanti from the inland rain forests. Dutch factors in this area obtained slaves through trade with the African Kings of Wydah, Benin, Futton, Fantyn, Aguina, Cabessaland, Lay, Fetu, Ardra, Akim, and Aquaffo. Wydah traders went as far as 200 miles inland to capture or trade for slaves to sell to the Dutch. Blacks from the New Calabar region were Ibo or Ijo. The many blacks taken from Western Central Africa (the Congo and Angola) belonged to Bantu‑speaking nations.7
Some blacks were shipped directly from Africa to New Amsterdam, either by private traders or the Dutch West India Company. Some Africans who were packed into the holds of Portuguese or Spanish slave ships destined for Iberian colonies in the New World arrived in New Netherland when such ships were seized en route by Dutch or French privateers and were diverted to New Amsterdam. Many other Africans, however, were "seasoned" to the labor routines of slavery on such island depots as Curacao, St. Thomas, and St. Domingo8 before being shipped to New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company. Seasoned Spanish slaves who were being transported from one Spanish Caribbean island to another often fell prey to piracy and were also sold in New Netherland.9
Seasoned slaves were preferred in New Amsterdam over blacks freshly imported from Africa. Most of the seasoned slaves who were brought into New Netherland by the Dutch West India Company came from Curacao. The pride of new slaves from Africa reduced their market value in comparison to "Negroes who had been 12 or 13 years in the West Indies and who for a year or two had always lived here with Dutch people" and were therefore deemed "a better sort of Negroes."10 In a 1660 letter to Vice‑Director Beck at Curacao, Peter Stuyvesant stated in his request for slaves for New Amsterdam that "an important service would be conferred on the company, on us and the country if there were among the sold negroes, some of experience who have resided a certain time at Curacao."11
* * * * *
The Africans of many nations brought together in New Amsterdam provided much‑needed labor both for the Dutch West India Company and private slaveholders. Since New Netherland was unable to attract a sufficient number of permanent agricultural settlers, slaves fulfilled the colony's pressing need for workers.12 The Company amassed a large labor force for its own use. In the 1630s the Company's slaves helped to build Fort Amsterdam; they were used in "cutting building timber and firewood for the Large House as well as the guardhouse, splitting palisades, clearing land, burning lime and helping to bring in the grain in harvest time, together with many other labors. . . . "13
In the 1650s and 1660s Company slaves continued to be used for agricultural, public, and military works. In 1651 they faced the outside of the fort with flat sods, and in 1658 they worked on the construction of a wagon road from New Amsterdam to the outlying village of Harlem. In 1660 Director Peter Stuyvesant requested that additional slaves be sent to New Amsterdam from Curacao for Company use: "They ought to be stout and strong fellows, fit for immediate employment on this fortress and other works; also, if required, in war against the wild barbarians, either to pursue them when retreating, or else to carry some of the soldiers' baggage. . . . " In 1664 Stuyvesant wrote that a recent shipment of slaves would be used "to procure provisions and all sorts of timber work, fix ox carts and a new rosmill."14
The desperate need for labor in the new colony rendered the Dutch system of slavery pragmatic--the Dutch regarded slavery as an economic expedient to furnish the settlement with workers. They either did not intend to, or were not in power long enough to make slavery into a form of social organization or race control; they developed no rigid slave system or formal slave code. (The English colonies also did not pass legislation controlling blacks before the 1660s.) Freed negroes were not legally discriminated against--no racial legislation existed to restrict their freedom to own property, intermarry with whites, or own white indentured servants.15 The Dutch attitude toward miscegenation, however, was expressed in a 1638 ordinance: "Each and everyone must refrain from fighting, adulterous intercourse with heathens, blacks, or other persons, mutiny, theft, false swearing, and other immoralities. . . . "16 While not as legally prohibitive as slavery would later become under the English, by 1664 the use of slave labor in New Netherland had achieved local importance and acceptance and was deeply entrenched.17
* * * * *
The elasticity of the slave system in New Netherland allowed family life to be recreated among the Africans who almost always arrived in the colony without either kinsmen or mates. While many of the slaves were able to marry and establish families, a high sex ratio (excess of males over females) among imported blacks prevented some men from finding wives. Males were preferred as laborers and were therefore overrepresented on each of the ships which deposited slave cargoes in New Amsterdam. The sex of adult blacks imported into New Amsterdam between 1626 and 1664 is known for 306 slaves: 174 were male and 132 were female. This preponderance of males yields a sex ratio of 131 (131 males per 100 females in the population). Black adult sex ratios in the colony probably improved in the early 1660s as the generation of black children born in New Amsterdam in the 1630s reached maturity.
At least some black marriages took place in the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam. As the established church of the colony from 1628 to 1664, the Dutch Reformed Church was dominant throughout the Dutch period and was the only religious body in New Netherland until Presbyterians formed a congregation in 1642. Dutch religious leaders in the Netherlands offered little criticism of the institution of slavery and called only for kind treatment and Christianization of the slaves. Ministers in New Amsterdam did not criticize slavery either--they were responsible to the Dutch West India Company and to officials such as Peter Stuyvesant18 who paid their salaries and profited greatly from slavery and the slave trade.19
Marriage records for the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam survive for the years 1639 to 1866.20 The first recorded black marriages occurred on May 5, 1641, when two couples were married: Anthony Van Angola with Catalina Van Angola, and Lucie D'Angola with Laurens Van Angola. Altogether twenty‑six black marriages took place between 1641 and 1664 in the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam.21 Twenty‑five of the twenty‑six couples were of unknown legal status, which reflected either their free status or the secondary importance attached to their condition of slavery by Dutch church officials. The one couple identified as slaves were owned together and were married on October 4, 1659: Franciscus Neger and Catharina Negrinne, "Slaven Van Corn. de Potter."
All of the fifty‑two spouses had last names. Thirty‑one of their names reflected countries of origin prior to arrival at New Amsterdam. Twenty‑eight names were variations of Angola (De Angola, Van Angola, D'Angool, or plain Angola) while three names indicated either other African locations or African ports of embarkation (Van Loange [Loango, northern Congo], de Chongo [Congo], and Van CapoVerde [Cape Verd or the Cape Verde islands]). Seven names reflected the racial and color characteristic of the person--Neger, Negrinne, Crioell, or Criolyo. Both types of names were probably assigned to incoming blacks by the Dutch to describe the geographical and racial characteristics of their new labor force.22 The remaining fourteen last names were individualized and were often of Dutch form and construction (Pieterszen, Emanuels, Jans, and Mattheuszen),23 reflecting either (or both) the newly acquired Dutch language patterns of the Africans and the attempts of the clergy to translate African or unfamiliar names into Dutch usages.
Five of the spouses also had a reference to their place of origin recorded with their marriage: Sebastiaen de Britto, Van St. Domingo, or Christoffel Crioell, Van St. Thomas. During Christoffel's lifetime his last name changed in a succession of records: Christoffel Crioell, Van St. Thomas (1656) later became Christoffel Santomme (1671).24 This fluidity probably reflected a gradual evolution of family names due partially to phonetic spelling in records and to white carelessness or confusion as to the true last names of their slaves and freed blacks. To be sure, however, the first generation of slaves in New Amsterdam had family surnames, a fact recognized by the white community.
The exact date of the birth of the first black child in New Amsterdam is unknown. It is also unknown what proportion of immigrant black women ever bore children, how many they delivered here during their lifetimes (they ranged in age from puberty to age forty [and sometimes older] upon arrival), and how many of their offspring survived to adulthood. It is therefore uncertain when New Netherland's black population first maintained its numbers through natural reproduction.25
Black children were born as early as the 1630s in New Amsterdam; they began to be baptized in 1639 in the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam. In this early period, only children of confessing members were allowed to be baptized, indicating that several adult negroes were full members of the Church. The Dutch Reformed Church, however, had little overall success in attracting blacks. In order to become full communicants, blacks had to demonstrate a good understanding of the basic beliefs of the Dutch Reformed Church. A difficult process of catechetical study was required which, coupled with sophisticated, unemotional sermons, discouraged black enthusiasm and participation.26
Ministers were also reluctant to baptize negroes because whites feared that Christianity necessitated emancipation. The reaction of white colonists to the retention in slavery of children of half‑freed Christian negroes (explained below) in 1649 indicated the potential power of this equation between Christianity and freedom. Domine Henricus Selyns, on June 9, 1664, wrote to the Classis of Amsterdam that "the negroes request baptism for their children‑‑we have refused due to their lack of knowledge and faith, and because of their worldly aims. The parents wanted nothing else than to deliver their children from bodily slavery, without striving for Christian virtues."27
In spite of these obstacles the Church was interested in catechizing negroes, and the records indicate that baptisms of confessing black members and their children took place as early as 1639.28 Fifty‑one blacks were baptized from 1639 to 1655 in the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam:29 one male adult, one female adult, twenty‑nine male children, and twenty female children. All of the forty‑nine children who appeared in the baptismal register were listed as the children of their parent or parents rather than as the servants of owners. None of the baptized children or their listed parents had a specific recorded legal status, indicating that they were either already free or that their position as slaves was not the overwhelming, fixed badge that it would later become. Whether really slave or free, the primary identification of the child in the church records was to its parents rather than to owners.
The Dutch accorded black fathers the primary parental role at baptism. The father alone was generally listed (46 fathers only, 3 mothers only);30 it was rare for mothers to be listed at all. The black fathers may have been accorded a predominant religious place either because they were free or half‑free or because the Dutch acknowledged slave men to be the heads of their families. All but one of the parents bore last names, a further indication of white recognition of the black family.
Baptismal witnesses were usually black, revealing family, social, and community ties among black New Netherlanders. All but two of the fifty‑one baptisms had witnesses: in twenty‑eight cases the witnesses were other blacks of unknown relationship to the family. Another seventeen baptisms had black witnesses, but whites were also present. In four baptisms only whites (possible owners, friends, or neighbors) attended the ceremony as witnesses.31 Baptism, as a familial event, was shared with other members, possibly relatives, of the black community in forty‑five out of fifty‑one cases (88.2 percent).
Many of the slaves in early New Amsterdam married and raised families. The favorable response of the Dutch West India Company on February 25, 1644, to a plea for emancipation made by several male slaves revealed that the blacks had formed nuclear families and were supporting their wives and children:32
We, William Kieft and Council of New Netherland having considered the petition of the Negroes named Paulo Angola, Big Manuel, Little Manuel, Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Simon Congo, Anthony Portugis, Gracia, Peter Santomee, Jan Francisco, Little Anthony, Jan Fort Orange, who have served the Company 18 or 19 years, to be liberated from their servitude . . . also that they are burthened with many children so that it is impossible for them to support their wives and children, as they have been accustomed to do, if they must continue in the Company's service . . . do release, for the term of their natural lives, the above named and their Wives from Slavery.
The eleven petitioners had arrived in 1625 or 1626‑‑eighteen or nineteen years before their petition--and must have been the first eleven blacks imported into New Amsterdam. They had presumably married women imported between 1628 and 1644, including, perhaps the three Angola women or slaves from the La Garce shipment.
The Dutch West India Company released these slaves on a "half‑freedom" plan which gave the Company the produce and periodic labor that it required without the responsibility of superintending and maintaining the slaves. It may have devised the "half‑freedom" arrangement as a form of semi‑retirement for slaves who had already served almost twenty years by 1644.33 The Company was mainly interested in the labor provided by black people, not in locking them into legal, perpetual slavery. By freeing older slaves, they received a tribute of food supplies and escaped the burden of supporting aging slaves. The blacks who were freed would be able "to earn their livelihood by Agriculture, on the land shewn and granted to them, on condition that they . . . shall be bound to pay for the freedom they receive . . . annually . . . to the [Dutch] West India Company . . . thirty skepels of Maize or Wheat, Pease or Beans, and one Fat hog, valued at twenty guilders."34 If the tribute were not paid, their freedom was forfeited. They were also obligated to work for the Company for wages whenever their services were required. One further condition was set: "that their children at present born or yet to be born, shall be bound and obligated to serve the Honorable West India Company as Slaves."35
A major controversy developed around this last stipulation. In a "Remonstrance of the People of New Netherland" to the Lords States General of the United Netherlands on July 28, 1649, the white residents complained that the children of freed Christian slaves were still enslaved contrary to law that anyone born of a free Christian mother should be free.36 The Dutch West India Company's answer came six months later. Although it reiterated that it had freed the adult blacks on the condition that their children should serve the company whenever it pleased, it moderated its claim on the service of these children from slavery to occasional labor. The Company explained that of all the children, no more than three were in service‑‑one with Stuyvesant on the Company's bouwerie, one at the house of Hope in Hartford, Connecticut, and one with Martin Krigier, who had reared her from a little child at his own expense.37 Christianity in New Netherland was therefore a potential route out of slavery for blacks.
The original slaves in New Amsterdam were often able to create kinship and friendship networks in addition to families. The first generation of New York slaves displayed African cultural norms of familial obligation: real or fictive kin cared for dependent members of the group.38 The black community, or perhaps black relatives, fulfilled familial obligations by taking in orphaned children and assuring the welfare of‑‑and trying to gain freedom for‑‑enslaved black children.
Three cases illustrate the black community's concern for black children. The court session of March 15, 1655, heard the case of Anthony Matysen, a negro, v. Egberts Van Borsum. Van Borsum had given Matysen and his wife one of his negro's children to nurse and rear,39 and Matysen claimed not to have been paid for this as promised. Matysen requested that the child be declared free and that he and his wife would rear it at their own expense. As the defendant wanted his slave back, the court ordered that the child be returned to him, and required Van Borsum to pay Matysen the sum contracted for the child's temporary care.40 On March 21, 1661, Emanuel Pieterszen and his wife Dorothy Angola petitioned for a certificate of freedom for a lad named Anthony Angola, whom they had adopted when an infant and had since educated and reared. The petition was granted.41 A similar petition was filed on December 6, 1663, by Domingo Angola, a free negro, praying for the manumission of eighteen‑year‑old Christina, a baptized orphan daughter of deceased black parents Anthonya and Manuel Trumpeter. The court freed her upon furnishing the Company with another negro in her place or upon paying 300 guilders.42
* * * * *
Many slaves were freed between 1644 and 1664, both by the Dutch West India Company and by individual owners. Paul d'Angola and Clara Crioole were privately freed by their master Capt. Jan De Vries.43 On September 27, 1646, Jan Francisco the Younger was freed for long and faithful service on condition that "he pay to the Company during his life 10 skepels of wheat or its value yearly, in return for his freedom."44 In an act of private manumission on February 17, 1648, Philip Jansen Ringo freed Manuel the [black] Spaniard for the sum of 300 guilders. On December 28, 1662, three negro women petitioned the Dutch West India Company for their freedom and were granted it on the condition that one of the three do the director general's housework each week. On April 19, 1663, Mayken, an old and sickly black woman, was granted her freedom outright by the Dutch West India Company, "she having served as a slave since the year 1628." She must have been one of the three original women from Angola to reach New Amsterdam. Domingo Angola and his wife Maykie were freed outright by the Dutch West India Company on April 17, 1664. Moreover, some of the slaves released earlier on the half‑freedom plan were later totally manumitted. On September 4, 1664, eight half‑slaves (Ascento Angola, Christopher Santome, Peter Petersen Criolie, Anthony Criolie, Lewis Guinea, Jan Guinea, Solomon Petersen Criolie, and Basje Pietersen) prayed to the Dutch West India Company to be made entirely free, a request that was granted three months later.45
Dutch slaves who were either fully manumitted or released on the half‑freedom plan by the Dutch West India Company were often given land or were able to rent or buy it so that they could adequately support their wives and children and pay the annual crop tribute to the Company. Between July 13, 1643, and April 8, 1647, for example, land patents were granted to freed negroes Domingo Antony, Catelina (widow of Jochim Antony), Anthony Portuguese, Big Manuel, Anna (widow of Andries d'Angola), Francisco, Antony Congo, Bastien, Jan, and Peter Van Campen. Typical of these grants was the one given to Anthony Portuguese on September 5, 1645, of six morgens and 425 rods of land on Manhattan island.46 All of the lands were contiguous on the public road near a pond known as the Fresh Water on the outskirts of town. The area became known as the "Negroes Land."47 Private citizens also gave lands to free blacks. In 1674 Judith Stuyvesant, widow of Peter Stuyvesant, gave a considerable amount of land to free black Francisco Bastiaenz on the condition that he keep its fences in repair.48 Land ownership by blacks prevented much of the pauperism and dependency which haunted slaves who were later freed in British New York.
Some of the early freed negroes moved to Long Island and other neighboring areas where they joined whites in the founding of new towns. The Dutch spread out over Long Island to settle five towns in Kings County between 1636 and 1661: Breuckelen (Brooklyn), Amersfoort (Flatlands), Midwout (Flatbush), Boswyck (Bushwick), and New Utrecht.49 In 1641 they founded Oude Dorp, the first white settlement on Staten Island.50 Francisco the Negro, one of the eleven slaves manumitted in 1644, became one of the twenty‑three original patentees of Boswyck in 1660. He appeared again on a 1663 "Muster Roll of Officers and Soldiers" in Boswyck along with Anton, another negro.51 In 1681 the original ten patentees of Tappan in Rockland County included five men from the Bowery in Manhattan. Three were white and two were black‑‑Claes Emanuels and John DeVries II. Before removing to Tappan, Emanuels and DeVries had been yeoman farmers in the outward of Manhattan and were close neighbors to several white members of the original patent group.52
Anthony Jansen Van Salee was a mulatto who had been born in the Moroccan seaport of Salee to a Dutch father and a Moorish mother. After his arrival in New Amsterdam (prior to 1638) he obtained a farm and married a white woman of colorful reputation named Grietse Reyniers. After a long series of court cases and disputes with his neighbors, Jansen and his wife were banished from New Netherland on April 7, 1639, for their quarrelsome and scandalous conduct. Prior to his departure in August Jansen successfully petitioned Director Kieft for 200 acres of land at uninhabited Gravesend, for which Jansen would pay the Dutch West India Company one hundred guilders a year over a ten‑year period. Jansen thereby became the first and one of the most prominent landowners in Gravesend, which was subsequently settled by the English in the 1640s.53
The career of Solomon Peters also illustrates the process of freedom and life afterward for some Dutch slaves. Solomon Petersen Criolie was one of the eight half‑slaves who petitioned successfully for their freedom in 1664.54 Salomon Pieterszen and his wife Maria Anthony later appeared in the baptismal registers of the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam at the baptisms of their children Jacob (July 15, 1668), Mary (January 28, 1671), Celitie (January 16, 1674), and Abraham (October 14, 1676). After achieving full freedom in 1664, Solomon Peters lived with his wife in a settled marriage for the next thirty years, fathered and raised eight children in all, and acquired a home, lands, and property. In his will written on November 30, 1694, at the Bowery, New York City,55 he left his wife, Maria Antonis Portugues, all his lands, house, and household goods either during her widowhood or for life. He left to his four sons all the iron tools, implements of husbandry, guns, swords, and pistols. His eldest son was to receive four pounds while the other three sons were to receive eighteen shillings each.
* * * *
Slavery was a loose institution under the Dutch. It left enough room for slave family life to persist: some slave husbands could contribute to the support of their families, parents and the black community were able to participate in the baptisms of black children, kin and friends were sometimes able to care for other blacks, and black adults were regularly accorded the dignity of bearing a surname. Many Dutch slaves were also able to achieve freedom, and with freedom often came the opportunity to own land and establish a considerable measure of economic independence. Much would change with the advent of British colonial rule in 1664.
1Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication no. 409, 1932; reprint ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 1:74‑76; James Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers: A Study of the Atlantic Slave Traders 1441‑1807 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1969), pp. 68‑69, 74‑75. Also see Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Academic Press, 1979), chap. 14, on the Dutch slave trade.
2Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:405, 410‑11, 416‑17; Joyce D. Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks: The Evolution of a Slave Society at New Amsterdam," New York History, 59, no.2 (April 1978):128‑29, 132; James Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1930; reprint ed., New York: Arno Press, 1968), p. 5; Edmund O'Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1853‑1887), 2:768; Henry C. Murphy, "The First Minister of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in North America: Letter of Domine Jonas Michaelius to Domine Adrianus Smoutius, Dated at Manhattan, 11 August, 1628," Collections of the New‑York Historical Society, vol. 13 (1880):383; Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1972), p. 2.
3Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:411‑13, 415, 417‑19, 420‑21; Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks," pp. 138, 141; McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 5.
4Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:422, 427‑29, 430, 431, 433‑34; E. B. O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany, 1630‑1664: Dutch Manuscripts (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co. for New York State, 1865), pp. 268, 333; Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks," p. 139.
5Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, p. 183.
6Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 1:141‑45, 152; 3:417‑19, 422, 426.
7Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), pp. 184‑90, 246; Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, pp. 58‑59, 75‑83, 88, 169, 171, 187, 206; Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 1:90.
8The last names and other information on blacks baptized and married in the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam often reflected either their countries of origin or places of prior residence. See the February 5, 1645 baptism of Mathias, whose father was Pieter St. Thome and the October 28, 1646 marriage of Sebastiaen de Britto, Van St. Domingo.
9The commonness of Spanish first names and the surname "Portugies" among blacks baptized and married in the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam between 1639 and 1664 indicates that these blacks had come to New Amsterdam from Portuguese or Spanish ships or colonies.
10A. J. F. Van Laer, ed. and trans., Correspondence of Jeremias Van Rensselaer 1651‑1674 (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1932), p. 167. Note Van Rensselaer's comment on the pride of his African slave Andries.
11Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3: 421.
12McManus, Negro Slavery, pp. 2‑4.
13Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks," pp. 129‑30.
14Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks," pp. 130‑31; Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3: 421, 429.
15McManus, Negro Slavery, pp. 11‑12.
16Ordinance, April 15, 1638, New York Colonial Manuscripts, IV, 2, in Edmund B. O'Callaghan, ed., Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638‑1674 (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Company, 1868), p. 12.
17Goodfriend, "Burghers and Blacks," pp. 125‑44.
18Peter Stuyvesant exploited his Curacao connections to obtain forty slaves for his own use--the largest slave force in New Netherland. McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 10. In 1660, Peter Stuyvesant erected a Chapel of Trinity Church on his bowery for his family and slaves. Domine Henricus Selyns, who served congregations on Long Island and at Stuyvesant's Bowery from 1660 to 1664, wrote to the Classis of Amsterdam in 1660 that "there is preaching in the morning at Breuckelen, but towards the conclusion of the catechismal exercises of New Amsterdam, at the Bowery . . . where people also come from the city to Evening Service. In addition to the household [families] there are over 40 negroes [from the region of the Negro coast] whose location is the Negro quarter." Edmund B O'Callaghan, ed., The Documentary History of New York State, 4 vols. (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1849‑1851), 3:72; Gerald Francis De Jong, "The Dutch Reformed Church and Negro Slavery in Colonial America," Church History, 40, no. 4 (December 1971):429. Services stopped after Stuyvesant's death in 1672. "Records of St. Marks Church in the Bowery," NYGBR 71 (October 1940):334. Five black couples who were married at the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam between 1672 and 1691 lived together on Stuyvesant's Bowery; they were probably Peter Stuyvesant's former slaves or their descendants. Four of the five were of unknown status--only one was specified as free.
19De Jong, "The Dutch Reformed Church, " pp. 425‑26.
20Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Marriages from 1639 to 1801 in the Reformed Dutch Church of New York (New York: By the Society, 1890; reprint ed., New York: By the Society, 1940).
21A marriage which took place on November 11, 1663, was also listed again on December 23, 1663, at the Dutch Reformed Church of Brooklyn. Jan the negro was married to Annetie Abrahams, with a certificate from the Manhattans. "First Book of Records of the Dutch Reformed Church of Brooklyn, New York," Year Book of the Holland Society of New York (1897): 133‑94.
22This African or racial surname pattern had declined by the 1666 to 1697 period. Nineteen black marriages took place in the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam during these years. Only seventeen of the thirty‑eight spouses had African/racial last names (44.7 percent) compared to 73.1 percent of spouses married between 1641 and 1664. Blacks within the Dutch community increasingly began to bear individualized family names.
23The two most common Dutch last name modes were "Van" followed by a place name--Van Cortlant or Van Angola--and "son of one's father's first name" as in Franciscus Bastiaenszen, meaning Franciscus, son of Bastiaen. Rosalie Fellows Bailey, "Dutch Systems in Family Naming," National Genealogical Society Special Publication No. 12 (May 1954): 1‑21.
24On September 9, 1656, Christoffel Crioell, Van St. Thomas and Maria Angola were married. According to Berthold Fernow, ed., The Records of New Amsterdam, 1653‑1674, 7 vols. (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, pub. under authority of New York City, 1897; reprint ed., Baltimore: Genealogical Publication Co., 1976), 6:335, on April 16, 1671, Manuel Sanders, widower of Mary Sanders, married Maria Angola, widow of Christoffel Santomme--a remarriage for both partners.
25Birthrates in New Amsterdam were likely to improve when the first generation of American‑born black children reached sexual maturity. Although extra male slaves would continue to be imported into the colony, the sex balance was probably equal among the new generation itself. American‑born women could be expected to bear more children than African‑born women because they were spared the high morbidity and mortality common among immigrant women and because they spent their entire reproductive lives in the colony.
26De Jong, "The Dutch Reformed Church," pp. 429, 432‑33.
27Edward Corwin, ed., Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, 7 vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1901‑1916), 1:548.
28Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Reformed Dutch Church, N.Y., Baptisms 1639‑1800, 2 vols. (New York: Printed for the Society, 1901; reprint ed., Upper Saddle River, N.J.: The Gregg Press, 1968). The baptismal records of the Reformed Dutch Church at New Amsterdam begin in 1639--negroes were baptized from this first opening date.
29Black baptisms continued to take place in this church between 1665 and 1679 (eighteen children). Two black children were baptized, in 1681 and 1684, at the Dutch Reformed Church of Flatbush. Records of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Flatbush 1677‑1872, 5 vols., Frost Collection, NYGBS. These seventy‑one baptisms represent all black baptisms located prior to 1706.
30Between 1665 and 1684 Dutch Reformed church records of black child baptisms regularly listed both parents (18 both parents listed, 1 single parent--sex unknown, 1 no parents listed). The one child for whom no parents were listed was described as the servant of her owner: "April 20, 1684. Margrita--aged about eleven years--purchased slave at ten years without parents. Witness--Grietje Jans, wife of Teunis Pelt, purchaser." Records of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Flatbush, Baptisms 1677‑1872, vol. 1, p. 43, NYGBS.
31The criteria for labelling a witness as black, apart from a specific listing as negro, was an analysis of last names--names like Swartinne, Van Angola, Negro, and Portugies were peculiar to blacks. The names of blacks who appeared in the early marriage records of the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam were also cross‑checked to identify the race of witnesses at black baptisms. Anthony Backers witnessed the baptism of Daniel in 1669; he is known to be black because he is listed as "Anthony Backers, Neger" at his marriage in 1672. Witnesses were classified as white on the basis of naming or use of the title Mr.; they could be overcounted. Although several of the baptismal witnesses had the same last name as the child's parents, they could not be positively identified as relatives due to the commonness of surnames such as Van Angola and Neger in the black community. Some of the female black witnesses could have been mothers in the many baptisms where only fathers are officially listed as the parent.
32O'Callaghan, ed., Laws and Ordinances, N.Y. Colonial Manuscripts IV, 183, pp. 36‑37.
33Thomas Davis, "Slavery in Colonial New York City" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1974), p. 54.
34O'Callaghan, ed., Laws and Ordinances, N.Y. Colonial Manuscripts IV, 183, pp. 36‑37.
35Ibid.
36O'Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative, New York State, 1:302.
37Ibid.,1:343.
38Gutman, Black Family, p. 352, commented that the early date of the 1644 petition for freedom for several slave men and their wives "is presumptive evidence that its expressions of family obligation had their roots in Old World African cultures." This first generation of slaves had had no time either to incorporate Dutch behavior patterns fully or to form new adaptations to enslavement--their behavior reflected the values they brought with them.
39The child's mother could have been dead, or Van Borsum may not have needed the young child's labor at that particular time.
40Fernow, ed., Records of New Amsterdam, 1:298.
41O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, p. 222. Emanuel Pieterszen and Dorothy Angola were free at the time of their 1661 petition but could have been slaves when they first adopted Anthony. They were married on February 2, 1653, at the Dutch Reformed Church, legal status unknown. Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Marriages in the Reformed Dutch Church of New York.
42O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, p. 256. Christina had been baptized on February 18, 1645, in the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam, and was then listed as the child of her father Emanuel Trompetter. Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Reformed Dutch Church, N.Y., Baptisms 1639‑1800.
43Roi Ottley and William Weatherby, eds., The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications for the New York Public Library, 1967), p. 11; O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, pp. 368‑74.
44O'Callaghan, ed., Laws and Ordinances, p. 60; O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, p. 105.
45O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, pp. 45, 242, 246, 264, 269.
46Ibid., pp. 368‑74.
47David Cohen, The Ramapo Mountain People (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1974), p. 26.
48Ottley and Weatherby, eds., The Negro in New York, p. 17.
49Bertus Harry Wabeke, Dutch Emigration to North America 1624‑1860, Booklets of the Netherlands Information Bureau, No. 10 (New York: Netherlands Information Bureau, 1944), pp. 49‑52; Rosenwaike, Population History of N.Y.C., pp. 6, 12.
50Ira K. Morris, Memorial History of Staten Island, 2 vols. (New York: The Winthrop Press, 1900), 1:32.
51Bushwick Town Records--History, Deeds, Births of Slaves 1660‑1825, pp. 7,69, St. Francis.
52Cohen, Ramapo Mountain People, pp. 25‑42.
53Harold Connolly, A Ghetto Grows in Brooklyn (New York: New York University Press, 1977), pp. 3‑4; Leo Hershkowitz, "The Troublesome Turk: An Illustration of Judicial Process in New Amsterdam," New York History, 46, no. 4 (1965): 299‑310; Hazel Van Dyke Roberts, "Anthony Jansen Van Salee 1607‑1676," NYGBR 103 (1972): 16‑28; Henri and Barbara Van Der Zee, A Sweet and Alien Land (New York: The Viking Press, 1978), p. 76.
54O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, p. 269.
55Collections of the New‑York Historical Society, Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office New York City, 1665‑1800, Publication Fund Series, 15 vols. (New York: Printed for the Society, 1892‑1906), 2:293 (hereafter cited as Coll.NYHS, Abstracts of Wills).

Chapter Three

2007-08-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 3
THE IMPLEMENTATION AND GROWTH OF A SLAVE LABOR SYSTEM IN BRITISH NEW YORK
Just imported from the River Gambia in the Schooner Sally . . . to be sold . . . a parcel of likely Men and Women Slaves, with some Boys and Girls of different Ages. . . . It is generally allowed that the Gambia Slaves are much more robust and tractable than any other slaves from the Coast of Guinea, and more Capable of undergoing the Severity of the Winter Seasons in the North-American Colonies, which occasions their being Vastly more esteemed and coveted in this Province and those to the Northward, than any other Slaves whatsoever.
Philadelphia Journal (May 27, 1762)
When New Netherland surrendered to an English fleet in 1664 it had a population of 8,000 persons, of whom approximately 700 to 850 were black,1 both free and slave. Because the August 27, 1664, Articles of Capitulation2 specified that current property and status relations in New Amsterdam would be maintained and honored by the British, free blacks were not deprived of their liberty with the transition in administration. The continuing presence of freed former Dutch slaves in British New York is revealed in a March 7, 1670/71 session of the New York Mayor's Court:3
Domingo and Manuel Angola, free negroes, being sent for to Court are informed, that divers complaints were made to the W [--] Court, that the free negroes were from time to time entertaining sundry of the servants and negroes belonging to the Burghers and inhabitants of this City to the great damage of the owners: thereupon they are strictly charged by the W: Court not to entertain from now henceforth any servants or helps, whether Christians or negroes [longer than 24 hours] on pain of forfeiting their freedom . . . which they were likewise ordered to communicate to the other remaining free negroes.
Along with a free black population the British inherited an informal, still‑immature slave system from the Dutch. The legitimacy of Dutch slave titles was implicitly guaranteed in the general recognition of existing property relations contained in the Articles of Capitulation. John De Decker, a Dutch West India Company official, had received twenty slaves from a cargo of two hundred blacks which was landed shortly before the British takeover of New Amsterdam. Ten were kept locally and ten were transferred to Fort Orange to be sold. British authorities seized the ten blacks in New Amsterdam as property belonging to the Dutch West India Company. This decision was appealed by De Decker on the basis that they were personal slave property, which was to remain intact according to the surrender treaty.4
The Duke of York's Laws, passed on March 1, 1665, were the first laws promulgated by the British in New York. Compiled from the statutes of other English colonies in America, they recognized both the institutions of limited‑term indentured servitude and of lifetime servitude (no race specified).5 The Duke's Laws, however, did not become effective throughout the province until after the short‑lived re‑occupation of New York by the Dutch from August 9, 1673, to November 10, 1674. Dutch laws had probably continued to be in partial force until this time.6 During this prolonged transition between Dutch and British rule, negro slavery existed in New York without expressed legal sanction. It was a racially‑based labor system that resembled lifetime indentured servitude more than chattel slavery.7
Not until 1682 did colonial authorities pass statutes which specifically mentioned black and Indian slavery. Laws enacted between 1682 and 1708 prohibited black and Indian slaves from leaving their masters' properties without written permission and from congregating in groups of more than three persons. Whites were forbidden to harbor or entertain slaves or to trade with them without their owners' permission. Slaves could be privately punished by owners or whipped or executed by public authorities for insolence to whites, drinking, swearing, or killing their masters. Slaves could no longer testify in court against whites. The law established a uterine descent for slavery.8
British New York did not intend to rely on Indians as slave labor and did not consider Indians in general as an enslaved people‑‑only individual members who fell into that condition. However, many persons of partial Indian ancestry were born as slaves from miscegenation between blacks and Indians;9 slave mothers created slave children. As a result many full‑blood or partial‑blood Indians served as bound servants or slaves from the 1660s through the first half of the eighteenth century.10 On September 11, 1665, for example, John Kirtland of Easthampton bound his six‑year‑old Indian servant Hopewell to Thomas James of Easthampton for nineteen years. Kirtland had purchased the orphaned Hopewell from his guardians at age one.11 In 1673 James Loper, also of Easthampton, made over to his father‑in‑law, Arthur Howell, in trust for his wife and heirs, a captive Indian girl called Beck about age fourteen. Loper had recently purchased Beck "for her natural life" from a Connecticut man.12
Although the Governor and Council of New York passed an act on December 5, 1679, which stated that "all Indians here were free and not slaves, nor could be forced to be servants, except such as were brought from Campechio and other foreign parts; and for the future even these were to be free,"13 subsequent colonial legislation indicated that Indians often served as slaves. Acts passed in 1682, 1706, 1708, 1712, and 1717 referred variably to "Negro, Indian, Mulatto, Mestee, or other slaves."14 Black and Indian slave mothers passed slavery on to their offspring. Black and Indian slaves were equally subject to laws which restricted their movement and assembly, their right to trade with whites, and their ability to testify in courts. New York laws also established punishments for a variety of offenses that pertained to both races.
Evidence that Indians were often enslaved in early New York appears in bills of sale, wills (where they were bequeathed as property), and in other documents. On July 30, 1687, Thomas Hawarden of Hempstead sold to Christopher Dene, butcher, an Indian boy named Will, for life. Five days later, Dene sold the boy to Nathaniel Pine.15 Four male Indian slaves were accused of participation in the 1712 slave uprising in New York City but were later pardoned.16 Some of the early censuses listed Indians as slaves along with blacks, while others listed them as a separate group within the population with no stated legal status. The 1698 censuses for Southold, Southampton, and Hempstead, counted Indians but did not classify them as slaves. Westchester's tabulation referred to them in the category of "negroes and Indians." Among the twenty‑eight "negro" slaves listed at Morrisania in 1698 were an Indian woman and girl.17 Both Oysterbay and Hempstead had a column for "negroes and other slaves" in their 1722 enumerations. Suffolk County in 1731 listed 715 Indians as a separate population group; they formed 8.5 percent of the population. The 1755 slave census for Hempstead, in one of its three separate returns, specified that it included negro, Indian, and mulatto slaves, as did the Mamaroneck and Scarsdale combined return.18
The missionary efforts of the Dutch Reformed Church were superceded by the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (the missionary arm of the Anglican church) with the transition from Dutch to British rule. Although both the Dutch Reformed Church and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPGFP) were interested in Christianizing blacks, neither group achieved much success.19 The major religious denominations in early New York‑‑Dutch Reformed, Anglican (Protestant Episcopal), Presbyterian, and Methodist‑‑all faced a set of similar impediments to conversion of slaves: master opposition, widely scattered parishes, necessity to catechize in evening hours due to the slaves' working schedules, and black indifference.
The SPGFP took the position that Christianization was not emancipation but that religious liberty and education could be offered to slaves.20 From their arrival in New York in 1705 until their work ended with the American Revolution, SPGFP missionaries spread out from New York City to Staten Island, Jamaica (the parish included Newtown and Flushing), Hempstead (including Oysterbay), Brookhaven (1729), Southampton, Huntington (1761), Philipsburg, New Rochelle (1708), Rye (including White Plains), Westchester, and Salem (1767). Missionaries from these towns reported on local conditions and efforts at slave baptisms; success varied according to the attitude and zeal of both individual pastors and individual slaveowners. Elias Neau, appointed catechist to the blacks in New York City's Trinity Parish in 1705, wrote to the SPGFP on November 15, 1705, that "there is more than a thousand Negroes that are actually there, great and small, men and women. . . ."21 In May 1711, Neau's letter to the SPGFP lamented the fact that of the large number of slaves in the city, "not one in ten comes to the catechism." He blamed the poor attendance on masters' opposition, indifference, and bad example rather than on negro failings.22
The Reverend Robert Jenney at Rye noted in 1725 that there were very few slaves in the parish, and among them only two were baptized: "In those that have negroes, I find little or no disposition to have them baptized, but on the contrary, an aversion to it, in some, and in most an indifference."23 Two years later Rev. James Wetmore found one hundred blacks in Rye's parish. Those who belonged to Quaker masters were allowed no instruction. Some Presbyterians permitted their servants to be taught but not to be baptized. Those of his own denomination were "not much better, so that there is but one negro in the parish baptized."24
Masters, particularly before the middle of the eighteenth century,25 feared that slave baptism would lead to claims to freedom,26 intractable behavior, or insurrections. Even after the New York provincial government enacted a law on October 21, 1706, which stated that "the baptizing of any Negro, Indian or Mulatto Slave shall not be any cause or reason for the setting them or any of them at Liberty,"27 masters remained opposed. The extent of missionary complaints about owner opposition to slave baptism in reports to the SPGFP indicated that owners were able to prevent and control to a large degree the Christianization of their slaves. Owners made the process more difficult, often forcing slave baptisms and attendance at catechism classes to proceed covertly.
In order not to alienate the white community and jeopardize its entire missionary effort among the colonists over the issue of slave baptism the SPGFP had to proceed cautiously with black Christianization. The Dutch Reformed Church faced the same problem when it debated slave membership in 1783 and ruled "that the Scriptures did not require that the permission of the master had to be obtained before a slave was admitted, but it resolved that care should be taken 'for the promotion and establishment of peace in households.'"28
In some parishes the masters' permissions were required, in others slaves were baptized in spite of masters' refusals, and in several places clergymen did not concern themselves with masters' attitudes other than to regret their indifference. In 1713 Rev. John Sharpe noted that a slave accused in the 1712 New York City uprising had attended catechism classes and "had made some proficience but was not admitted to baptism through the reluctancy of his master [Hendrick Hooghlandt], whom he had often solicited for it [for two years]."29 Elias Neau wrote to the SPGFP on August 24, 1708, that some slaves dared not to come to catechism at all because "upon desiring the approbation of their masters to be baptized, they are either threatened to be sold to Virginia or else to be sent into the Country if they come any more to school."30
Rev. William Vesey in New York City was willing to baptize slaves over the opposition of their owners. Neau informed the SPGFP in 1706 that Vesey had baptized some negroes "against the will and without the knowledge of their masters, because [the masters] fear lest by baptism they should become temporally free." Again, in 1711, Neau wrote that Vesey had recently baptized ten negroes, and "those who were baptized had it done to them without consent of their masters and there are .. . [some] who wish me ill and many negroes come to catechism unknown to their masters."31
More commonly, SPGFP missionaries capitulated to owners and required masters' consent for baptisms. The Reverend Thomas Barclay in Albany "publicly declared that [he] will admit none of them into the Church by baptism till [he has] obtained their masters' consent. Yea, I send them home without instruction who cannot have their masters' allowance to come, for some masters are so ignorant and averse that by no entreaties can their consent be had. . . . ."32 Some masters cooperated with the work of the SPGFP at the same time enhancing their powers of observation and control over their slaves' lives. Rev. John Ogilvie, a missionary at Albany, wrote in 1752 that he had "baptized . . . four black children who had passed through a regular course of catechetical instruction, and brought a certificate of their good behavior from their masters."33
Between 1705 and 1780 SPGFP missionaries baptized at least 1,407 blacks in the southern six counties of New York.34 The organization's schoolmasters worked with missionaries in processing students to the point of baptism: approximately 1,174 catechumens were taught during this same period.35 If the SPGFP baptized 1,407 blacks in seventy‑five years, it averaged only 18.8 baptisms per year in a six‑county population which ranged from 2,050 blacks in 1703 to 12,021 by 1771. Baptism and church participation, for children or adults, was an experience which touched probably only a minority of enslaved blacks in New York.
* * * * *
After the surrender of the Dutch, slaves continued to be imported into the British colony of New York. The principal slavetraders and shipping routes changed with the shift from Dutch to British rule as did the African origins of the slaves who reached New York. The Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading to Africa (created in 1663) and its successor the Royal African Company (chartered in 1672 with a monopoly of the English slave trade) replaced the Dutch West India Company as the government‑authorized supplier of slaves to the colony. The British islands of Jamaica, Barbados, Bermuda, and Antigua replaced the Dutch island of Curacao as the main source of seasoned slaves and as trading stations for slave ships en route from Africa to the North American mainland colonies. British New York received slaves at first from Madagascar and then from the main east‑west Guinea Coast from Cape Mount to the Cameroons rather than primarily from Angola.36
Many of the slaves who reached New York from the 1670s through the 1690s were from Madagascar. New York colonial slave merchants evaded the monopoly of the Royal African Company by trading directly with pirates operating out of Madagascar for slaves.37 Frederick Philipse, owner of Philipsburgh Manor in Westchester County, derived both profit and slaves for his own use from the trade with Madagascar pirates. In about 1684 Frederick Philipse sent his son Adolphus in the sloop Frederick to Delaware Bay to intercept New York Marchand, a vessel carrying both slaves and East India goods from Madagascar. Adophus transferred the trade goods from New York Marchand to Frederick and then ordered Frederick to sail to Hamburgh to sell its cargo. He returned to New York in New York Marchand, which now carried only slaves (private trade for slaves in Madagascar was not yet prohibited). Frederick Philipse continued to deal in slaves as late as 1698. The Charles acquired 140 blacks in Angola; it deposited 117 of them in Barbados and then set sail for New York with 23 sick blacks who had remained unsold. Of this group, "but Nine Remained Alive who were brought into the Sound and Eight of them Put Ashore with the Long boat neer About Rye and Delivered to Mr. Frederick Philips his Sonne and the Other being A Negro boy was Sent to this Citty."38
As table 1 shows, at least 6,800 blacks were imported into New York between 1700 and 1774. Approximately 2,800 (41.2 percent) arrived directly from Africa, with another 4,000 from American sources. Blacks brought into New York served the local market. New York exported relatively few slaves‑‑the known total reached only 268 blacks.39 Between 1701 and 1717 more than half of the slaves imported into New York came directly from Africa. Early eighteenth‑century New York customs duties promoted direct African importations by placing higher duties on slaves imported from indirect sources.40 Since the Gold Coast and Bight of Benin supplied two‑thirds of the slaves exported from Africa by the British between 1701 and 1730,41 most of the slaves who reached New York during these years were probably from these
TABLE 1

NEW YORK SLAVE IMPORTS, 1701 TO 1774

Years Africa West Indies and Coastal

1701‑1715 209 278

1715‑1764 1,127 3,074 197

1768‑1772 59 171

190a ...

1,215b 280c

Total 2,800 4,000

SOURCE: James G. Lydon, "New York and the Slave Trade, 1700 to 1774," William and Mary Quarterly, 35, no. 2 (April 1978):337, 382‑83, 387.
aThis figure represents known smuggling. Lydon did well to estimate a large amount of smuggling. Thomas Davis, "Slavery in Colonial New York City," p. 188, pointed out that most blacks arrived in small, easily concealable parcels which formed a minor part of a ship's cargo. Captain Johan Vanburgh's voyage to the West Indies in 1720 was typical of this process--he brought back only four blacks for sale. Only occasionally would a slaver arrive with a large black cargo. See Helen Wortis, "From First Settlement to Manumission: Black Inhabitants of Shelter Island", Long Island Forum, 36, no. 8 (August 1973): 148‑49 on the smuggling of slaves on the eastern coast of Long Island. See John Watts, to Gedney Clarke, March 30, 1762, Collections of the New‑York Historical Society, Letter Book of John Watts, 1762‑1765, vol. 61 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1928), p. 32 for his suggestion that since New Jersey had no import duty on slaves, the master of the ship "might lay a mile or two below the Town & send up word" in order to avoid New York customs inspectors.
bLydon estimated that an additional 1,215 Africans were brought in. The figure of 1,585 recorded African imports is based on data available for only 32 of the 60 vessels known to have entered New York between 1701 and 1774. Of the remaining 28 vessels, at least 15 carried slaves--guesswork places total importation directly from Africa at around 2,800.
cAn estimate of slaves imported from American sources.
areas. The English forts of Dixcove, Commenda, Cape Coast Castle, Anamabu, Winneba, and Fort James (Accra) on the Gold Coast42 shipped Akan or Ashanti peoples (commonly miscalled "Coromanti" after the Dutch fort at Koromantin). From the Bight of Benin came blacks from such linguistic and ethnic groups as Ardra (from southern Dahomey), Yoruba, Adja, Fon, Popo (from the coastal regions of the Slave Coast near Wydah [Dahomey and Togo]), Gur‑speaking (from the region north of Ashanti), Tem, Bargu, and Nupe (from Nigeria).43
The presence of Coromanti and Popo tribesmen in New York is verified by their participation in the 1712 slave uprising in New York City. Coromanti slaves were known throughout the mainland colonies and the West Indian islands for their bravery, strength, efficiency, pride, fierceness, fearlessness, and independence; they also had a reputation for rebelliousness.44 On June 23, 1712, Rev. John Sharpe of New York informed the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in London about the recent revolt:45
Some Negro Slaves here of the Nations of Carmantee & Pappa plotted to destroy all the White[s] in order to obtain their freedom and kept their Conspiracy [so] Secret that there was not the least Suspicion of it, (as formerly there had often been) till it come to the Execution. It was agreed to on New Years Day the Conspirators tying themselves to Secrecy by Sucking the blood of each Others hands, and to make them invulnerable as they believed a free negroe who pretends Sorcery gave them a powder to rub on their Cloths which made them so confident that on Sunday night Apr. 1 about 2 a Clock about the going down of the Moon they Set fire to a house. . . .
The free black who administered the powder was an African conjurer, undoubtedly well‑learned in the art of obeah. As James Pope‑Hennessy notes, "the haphazard methods of stocking up slave ships on the Guinea Coast or down in the Congo or in Angola meant that witch‑doctors of both sexes were often transported in a parcel of fresh slaves."46 A Jamaican insurrection in 1760 bore a resemblance to the New York City revolt of 1712: it had also "been instigated by an old Coromantee oracle, who had administered the fetish oath to the conspirators, and handed them out a `magical preparation which was to render them invulnerable.'"47 Judging from such names as Amba, Bonny, Cuffee, Kitto, Mingo, Quaco (4), Quashi, and Quasi, several of the slaves who were accused in the 1712 New York uprising were African‑born.48 As Africans, they had probably believed in the African conjurer's power and in the protective power of his fetish charms.49
* * * * *
Between 1718 and 1741 the majority of slaves who entered New York had been seasoned in the West Indies or had been shipped to New York from American coastal sources, especially South Carolina.50 Before 1742, 70 percent of all blacks imported into New York were from these indirect Caribbean or American sources; after 1742, the ratio was almost exactly reversed.51 A number of underlying circumstances contributed to this sharp rise in the direct importation of slaves from Africa. The slave plot of 1741 in New York City caused residents to be concerned over the importation of malcontents and incorrigibles from the islands and other colonies. Lower import duties for blacks fresh from Africa reflected the New York preference for African rather than West Indian slaves. In 1762 merchant John Watts wrote that "Our Duty is four pound a head from the West Indies [and] forty shillings from Africa."52 Total New York demand for slaves also dropped after the 1741 uprising; slave imports, which had averaged 150 blacks per year between 1715 and 1741, declined to an average of 60 blacks per year between 1742 and 1764.53
The end of the Asiento also contributed to the flood of African slaves into New York. In 1713 England had won the coveted Spanish Asiento which entitled her British South Sea Company to transport five thousand slaves per year to Spain's New World colonies for thirty years. The African coastal forts of the Royal African Company supplied slaves to Jamaica and other West Indian islands; the British South Sea Company then sold and sent these seasoned slaves to Spain's colonies. The Anglo‑Spanish war of 1739‑1748 interrupted the Asiento contract; it was briefly resumed between 1748 and 1750 when it was relinquished by the British.54 With the Spanish market for slaves largely closed to English traders after 1739, a glut of slaves soon developed at the slave stations along the African coast. The English colonies, including New York, were inundated with slaves at reduced prices.55
Ships began to arrive directly from Africa to sell slaves on the wharves of New York City. On May 13, 1751, the New York Gazette advertized that "a number of likely Negro Slaves, lately imported in the Sloop Wolf directly from Africa" would be "Sold at Publick Vendue, on Friday the 17th Instant, at 10 o'clock in the Morning, at the Meal Market." On August 19, 1751 the New York Gazette again publicized a slave sale: "Likely Negroes Men and Women, imported from the Coast of Africa" in the Warren. In 1762 the sloop Rebecca and Joseph arrived from Anambo [Anamabu], Guinea. "A parcel of likely young slaves--men, women, and boys" were placed on sale at Cruger's Wharf when the ship reached New York City.56 This influx of Africans ceased only in the early 1770s when the supply began to diminish and slave prices rose beyond the demand of the New York market and when the imperial crisis interrupted trade.57
The Africans who were brought to New York from 1740 through the early 1770s were of different ethnic origins than earlier forced immigrants from Africa. In the 1740s and 1750s half of the slaves exported by the British from Africa came from either the Bight of Biafra or the Gold Coast areas. In the 1760s and 1770s, 46.4 percent of British‑shipped slaves came from the Bight of Biafra while another 23.9 percent came from the Windward (Ivory) Coast.58 Akan peoples continued to come in from the Gold Coast, while Akwa, Mbato, Kissi, and Bobo peoples from the Windward (Ivory) Coast increasingly found their way to the New World. The bulk of slaves, however, were from the Bight of Biafra; they were Moko (a diverse group of cultures shipped from the lower Cross River), Ibo and Ijo (New Calabar), and Efik and Ibibio (Old Calabar) peoples.59
* * * * *
An immigrant mixture of black Africans from many groups and white Europeans from several countries gave colonial New York an international flavor. British New York received a sustained infusion of unacculturated African newcomers from the 1670s through the mid‑1770s. African notions of kinship obligation and social ritual were continuously imported with each successive wave. The African segment of the slave population helped to disseminate and preserve the use of African languages, religious beliefs, names, and marital and familial values in New York's black community. The heavy importation of Africans in the decades before the American Revolution helped to sustain African customs and cultural patterns in New York's black population into the early nineteenth century.
The language abilities and often‑mentioned national origins of New York slaves underscore the recent immigrant nature of the New York slave community in the eighteenth century. A sample of newspaper ads for runaway slaves between 1726 and 1814 listed linguistic capabilities for 40 out of 194 voluntary black runaways.60 Of the forty, fourteen spoke English well and five spoke it only poorly, probably reflecting their recent arrival in New York. Another six slaves knew no English at all: they spoke Dutch, French, or an African language,61 reflecting both their owners' national cultures and their own recent Caribbean or African origins. The remaining fifteen slaves were bilingual: eleven spoke a combination of Dutch and English while the others spoke a blend of English/Welsh, French/English, and Spanish/English. The eleven who spoke both Dutch and English reflected the two major ethnic groups in New York and the sale of slave labor between the two communities.62 This suggests the instability of slave placement; repeated sale meant an added burden of cultural/linguistic readjustment by the slave.
Eleven of the runaway slaves were born outside the mainland colonies. Their masters sought to describe their missing slave property by mentioning their countries of origin: Africa, Madagascar, Guinea, Jamaica, and Barbados. In 1748 Robert Dickenson of Northcastle described his twenty‑two‑year‑old runaway slave as "very black with his own country marks plain to be seen on both his temples." When Yarrow ran away in 1781 he was listed as a "new Negro fellow" who spoke English badly and had his teeth filed sharp. In 1797 Samuel Carman advertized that his twenty‑eight‑year‑old runaway was "a Guinea negro and marked on his cheek."63
Slaves born in Africa spoke languages which were of little practical use in New York. Since blacks were taken to the New World from many different linguistic groups they were unable to communicate with each other in their native tongues. They were forced to learn the languages of their new owners. English, Dutch, French, and Spanish were haltingly mastered and were pronounced with African accents. Augustus Griffin of Oysterponds, Long Island commented in 1799 on the speech of two elderly Africans: "John Tatoo, another Affrican, about Jack's age, and died about the same time, was honest faithful and trusty and a good upright man--He talked much plainer english than Jack, [brought from Africa fifty‑five years ago] whose pronounciation was much broken."64
Evidence of the presence of native Africans in New York permeates the historical records in which slaves appear.65 In spite of widespread rendering of African names into English and Dutch equivalents and the renaming of newly arrived blacks by masters, African names appear in New York censuses from 1698 through 1820. Names such as Coraneni, Cuffie, Bango, Coffe, Mingo, Sambo, Shantee [Ashanti?], Abashe, Abee, and Mando appear in the 1698 censuses for Kings, Queens, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. Slaves named Cofi, Cessemin, Mishe, Carmente [Coromanti?], Finno, and Keshe lived on Staten Island in 1706. The slave census of 1755 recorded several African names, including Ambo, Zibia, Kea, Roos, Kouba, Febe, Ando, Ocumah, Yaff, Quam, Commenie, and Bendo. Free blacks still bore African names between 1800 and 1820. Free black Quaquo Minnefee lived in the Sixth Ward of New York City in 1800. Congo Clark, Anthony Eto, Oby Cuffe, Quam Brown, and George Hotentot were listed in the 1810 and 1820 censuses.66
African names and references are scattered throughout the church records of baptisms, marriages, and deaths in the southern six counties of New York. In 1778 a slave named Yarrobu [Yoruba?] died in the town of Southold. Thomas Wilson, a native of Guinea, was baptized in New York City in 1797; he was approximately fifty years old. A black woman named Binah died in Easthampton in 1802. Between 1802 and 1815, Ming Pritchard, Eber Brown, Comene Nicols, and Commany Tickers were members of the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn.67
African traces are found in a variety of other sources. Several blacks with African names participated in the 1741 slave plot in New York City: Cuffee (3), Cuba, Cajoe alias Africa, Cajoe, Quack (3), Quamino, and Quash (2).68 Two of the fourteen slaves owned by Nicoll Havens of Shelter Island in 1776 were from Guinea (Africa and Judith).69 In 1812 seventy‑year‑old Richard [Conrency] certified that he had been freed in 1798; he had been born in Africa and had come to this country forty‑five years earlier.70 The way in which New York slaves celebrated the week‑long Dutch holiday of Pinkster every Spring reflected their African roots. The African tradition of communal rather than private festivities led to mass gatherings where slaves beat drums, danced, and sang African songs. They also showed their respect for African customs and leadership by electing as festival heads native Africans, some of whom were descended from royalty. Sojourner Truth described Prince Gerald, the leader of Pinkster in Ulster County in the early eighteenth century, as the grandson of an African king. An eighty‑five‑year‑old African from Guinea named King Charlie headed the celebrations in Albany.71
* * * * *
Africans imported into New York found a ready market. The ownership of slaves was widespread in early New York: of the forty‑eight heads of household in Flushing in 1675, ten (20.8 percent) held slaves. In 1683 five (13.2 percent) of the thirty‑eight householders in Flatlands owned slaves. In 1686 Southold's 114 families included 12 (10.5 percent) who owned slaves. In New Utrecht in 1693 ten of the forty‑three household heads (23.3 percent) were slaveowners. Kings County (predominantly Dutch) had an even larger black population: 40.7 percent of white households contained slaves (129 out of 317 households) in 1698.72 The proportion of slaveowners among white household heads in the towns of Westchester (11.3 percent), Fordham (21.7 percent), New Rochelle (24.1 percent), Mamaroneck (26.7 percent), Newtown (26.1 percent), and Flushing (44.1 percent) in 1698 indicates that slavery was common in these areas too.73
By 1703 there were 818 white households in New York City; 339 of them (41.4 percent) possessed slaves. In Kings County in 1731, 58.8 percent of white households contained slaves.74 New Rochelle in 1771 had one hundred households, of which 51 percent held slaves, while 25.9 percent of Shelter Island's twenty‑seven heads of household owned slaves in the same year. In Suffolk County in 1776,75 20.6 percent of homes owned slaves.76
In 1790 the institution of slavery stood at a crossroads betweeen its eighteenth‑century zenith and the onset of massive individual voluntary manumission and eventual abolition. As table 2 shows, between 1790 and 1820 the incidence of slaveholding was highest among Kings77 and Richmond county households, where large segments of the white population owned black labor. Slaves were far less commonly found in Westchester, Suffolk, and New York households. Slaves held by Dutch owners in Kings and Richmond counties and in the towns of Harlem, Newtown, and Jamaica experienced a substantially different form of the institution. They lived in an environment where a large proportion of the whites in the community were involved in and supported the slave system.
The proportion of white households that held slaves dropped from 22.1 percent in 1790 to 4.1 percent in 1820 in the combined southern six counties of New York as owners manumitted their slaves. While the proportion of whites that were slaveholders dropped in each county after 1790, the actual number of white slaveholding households increased for a time in Kings and New York counties before falling and declined only very slowly in Richmond County. Slaveholders in these areas maintained their numbers but not their proportional representation in the growing white society around them.
* * * * *
TABLE 2

NUMBER AND PROPORTION OF WHITE HOUSEHOLDS THAT HELD SLAVES,
SOUTHERN SIX COUNTIES OF NEW YORK, 1790 TO 1820
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________

Total Number of Proportion of All
County Number White Households White Households
Of White Which Held that Held Slaves
Households Slaves
___________________________________________________________

1790
___________________________________________________________

Kings 544 319 58.6
New York 5,854 1,117 19.1
Richmond 562 238 42.3
Suffolk 2,806 493 17.6
Queens 2,246 776 34.6
Westchester 3,763 540 14.4

Total 15,775 3,483 22.1
___________________________________________________________

1800
___________________________________________________________

Kings 707 398 56.3
New York 11,199 1,483 13.2
Richmond 686 231 33.7
Suffolk 3,283 410 12.5
Queens 2,675 532 19.9
Westchester 4,180 480 11.5

Total 22,730 3,534 15.5
___________________________________________________________

1810
___________________________________________________________

Kings 1,086 370 34.1
New York 15,859 1,074 6.8
Richmond 811 203 25.0
Suffolk 3,528 225 6.4
Queens 2,711 357 13.2
Westchester 4,269 432 9.9

Total 28,264 2,652 9.4
___________________________________________________________

1820
___________________________________________________________

Kings 1,718 286 16.6
New York 18,264 366 2.0
Richmond 942 183 19.4
Suffolk 4,141 146 3.5
Queens 3,154 270 8.6
Westchester 5,178 133 2.6

Total 33,397 1,384 4.1
SOURCES: The total number of white households and the number of white households which held slaves wereindividu‑
ally counted within each of the southern six counties of New York as listed in the 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1820 federal censuses. Bureau of Census, Heads_of_Families,
1790; 1800 Census, Printed Population Schedules,
NYGBR; 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules.

NOTE: Free black‑headed households which contained slaves are not included in this table which concerns only white slaveholders.
The average New York master owned only two or three slaves. Holdings were consistently small in both New York City and in rural areas during the entire colonial and early national periods. In New York City most slaves served as domestics or as workers in mercantile houses, small shops, and in the maritime trades. They were owned by a wide variety of city residents: merchants, grocers, physicians, attorneys, mariners, and gentlemen. A broad spectrum of artisans also held slave labor: shipwrights, carpenters, tallow chandlers, coachmakers, and ropemakers. Slaveholding was common in all walks of city life; the inspector of the revenue, the vice consul of France, a deputy sheriff, and numerous clergy held slaves, as did tailors, fruiterers, booksellers, and shoemakers. In the growing town of Brooklyn, the occupations of thirty‑five persons who manumitted their slaves between 1790 and 1827 included fourteen farmers, eleven gentlemen, three merchants, one widow, one innkeeper, one storekeeper, a butcher, a miller, a soldier, and the town clerk.78
Outside of New York City, slaves were used extensively for farm labor, as they were in New England.79 The small farm was the backdrop for New York slavery--the setting in which the majority of slaves lived out their lives in the southern six counties of New York. Northern agriculture was essentially subsistence farming with a ready market in New York City for whatever surplus might be produced.80 Rather than serving in gang labor in a mass‑scale southern plantation single‑crop economy, New York slaves provided the much‑needed extra general labor required on the diversified family farm.
Most New York farms were of moderate size. The original patentees of the Queens County town of Jamaica each received a six acre house lot, ten acres for farming, and twenty acres of meadow when the town's lands were divided in 1656; later divisions expanded these holdings.81 The largest farms in late seventeenth‑century Long Island were composed of between 110 and 120 acres. The bulk of the rural population in the eighteenth century was composed of farmers whose holdings ranged from forty to one hundred acres. The average farm in nearby Rockland County was approximately eighty acres by 1800, which was generally sufficient to support a family in reasonable comfort with some marketable surplus.82 The three economic classes in eighteenth‑century Jamaica in Queens County consisted of small farmers who held up to twenty acres of land, middle class to wealthy farmers who owned from forty to one hundred acres (forty‑five was the average), and a small class of planters who held an average of 215 acres of land apiece.83
In the late seventeenth century there was a positive correlation between landed wealth and the number of slaves owned, although small farmers could often possess as many slaves as average size landholders. The two men with the largest landholdings also had the greatest number of slaves in the English town of Flushing in 1675.84 Charles Bridgs owned the largest farm in Flushing, with fifty acres of land, sixty acres of meadow, fifty‑seven animals, and eight blacks. John Furbosh was second, with eighteen acres of land, forty acres of meadow, fifty‑seven animals and three blacks. John Bowne was the third largest landowner; he held twenty acres of land, thirty acres of meadow, ninety‑four animals, but no slaves. No slaveholder, other than Bridgs and Furbosh, had more than one black slave. The smallest farm in town belonged to John Hoper, with one acre of land, two cows, and no slaves. The distribution of slaves in the Dutch town of Amesfort (Flatlands) in 1683 reveals a similar pattern. Roelof Martens owned the largest farm which comprised sixty morgens (one morgen equals two acres) of land, thirty‑one animals, and two blacks. Three farmers who owned between twenty‑three and twenty‑eight morgens of land each held one black. Gerrit Strycker's small farm comprised only two morgens of land and twelve animals, but he also had one black slave.85
Slaveholding was widespread among middle‑class, wealthy, and elite farmers but was by no means universal. A 1781 census of Oysterbay‑Jericho on Long Island86 revealed that Thomas Smith held the largest farm in the area, with 100 acres under cultivation, 25 in woodland, and 118 animals. He also owned eleven slaves--three men, three women, and five children. Henry Ludlam's farm was the second largest, with 70 acres of fields, 20 of woodland, and 104 animals. He had a slave labor force of one man and two women. Henry Downing's properties made him the third largest landholder in town, with sixty‑two acres under cultivation, twelve in woodland, and fifty‑one animals. He held no slaves.
The Kings County town of Gravesend was heavily involved in slaveholding. When it counted the amount of land and the number of slaves held by its residents for tax purposes in 1788,87 twenty‑seven (46.6 percent) of its fifty‑eight households owned slaves. Slaveowning was more common among larger landholders. The twenty households at the bottom of the landed wealth scale owned from zero to twelve acres; none had slaves. The nineteen households in the middle of the landed wealth scale owned from thirteen to eighty acres; of this group eleven, or 57.9 percent, held slaves. The nineteen households at the top of the landed wealth scale owned from 81 to 248 acres; sixteen, or 84.2 percent, held slaves. While landed wealth was an indicator of whether or not one would own slaves, large landholders did not necessarily own greater numbers of slaves than small farmers. Out of twenty‑seven slaveholders, the nine men with the most acreage possessed a total of twenty‑three slaves, an average of 2.6 slaves per owner. The middle nine men held nineteen slaves (2.1 per owner), while the nine slaveholders with the least acreage held twenty‑three slaves between them (2.6 slaves per owner). The largest single slaveholder in Gravesend was Albert Voorhis, with a modest thirty‑five acres but seven slaves.
When New Yorkers established new towns and farms they needed all available labor to build the first dwellings, erect shelters for the stock, and raise churches and meetinghouses. Gardens had to be laid out, fruit orchards planted, crops grown and harvested, trees cut, and highways constructed. Once established, New York farmers grew such field crops as corn, wheat, rye, oats, barley, field peas, and clover. They raised garden vegetables which included turnips, carrots, pumpkin, squash, cabbage, beans, and onions. Fruit trees produced apples and pears. Cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, and chickens were kept as sources of meat, milk, butter, cheese, cream, eggs, and wool; horses and oxen were used as beasts of burden and for transportation.88 Slaves were employed in all of these tasks. Slaves were also skilled in the other areas of the colonial economy. On the large estate of Colonel Schuyler at Albany, slaves cut wood, threshed wheat, raised hemp and tobacco, made shoes, constructed canoes, nets, and paddles, tended to and shod horses, broke in wild horses, made cider, cooked, sewed, did laundry, and acted as household servants.89
Slave labor was well‑utilized all year long in New York, not only during the shorter northern growing season and at harvests. Just to cut, pile, haul, and split the family's firewood could consume weeks of labor.90 Slaves carted dung, mended fences, thatched roofs, and repaired farm buildings and dwellings. Animals had to be fed. Slaves were also sent on errands to local shopkeepers or on other business for their masters. An annual routine of seasonal agricultural chores kept slaves constantly busy. Spring meant days of picking up stones in the field, plowing, and planting the field crops and garden vegetables. In June wild strawberries could be picked, and August/September was haying time, with hands needed to mow the meadow grasses. Late September and October were harvest time, with potatoes to be dug and corn to be cut, carted home, and husked. Hogs were butchered in the late Fall between November and January; they had to be slaughtered, cut into merchantable pieces, salted and barreled. Other animals might have to be taken to town and given to merchants to help balance farmers' accounts.91
Male and female slaves were often assigned to different kinds of labor. Runaway males and black men advertized for sale were described as being proficient in a number of occupations: farmer, butcher and sawyer, "attends a grist mill," "acquainted with management of horses," house carpenter, boatman, and blacksmith--skills in high demand in farm and town. Male slaves commonly accompanied their masters while hunting and fishing.92 Female slaves generally were employed at cooking, housekeeping, sewing, spinning, knitting, repairing clothing, attending at table, and in dairy work (milking cows and processing milk into cheese and butter). The absence of ready‑made consumer goods in seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth‑century America meant that New York women, aided by their female slaves, had to produce all of the household's food, clothing, and such other necessities as soap and candles from scratch. In a world without refrigeration breads had to be baked daily, meats had to be smoked, salted, or pickled, and fruits and vegetables had to be preserved in the Fall for use through the Winter until the following June. Colonial kitchens also produced apple cider and medicines and fragrances from herb gardens. The production of cloth was a major domestic enterprise. Flax was grown and laboriously fashioned into linen. Woolen cloth was made at home: sheep were shorn, the wool was sorted, picked, and carded; it was then turned into yarn on spinning wheels, dyed with berry, plant, or insect colorings in large iron pots over open fires, and woven into cloth which would be sewn into clothing, bedding coverings, and curtains. The very small size of New York slaveholdings meant that a black woman was often the sole family slave; she might therefore also be required to do a great deal of agricultural work. In 1692 John Bowne and his son Samuel of Flushing described the work expected of their slave Black Mary: she was "to assist in weeding the Indian corn, in harvesting and hay‑making, when she can be spared from the garden, orchard and carding work."93
Famed abolitionist Sojourner Truth served as a slave in Ulster County, New York, from her birth in 1797 until her emancipation in 1827. She performed a wide variety of tasks for her four successive owners. She planted and hoed corn, plowed, planted, reaped, and bound wheat, and raked hay. In the Fall she would slaughter the pigs, smoke the hams, pickle the meat, or stuff the summer sausage. She picked hundreds of ripe apples and pears, cut them into quarters, and strung them high in the attic to dry. In the Autumn she also washed wool, carded, and spun it into long woolen threads to be made into clothing. She was expected to cook, clean, and wash laundry throughout the year.94
Slave labor, when not required by the owner, was commonly hired out.95 Estate executors and widows also hired out slaves to receive the income from their wages; men occasionally left slaves as legacies to be hired out to provide revenue for their widows and children.96 On August 23, 1703, the widow Aletta Douw hired out her negro man Josse for one year at 13 to Simeon Soumain.97 The estate of John Cortelyou hired out a female slave [Isabel] in 1813 to serve Ann McLeod of Flatbush.98 Acting for herself while her husband was in England, Ann Wharton of New York City hired out two slaves, Sy Coster and Mingoe, to John Pallmer of Westchester. In 1696 she contracted with Lt. John Lawrance that at the end of their period of hire to Pallmer the two men would be permanently sold to him for the sum of 50.99
In addition to hiring them out for profit owners used their slaves' labor as a means of repaying debts. According to the account book kept by Elias Pelletreau of Southampton, David Hanes settled a debt with Pelletreau by having his slave perform farmwork for him on January 30, 1770.100 Slaves were also temporarily loaned or borrowed out to neighbors. John Baxter, a Flatlands farmer, made the following entries in his diary:101

September 7, 1799 Mowing salt hay. Peter Van Der Bilts negro Bram helped.

September 13, 1802 Carromus A. Wyckoff and his negro mowed my salt meadow.

July 23, 1806 Mawn the negro of John Voorhees mowing fresh grass for me.

September 2, 1806 A. Wyckoff and his negro Harry cut my salt hay.

November 17, 1817 Paid Mrs. Bennet 7 1/2 dollars for one month's work of her negro Rob‑‑he has ten blank days.
* * * * *
The overall productivity of the slave labor force in New York was modified by the age structure of the black population.102 At any given time, approximately half of a town's slave population was dependent rather than immediately productive labor. Since the work of slave children was only fully valuable from puberty upwards and adult slave labor began to lose both resale and productivity value over approximately the age of forty‑five, both youthful and elderly slaves were often economic burdens rather than assets. As table 3 shows, only approximately 50 percent of slaves were prime laborers between the age of fourteen/sixteen and forty‑five/sixty. About 40 percent of blacks in the slave population were children and about 14 percent were over the age of forty‑five; between 6 and 7 percent were over the age of sixty (males). Whites had to support that segment of the slave labor force which was dependent--part of the costs of running a slave labor system.
While the normal age profile of the black population in eighteenth‑century New York (which included both natural reproduction and importations) dictated that half of the population would be partially or totally dependent, the non‑random distribution of slaves into particular households meant that through choice, purchase, sale, and the passage of time owners could have either prime or mixed‑age holdings or holdings of particularly youthful or elderly slaves. The age contours of their slaveholdings changed over time because of black births, the addition of young adults, the aging of slaves, the voluntary or involuntary retention of superannuated blacks, and by deaths.
The life cycle of individual slaves in small holdings and of a collectivity of slaves in larger holdings
TABLE 3

NOTE: ALL THE CATEGORIES ARE MISSING IN THIS TABLE—SEE ORIGINAL P. 103
AGE STRUCTURE OF THE BLACK POPULATION,SOUTHERN SIX COUNTIES OF NEW YORK

Census
Year

1746 41.1 52.0 7.0 11.9

1749 43.3 50.7 6.0 10.5

1756 44.4 49.1 6.5 11.7

1771 41.4 50.8 7.8 13.3

Census
Year

1820 36.1 49.7 14.2 30.4 14.5

SOURCES: Compiled from data in Bureau of Census, Century of Population Growth, tables 95, 96, 97, 98, pp. 182‑83; 1820 Census, "Aggregate Amount of Persons. . . ."
determined the potential labor benefit available to owners. Lewis Morris, lord of the Manor of Morrisania in 1755, owned twenty‑nine slaves over the age of fourteen plus an estimated additional twenty‑one children.103 Out of these fifty slaves, the twenty‑one children (42 percent) were either still totally dependent or were of limited immediate value and the eight elderly slaves (16 percent) were largely beyond sustained labor. Therefore, 58 percent of Morrisania's slave population was only marginally productive.

Age Structure of Adult Slave Population,

Manor of Morrisania, 1755

Age Groupings Males Females

14‑19 1 0

20‑29 6 3

30‑39 1 1

40‑44 2 1

45‑49 2 0

50‑59 2 2

60‑69 4 1

70‑79 0 0

80‑89 1 1

90‑99 1 0

Out of twenty‑nine adult slaves held by Lewis Morris only fifteen were prime adults between the ages of fourteen and forty‑four. The six slaves between the ages of forty‑five and fifty‑nine were growing old and may have produced less work. The five slaves in their sixties and the three slaves in their eighties and nineties were beyond productive labor; they represented 27.6 percent of Morris's adult slave labor force. The life cycle of the manor, its owners, and its slaves104 had produced a particularly old workforce.
Abraham Depeyster of New York City had a far smaller holding than Lewis Morris; it too contained a proportion of dependent slaves:105

Sarah age 90 no value

Ceaser age 50 35

Mary age 48 45

Dinah age 45 32.10

Hannah age 18 60

Susan age 34 55

Frank ‑‑‑‑‑‑ 60

Bett, blind ‑‑‑‑‑‑ no value

287.10

Out of eight slaves only three were choice laborers--Susan, Hannah, and Frank. The three slaves between forty‑five and fifty years of age were worth less at valuation and were beyond their prime. One slave was blind, and another was ninety years old. This labor force was probably less of an asset than a burden to be supported; in a few more years it would have further become a collection of largely dependent, superannuated slaves.
According to Henry Oothoudt's estate inventory taken on August 25, 1801, he had owned a very youthful slave workforce:106
negro wench Sarah age 22

negro child Dian age 5

negro child Brom age 3

negro child Ann age 1

negro wench Claar age 25

negro man Sam age 22

negro boy Jack age 16

negro boy Sam age 10

negro boy Pert age 9

negro boy Jack age 6

negro girl Sarah age 4

negro girl Criss age 2

negro girl Gin age 5 months

Out of Oothoudt's thirteen slaves, four were prime adult laborers aged sixteen to twenty‑five years, three were children of only modest current labor value, aged six to ten years, and six were young children under the age of five who had to be supported. In five years, however, Oothoudt would have had a very valuable, young, prime labor force of six men and women aged fourteen to thirty years, six older children between age six and eleven of moderate current use but on the verge of entering their prime years, and only one five‑year‑old to be supported.
Most New York slaveowners held far fewer slaves than did Lewis Morris, Abraham Depeyster, or Henry Oothoudt. With only one, two, or three slaves in his household, the average master could ill‑afford to maintain a half (or in the case of a single slave) totally unproductive workforce. The small size of their holdings made New York owners particularly anxious to try to sell off unwanted infants born to their women as well as their aging slaves. The smallness of New York slaveholdings also dramatically affected blacks both as individuals and as family members. Most slaves lived on properties of less than a hundred acres with a white family and either none or only a few other slaves. The ownership of an entire slave family over time was incompatible with the economic demands of northern family farm slavery which called for a limited number of workers of a specific age and sex.
1Rosenwaike, Population History of N.Y.C., p. 3; Davis, "Slavery in Colonial New York City," p. 42; Michael Kammen, Colonial New York--A History, A History of the American Colonies in Thirteen Volumes (New York: Charles Scribner's & Sons, 1975), pp. 58, 65.
2Articles of Capitulation, in O'Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative, New York State, 2:250‑53.
3Fernow, ed., Records of New Amsterdam, 6:286.
4Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 1:82‑83.
5Charles Lincoln, William Johnson, and A. Judd Northrup, eds., The Colonial Laws of New York from the Year 1664 to the Revolution, 5 vols. (Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1896), 1:18, 48.
6Ibid., 1:xii.
7McManus, Negro Slavery, pp. 79‑80.
8"An Order Concerning Negros and Indian Slaves," October 4‑6, 1682, Collections of the New-York Historical Society, Proceedings of the General Court of Assizes, 1680 to 1682, vol. 45 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1912), pp. 37‑38; "An Act for Regulateing of Slaves," November 27, 1702; "An Act to Incourage the Baptizing of Negro, Indian & Mulatto Slaves," October 21, 1706; "An Act for Suppressing of Immorality," September 18, 1708; "An Act for preventing the Conspiracy of Slaves," October 30, 1708, in Lincoln, Johnson, and Northrup, eds., Colonial Laws of New York, 1:519‑21, 597‑98, 617‑18, 631.
9See p. below on black/Indian miscegenation.
10The origins of Indian slavery in New York are unclear. Although no eighteenth‑century statute which outlawed Indian slavery has been located, acts passed regarding slavery after 1773 no longer mentioned Indians. By the 1780s Indian birth or ancestry was considered prima facie evidence of entitlement to freedom. See p. below on such manumissions.
11Joseph Osborne, comp., Records of the Town of Easthampton Long Island, 5 vols. (Sag Harbor, N.Y.: John H. Hunt, Printer, 1887‑1905), 1:229.
12Paul Gibson Burton, "Cornelis Melyn, Patroon of Staten Island, and Some of His Descendants," NYGBR 68 (July 1937): 218; Osborne, comp., Records of Easthampton, 1:412‑13.
13John Gilmary Shea, "The New York Negro Plot of 1741," in David Valentine, comp., Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 28 vols. (New York: William C. Bryant, Printer, for New York City, 1841‑1870); 28 (1870): 764‑65.
14Shea, "New York Negro Plot of 1741," p. 765 notes that "with the fall of King James the enslavement of Indians resumed." For the 1682, 1706, and two 1708 acts, see n. 8 above. "An Act for Preventing Suppressing and Punishing the Conspiracy and Insurrection of Negroes and other Slaves," December 10, 1712; "An Act for Explaining and Rendering more Effectual an Act of the General Assembly of this Colony entitled, an Act for Preventing, Suppressing and punishing the Conspiracy and Insurrection of Negroes and other slaves," November 2, 1717. Lincoln, Johnson, and Northrup, eds., Colonial Laws of New York, 1:761‑67, 922.
15Records of the Towns of North and South Hempstead, 1654‑1874, 8 vols. (Jamaica, N.Y.: Long Island Farmer's Print, printed by order of the Town Board of North Hempstead, 1896‑1903), 2:60.
16Scott, "Slave Insurrection in New York," pp. 43‑74. Of the forty‑six slaves accused in the conspiracy, forty‑two were black and four were Indian.
17"Southold, 1698," Doc. Hist., 1:455‑56; "Southampton, 1698," Doc. Hist., 1:445‑47; Harris, "Hempstead, 1698," NYGBR, p. 67; Miller, "Census of Westchester, Eastchester, Fordham and Bedford, 1698," pp. 129‑34; Randolph, "Census of 1698, Mamaroneck, Morrisania, and New Rochelle," pp. 104‑5.
18Hartell, "Slavery on Long Island"; Wells, "New York Census of 1731," pp.256‑57; "1755 Slave Census," Doc. Hist., 3:511, 516.
19Wood, Black Majority, p. 142, also found that the work of the SPGFP in baptizing blacks had only very limited rewards due to the difficulty of the preparation required for Anglican baptism. Early efforts to spread Protestant Christianity among South Carolina negroes had a negligible impact, whereas other sects, notably Catholic, "readily christened any Negro who came before them."
20Frank Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism in Colonial New York (Philadelphia: The Church Historical Society, Publication no. 11, 1940), pp. 122, 170, 187.
21Ibid., p. 126. Neau's estimate of the black population of New York City was quite accurate. According to the 1703 New York City census there were eight hundred blacks in the city. "N.Y.C., 1703," Doc. Hist., 1:395‑405.
22Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, p. 131.
23Ibid., pp. 155‑57.
24Ibid., p. 167.
25Owner opposition eased somewhat in the 1740s. In 1740 Rev. Richard Charlton at New York City noted an improved master attitude toward his activities due to public and private exhortations. Rev. Samuel Auchmuty at New York City wrote in 1750 that "masters of the slaves in this place have also become more desirous than they used to be, to have their servants baptized. . . ." Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, pp. 143, 147.
26The idea that only heathens could be enslaved made whites fear the Christianization of their slaves. An early attempt to resolve this issue occurred on March 30, 1688 when Gov. Thomas Dongan ordered the attorney general to draw up an "Act for all negroes and other servants within ye government to be instructed and bread on ye Christian Faith," with a clause that "ye property of ye owners of such servants be no wise altered thereby." Shea, "New York Negro Plot of 1741," p. 765.
27Lincoln, Johnson, and Northrup, eds., Colonial Laws of New York, 1:597‑98. This bill was supported by various ministers including Elias Neau and William Vesey. They urged the legislation in order to prevent the withdrawal of their negro catechumens by whites who feared that baptism would deprive them of their slave property. Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, p. 127. See William Kemp, The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Contributions to Education, Teacher's College, No. 56 (New York: Teacher's College, Columbia University, 1913), p. 239.
28Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, pp. 25‑26.
29"Reverend John Sharpe's Proposals for Erecting a School, Library, and Chapel at New York, 1712‑1713," Collections of the New-York Historical Society 13 (1880):353.
30Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, p. 130.
31Ibid., pp. 127, 132.
32Ibid., p. 135.
33Ibid., p. 176.
34This estimate is based on the number of black baptisms listed in missionary reports to the SPGFP excerpted in Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, pp. 120‑86. The legal status of blacks who received baptism was usually not mentioned, but since almost all blacks were slaves during this period it is likely that most of the baptized blacks were slaves rather than freedmen. There were 7 men, 11 women, 833 children, and 556 persons of unknown age and sex baptized during this period.
35This estimate is based on the number of black catechumens listed in missionary reports to the SPGFP in Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, pp. 120‑86. Some students in this group may have been double‑counted if they reappeared in successive years or reports. Some who were later baptized were counted in with that group separately. Catechumens who received religious instruction included 127 men, 145 women, 50 children, and 852 persons whose age and sex were not specified. Only eight pupils were listed as being free.
36Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, p. 155; James G. Lydon, "New York and the Slave Trade, 1700 to 1774," William and Mary Quarterly, 35, no. 2 (April 1978):384; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 123. See Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade,3:462‑510 on the Caribbean islands from which slaves were shipped to New York.
37Lydon, "New York Slave Trade," p. 376; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 125; Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 1:93‑95; 3:406, 438‑44.
38Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:438‑39 (this incident probably took place in 1684), 442‑44 (this incident probably took place in 1698); Edmund B. O'Callaghan, ed., Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany, New York, 1664-1776: English Manuscripts (Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1866), p. 158; Thomas J. Scharf, History of WestchesterCounty, New York, Including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: L.E. Preston & Co., 1886), 1:30.
39At least fifty blacks were transported out of the colony in the aftermath of the 1741 slave plot. Of the others, 176 went to southern plantations, and the rest to the West Indies and Madeira. Known exports amounted to about 6 percent of known imports‑‑268 out of 4,398 blacks in the 1715 to 1764 period. Lydon, "New York Slave Trade," p.387.
40See Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:444, table 351 and n. 2 on the proportion of Africans imported 1701 to 1717 and on customs duties.
41Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 150.
42Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, pp. 56‑57.
43Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 185‑88.
44Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 1:398; Pope-Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, pp. 58‑59; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 161‑62; Collections of the New‑York Historical Society, Diary of William Dunlap, 1766‑1839, 3 vols. (New York: Printed for the Society, 1929‑1931), 1:190‑91 (hereafter cited as Coll. NYHS, Diary of William Dunlap); Kenneth Scott, "The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712," New-York Historical Society Quarterly 45 (1961):46‑47.
45Chaplain Roswell Randall Hoes, "The Negro Plot of 1712," NYGBR 21 (1890):162. 1715 to 1764 period. Lydon, "New York Slave Trade," p.387.
46Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, p. 139.
47Ibid., p. 141.
48Scott,"Slave Insurrection in New York," p. 57, notes that at the trial of one of the conspirators, "a Negro boy was allowed to act as interpreter for one or more of the more of the accused slaves who had not yet learned English." See pp. 62‑67 for a list of the names of the slaves who were accused of participating in the 1712 uprising.
49See p. below on another New York slave who practiced obeah.
50Lydon, "New York Slave Trade," p. 382.
51Ibid., pp. 387‑88.
52Collections of the New‑York Historical Society, Letter Book of John Watts, 1762‑1765, vol. 61 (New York: Printed for the Society, 1928), p. 32 (hereafter cited as Coll. NYHS, Letter Book of John Watts). Also see Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:457.
53Lydon, "New York Slave Trade," pp. 381‑82, 387.
54Pope‑Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, pp. 152‑55.
55McManus, Negro Slavery, pp. 28‑30.
56Ann Hartell, "Slavery on Long Island," The Nassau County Historical Journal, 6, no. 2 (Fall 1943): 56.
57McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 30. Slave importations into New York were made illegal on February 22, 1788.
58Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 150.
59Ibid., pp. 185, 188.
60See pp. ‑ below on this sample of runaway slaves.
61The African spoke no English or Dutch "or any other language but that of his own country" and was "lately imported from Africa." Runaway Slave Ad, New York Mercury, 6 November 1752.
62This interchange of slave personnel between Dutch and English communities is illustrated in Runaway Slave Ad, New York Mercury, 30 November 1772. Owner Caleb Morgan reported that his twenty-five-year-old runaway slave Sambo "talks good English and some Dutch--was brought up among the Dutch."
63Runaway Slave Ad, New York Evening Post 5 September 1748, in Richard Webber, "Some Old Westchester News Items and Advertisements," Quarterly Bulletin of the Westchester County Historical Society, 3, no. 3 (July 1927): 10; Runaway Slave Ad, New York Mercury, 12 November 1781; Runaway Slave Ad, Frothingham's Long Island Herald, 31 May 1797. Pope-Hennessy, Sins of the Fathers, p. 59 mentions the "tribal and status‑symbol cuts [commonly] incised facially in childhood" among Gold Coast tribes. African slaves in New York often bore these markings.
64Augustus Griffin Diaries, 1792‑1850, 2 vols., August 12, 1799 entry, vol. 1, pp. 124‑26, LIHS.
65Several native Africans and African practices are mentioned in this study. See Venture Smith (p. ), Sojourner Truth's mother (p. ), Jack Conklin (p. ), Belinda (p. ), King Charlie (p. ), Schuyler estate (p. n. ), Cato (p. ), Obium (p. ), Owah/Tom Gall and Obed (pp. ‑ ). See pp. ‑ below on breastfeeding and pp. ‑ below on the naming of children.
66See app. 1 for a listing of the relevant 1698, 1706, and 1755 census sources. 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules, New York City (Ward 6, p. 828); 1810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules, New York City (Wards 6 and 7, pp. 149a, 176a); 1820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules, Suffolk County (p. 169a); Westchester County (p. 227); Queens County (p. 255).
67William A. Robbins, "The Salmon Records," NYGBR 48 (1917): 277. This black could be the same Yarranbey whose daughter was baptized on October 20, 1758 and who was baptized himself (Yarranboe) in 1764 at the Presbyterian Church of Mattituck-Aquebogue. R. Vosburgh, ed., Christ Protestant Episcopal Church, New York City (n.p., 1919), NYGBS; "Records of the Church of East Hampton," in Joseph Osborne, comp., Records of the Town of Easthampton, Long Island, 5 vols. (Sag Harbor, N.Y.: John H. Hunt, Printer, 1887‑1905), vol. 5; Records of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn, N.Y., formerly known as the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, NYGBS.
68Daniel Horsmanden, The New York Conspiracy or a History of the Negro Plot, with the Journal of the Proceedings against the Conspirators at New York in the Years 1741‑1742 (New York: Southwick and Pelsue, 1810; reprint ed., Thomas J. Davis, ed., Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).
69Ralph G. Duvall, The History of Shelter Island from Its Settlement in 1652 to the Present Time, 1932 (Shelter Island Heights, N.Y.: By the Author, 1932), p. 89.
70Richard [Conrency], Certificate of Freedom, December 14, 1812, Indentures of Apprenticeship, NYHS.
71Jacqueline Bernard, Journey Toward Freedom: The Story of Soujourner Truth (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1967), pp. 42‑44; Gabriel Furman, Antiquities of Long Island, and Notes Geographical and Historical Relating to the Town of Brooklyn in Kings County on Long Island, To Which is Added a Bibliography by Henry Onderdonk, ed. Frank Moore (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1875), pp. 265‑69.
72In the town of Brooklyn 33.7 percent of households held slaves, 36.2 percent in Bushwick, 51.4 percent in Flatlands, 32.4 percent in Gravesend, 48.5 percent in Flatbush, and 46.3 percent in New Utrecht. Large proportions of the white population continued to use slave labor in New Utrecht: 50 percent in 1716 and 47.4 percent in 1717. The need for farm labor was great in Kings County, for in addition to the 295 slaves in the county in 1698 there were also 48 apprentices.
73"Flushing, 1675," Doc. Hist., 2:263‑64; "Flatlands, 1683," Doc. Hist., 2:288‑89; Southold, 1686, L.I.H.S.; N.U., Bergen Papers, St. Francis; "Kings Co., 1698," Doc. Hist., 3:87‑89; Miller, "Census of Westchester, Eastchester, Fordham and Bedford, 1698"; Randolph, "Census of 1698, Mamaroneck, Morrisania, and New Rochelle"; Gardner, "Census of Newtown"; "Flushing, 1698," Doc. Hist., 1:432‑37.
74In Kings County in 1731 180 out of 306 households held slaves. High proportions of households owned slaves in all of its towns: Gravesend (41.4 percent), New Utrecht (55.9 percent), Flatlands (55.9 percent), Flatbush (57.9 percent), Bushwick (61 percent), and Brooklyn (66.3 percent).
75This census of Suffolk County excludes the town of Huntington. Proportions of slaveholders in the white population ranged from a low in Southampton (14.4 percent), Easthampton (14.6 percent), Shelter Island (18.5 percent), Brookhaven (19.6 percent), Southold (21.8 percent), Islip (26.9 percent), Manor of St. George and Patent of Meritches (30.4 percent) to a high in Smithtown (41.5 percent).
76"N.Y.C., 1703," Doc. Hist., 1:395‑405; "Kings Co., 1731," Doc. Hist., 4:122‑31; "New Rochelle, 1771," NYGBR 107 (1976):196‑98; Mallmann, Historical Papers; "Suffolk, 1776," Force, ed., American Archives, 4:1236‑52.
77The proportion of Kings County white households that held slaves in 1790 ranged from 47.2 percent of households in Brooklyn to 75.9 percent of households in New Utrecht.
78Occupations of owners were compiled from Scott, "Slave Insurrection in New York," pp. 43‑74 (the professions of twenty‑nine of the owners whose slaves were accused in the 1712 New York City uprising were listed); New York City Birth Certificates of Slaves, microfilm reel 49, NYHS (professions were listed for 170 of the owners who registered the birth of children to their slave women between 1799 and 1827); Harry Yoshpe, "Record of Slave Manumissions in New York During the Colonial and Early National Periods: A. Abstract of Instruments of Manumission on Record in the Office of the Register, New York County; B. Abstract of Instruments of Manumission among the Papers of the Manumission Society, New York City," Journal of Negro History, 26, no. 1 (January 1941):78‑107 (professions were listed for 159 slaveowners in Yoshpe's compilation and in other scattered manumission documents). Figures for Brooklyn were taken from manumissions listed in Brooklyn Town Meeting Minutes, 1785‑1823, Book no. 500, St. Francis. Printed with minor errors in Kenneth Scott, "Manumissions in Kings County, New York, 1797‑1825," National Genealogical Society Quarterly, 65, no. 2 (June 1977):177-80, and in Henry McCloskey, "Slavery on Long Island," Manual of the Common Council of the City of Brooklyn (1864), pp. 157‑65.
79A large proportion of New England's slaves worked on small farms where they raised food products, forage crops, and livestock and made dairy products. Greene, Negro in Colonial New England, pp. 103, 321.
80Carl Nordstrom, "Slavery in a New York County: Rockland 1686‑1827," Afro Americans in New York Life and History, 1, no. 2 (July 1977):155.
81Jean Peyer, "Jamaica, New York, 1656‑1776: Class Structure and Social Mobility," Journal of Long Island History, 14, no. 1 (Fall 1977):34‑47; Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke's Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society 1664-1691 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p.131.
82Nordstrom, "Slavery in Rockland, 1686‑1827," p. 155.
83Peyer, "Jamaica, New York, 1656‑1776," p. 36.
84"Flushing, 1675," Doc. Hist., 2:263‑64.
85"Flatlands, 1683," Doc. Hist., 2:288‑89.
86Blank, "Census of 1781"; Darlington, "Census of 1781," 2:328‑29.
87"Gravesend, 1788," Gravesend Records, St. Francis. See app. 3 for a list of households arranged according to the number of acres held with the corresponding number of slaves. The number of taxable acres listed may only be the number of acres a man had under cultivation, not his entire holding in land. The real number of slaves in Gravesend could have been higher if only prime adults were listed as taxable property in 1788. The 1788 list included 65 slaves whereas according to the 1790 federal census, Gravesend had 135 slaves. The seventy slaves not listed in 1788 may have been black children and the elderly who were not considered to be taxable property.
88Alice P. Kenney, Stubborn for Liberty: the Dutch in New York (Syracuse, N.Y.:Syracuse University Press, 1975), pp. 91‑95. On the Manor of Queens Village the Lloyd family's slaves and tenants raised wheat, rye, corn, vegetables, fruits, cattle, sheep, swine, and horses using the best contemporary agricultural methods. Collections of the New‑York Historical Society, Papers of the Lloyd Family of the Manor of Queens Village, Lloyd's Neck, Long Island, New York, 1654-1826, 2 vols. (New York: J.J. Little & Ives Co. for the New-York Historical Society, 1926‑1927), 1, introduction, p.xi. (hereafter cited as Coll. NYHS, Papers of the Lloyd Family).
89Ann Grant, Memoirs of An American Lady, 2 vols. (London: n.p., 1808; reprint ed., New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1901), 1:302‑11.
90Howard S. Russell, A Long, Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976), p. 314.
91Ibid., pp. 44, 94, 96, 99, 122, 145, 151, 153‑54, 161, 193, 195, 220, 294.
92Journal of John Baxter of Flatlands, Long Island, 1790‑1826, 3 vols.,LIHS. Long Island artist William Sidney Mount painted a picture in 1845 entitled Eel Spearing at Setauket, based on an old black named Hector who had shown Mount how to fish. Alfred Frankenstein, Painter of Rural America: William Sidney Mount, 1807-1868 (Stony Brook, N.Y.: Suffolk Museum at Stony Brook, 1968).
93Henry Onderdonk, "Farming in Olden Times in Queens County," Journal of Long Island History 5 (1965):1‑17.
94Bernard, Journey Toward Freedom, pp.26, 48, 58.
95For examples of hiring out, see Coll. NYHS, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 1:105, 258, 261‑62, 270‑71, 282‑83.
96Out of 2,526 slaves disposed of in regular wills, and 1,109 slaves disposed of in miscellaneous wills where data was less complete, only ten slaves where ordered to be hired out by testators. The widows or estate executors generally took such actions themselves in order to best utilize inherited slave property.
97Richard B. Morris, Select Cases of the Mayor's Court of New York City, 1674-1784 (Washington, D.C.: The American Historical Association, 1935), p. 237. This hire resulted in a court case heard on May 22, 1705 (Aletta Douw v. Simeon Soumain). Soumain failed to pay Douw 11.7.0 of the sum agreed upon.
98Ann McLeod registered the birth of children to Isabel in 1813 and 1815. Flatbush Slave Records 1799‑1819: Births and Manumissions of Slaves 1799‑1819, vol. 107, pp. 275, 282, St. Francis.
99Bill of Sale, Ann Wharton to Lt. John Lawrance, April 1696, in Josephine Frost, ed., Records of the Town of Jamaica, Long Island 1656-1751, 3 vols. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lyons Genealogical Co. for the Long Island Historical Society, 1914), 2: 177.
100Ken Stryker-Rodda, "Genealogical Gleanings from Account Books of Elias Pelletreau of Southampton, Long Island," Journal of Long Island History, 5, nos. 1 and 2 (1965):27‑47, 28‑46.
101Journal of John Baxter of Flatlands, Long Island, 1790‑1826, LIHS.
102Figures for the white population from 1712 to 1786 indicate that an average of 47.6 percent of males were in the prime sixteen to sixty age group compared to 50.6 percent of black males. For the 1800 to 1820 period an average of 42.7 percent of whites were in the prime sixteen to forty‑five age group compared to 52.4 percent of blacks (aged fourteen to forty‑five years). Whites had lower proportions of prime labor in their population than blacks because they had a larger proportion of children in their population. The age structure of the New York white population (proportions of children, prime adults, and elderly) is displayed in app. 4.
103Slaves in Westchester County, "An Account of the Negroes above fourteen years of Age belonging to Lewis Morris, at Morrisania," in O'Callaghan, ed., Documentary History New York State, 3:510. See p. n. for the method of estimating Morrisania's child slave population.
104The original owner of the manor lands, Colonel Lewis Morris, had what was probably a young, productive work-force of sixty-six slaves (thirty‑three adults and thirty‑three children or teenagers) at the time of his death in 1691. Having only come to New York in the 1670s, it is likely that in 1691 most of his slaves had been recently purchased in their youth. His nephew Lewis Morris inherited the estate and sixty of the slaves; he consolidated the properties into the Manor of Morrisania in 1697 with this theoretically young, healthy slave labor force (half of which were children). When he died in 1746 at age seventy‑five his slaveholding had become middle‑aged, composed of the remnants of his inherited sixty slaves and any additional purchases he had made during his stewardship of the manor. His son Lewis Morris, lord of the manor in 1755, had to support eight slaves in old age which had belonged initially to either his father (see his mother Isabella Morris's 1746 will, p. below) or to their ancestor Lewis Morris in 1691. The passing down of Morris family slaves from one heir to the next meant that by the third generation a number of long‑held slaves had accumulated who needed to be maintained during old age. Estate Inventory and Will of Colonel Lewis Morris, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 1:196, 182; Frederic Shonnard and W. W. Spooner, History of Westchester County, 2 vols. (New York: The New York History Company, 1900), 1:153.
105Estate Inventory of Abraham Depeyster, New York City, January 25‑26, 1768, New York Public Library.
106Kenneth Scott and James Owre, Genealogical Data from Inventories of New York Estates, 1666‑1825 (New York: New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1970).

Chapter Four

2007-08-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 4
DEMOGRAPHY AND THE SLAVE FAMILY
A little time in the dusk of evening after hard labor all day, was the whole time allowed them for learning and for relaxation, and to visit their wives and children, which were generally in other families, not in their masters'.
David Humphreys (1730)
Five demographic factors--small total population size, low population density, unbalanced sex ratios, small slaveholdings, and random distribution into slaveholdings shaped slave family life in New York. The economic requirements of a slave labor supply system dictated the size, composition, and distribution of the black population in New York rather than biology or human nature. The total number of blacks brought into New York was small compared to the numbers imported into the southern colonies. New York blacks were therefore scattered at low density throughout the southern six counties of New York. White preference for male slave laborers meant that black sex ratios would be unbalanced due to the selective importation of boys and men. Because of the limited labor needs of small New York slaveholders most blacks lived with only one or two other slaves. Slaves were randomly sold and distributed among white households according to the number, sex, age, and price preferences of owners rather than according to the desires of black family members to live together. These factors made black family formation difficult, hindered black social and community life, and destroyed the ability of New York slaves to live in family groups.
Compared to the massive numbers of slaves imported into the South to fuel the large‑scale agricultural economy, only small numbers of blacks reached the family farms of New York.1 In towns where only very small numbers of blacks were located, such as Easthampton in 1687, family formation was hampered by the small number of available mates. Easthampton had a population of 502 persons: 223 white males, 219 white females, 35 male and female servants, and only 11 black males and 14 black females.2 In 1698 there were only 1,972 blacks in the southern six counties of New York. By 1820 slave importations and natural reproduction had increased the number of blacks in the same area to 20,138.3 This black population was not clustered together in large plantation districts as was the black population in the South; it was spread out over a broad geographical area.
The density of the black population partly determined the chances for marriage and family life. The concentration of blacks in a particular area provided a given number of other blacks who were available for family formation and social contact. As table 1 shows, between 1698 and 1820 blacks formed anywhere from 9.2 to 16.2 percent of the population in the combined southern six counties of New York. Although blacks constituted a substantial minority of the population in some New York counties at certain periods, their numbers never approached the density which fostered family development and the maintenance of extended kinship networks in the big plantation areas of the American South.4
By the end of the seventeenth century the black population formed a modest proportion of the total population in each of the small towns in the southern six counties of New York. Black population density varied greatly from town to town. In Kings County in 1698 Gravesend was 8.1 percent black while New Utrecht was 19.2 percent black. Westchester County in 1712 was 11.8 percent black: its component towns included Eastchester at 8.3 percent, and New Rochelle at 18.1 percent black. Morrisania was 74.2 percent black, with sixteen whites and forty‑six blacks, all of whom were on the holding of Lewis Morris. In 1731, the towns in Kings County ranged from 10.9 percent black in Gravesend to 31.2 percent black in adjacent New Utrecht. Suffolk County's 1776 census revealed that only 4.3 percent of Southampton was black, while 22.4 percent of Smithtown's population was black.

In 1790, 13.3 percent of the population in the southern six counties of New York was black. In thirty‑seven of the towns blacks formed from 0.7 percent (Poundridge) to 19.6 percent (Pelham) of the population. The fourteen towns of Shelter Island, Morrisania, Westchester, North Hempstead, Westfield, Smithtown, Newtown, Brooklyn, Harlem Ward, Flushing, Southfield, Flatlands, Bushwick, and Gravesend (in order of proportions) had populations ranging from 23.4 to 32.9 percent black. The greatest black population density occurred in the Kings County towns of New Utrecht and Flatbush, where blacks respectively formed 38.4 and 41.4 percent of the population. After 1790, the proportion of blacks in the population declined in all counties, reflecting the end of slave importations and rising white immigration after the American Revolution.
Dutch‑owned slaves lived in areas of denser black population concentration than English‑owned slaves, with perhaps more chances for family contact and community life than in areas where blacks were sparse. In heavily Dutch Kings County from 1749 (34.3 percent) consistently through 1800 (31.9 percent), approximately a third of the population was black. In other counties, the density range of the black population for the same period was much lower: Suffolk, from 7.7 to 13.7 percent black, Westchester, from 6.1 to 15.8 percent black, New York from 9.6 to 17.8 percent black, Queens from 16.7 to 20.4 percent black, and Richmond, from 16.6 to 23 percent black. The Dutch‑settled Harlem Division in 1790 had the highest proportion of blacks in its population of all the New York City wards at 28.7 percent, while the total citywide proportion was only 10.5 percent black.
The difficulty of finding mates and companions among a small, widely scattered captive population was compounded by uneven adult sex ratios. Slavetraders selectively shipped African males into the colony to meet the white demand for young male workers. This resulted in high sex ratios (an excess of males over females) from 1703 to 1771 with a reversal in trend toward a small male population deficit once importations stopped after the Revolution. Opportunities to find mates were restricted for the excess men in each town and county, and for the great surplus of females which developed in New York City after the 1770s.5
The black population problems of small absolute size, thin concentration of people, and unequal numbers of men and women were caused by the involuntary removal of African nationals from their various homelands and their relocation to New York. Even more devastating to family life was the parcelling out of this population into very small slaveholdings which could not accommodate entire families and which isolated slaves from other blacks in the area.
Most New York slaves lived in units of from one to five slaves which severely restricted their opportunities to reside with black family members. Family life under one roof was not possible for individual slaves who lived in white households which contained only one black person. Slaves in holdings which contained two blacks also had slim chances for family life; the other slave was likely to be an unrelated worker rather than a parent, spouse, sibling, or child. For slaves in units of three slaves, kin‑linked family life may have been possible, depending on the composition of the master's holding. Where a small nuclear family did exist at this size level, the likelihood was great that one or more children had been or would be sold off. Holdings of four or five slaves were probably the minimum borderline sizes for even partially completed family groups to live together under slavery. Enough room existed for two parents and some of their children to live together, although not all of the five members would necessarily be related. Slaves held in units of six or more slaves had the best chance to live with other family members. Most of the slaveholdings in New York, however, were too small in size for completed or even fragmented nuclear families to live and remain together under slavery.
Where both the number of slaves and the number of individual households were enumerated, census data revealed the very small average size of slaveholdings in the southern six counties of New York. Required as agricultural help on small family farms, as laborers and skilled artisans in trades and shops, and as domestic servants, slaves were only needed in small numbers by the white families who owned them. In Flushing in 1675, Flatlands in 1683, Southold in 1686, and New Utrecht in 1693, slaveowners held an average of 1.9, 1.2, 2.3, and 1.1 slaves respectively.6 In Kings County in 1698 the average holding for 129 white slaveowning households was 2.3 slaves, ranging from 1.5 in Gravesend to a high of 3.1 slaves in Bushwick.7 The towns of Newtown, Flushing, Mamaroneck, Fordham, and New Rochelle in 1698 displayed similar slaveholding patterns‑‑owners held an average of from one to 3.1 slaves.8 There were an average of 2.4 slaves per master in New York City in 1703.9 In heavily slaveholding New Utrecht, where approximately 50 percent of the white households owned slaves, the holdings were small: 1.8 slaves in 1716, 1.9 slaves in 1717, 2.1 slaves in 1718, and 2.0 slaves in 1734/5.10 By 1731, the average size of the slaveholdings in Kings County had increased only slightly, from 2.3 slaves in 1698 to 2.8 slaves.11
The 1755 census was taken for military reasons and counted only white slaveholders and slaves over the age of fourteen.12 It polled every town in Kings County, delivered only partial returns for Westchester, Queens, Richmond, and Suffolk counties,13 and omitted completely New York City. Traditional analyses of this census14 found 2,435 slaves colonywide over the age of fourteen: 1,371 males and 1,064 females held by 1,113 individual households. A pyramid of ownership was formed by a broad base of 1,032 households which contained from one to five slaves, 72 households with from five to nine slaves, and six households which owned ten slaves each (Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, David Jones in Oysterbay, Rutgert Van Brunt, Jr. in New Utrecht, Isaac Willitt of Westchester, and Martin Hoffman in Dutchess County). Peter Delancey of Westchester held twelve slaves, and Lewis Morris of Morrisania formed the apex of the structure with twenty‑nine adult slaves. This model demonstrated the widespread holding of small numbers of slaves, averaging 2.2 slaves per household.15 As table 2 shows, based on a revised model of the 1755 slave census,16 combining known adult slaves and estimating the number of children also held, the average number of slaves owned by 793 masters in twenty‑one towns in the southern six counties of New York is raised from 2.1 (adults only) to an average of four slaves‑‑a difference of an additional 1.9 children per owner.17
The average size of New York slaveholdings continued to be modest during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, at 3.1 slaves per owner in New Rochelle in 1771, and 2.7 slaves per household for eight towns in Suffolk County in 1776.18 The average size of slaveholdings in Brooklyn in 1783 was 2.6 slaves, and 2.7 slaves in New Utrecht in 1786.19 In 1790, on the eve of massive voluntary manumission and gradual emancipation of all slaves, average holdings were small in all counties. Slavery in New York remained broadly based, with a large number of very small holders. In New York State in 1790, 21,193 slaves were
owned by 7,796 households, averaging 2.7 slaves per holder. At the base of the broad ownership pyramid, 3,088 households held one slave, 2,867 households held from two to four slaves, 1,165 households owned from five to nine slaves, and 181 households held from ten to nineteen slaves. At the summit, Robert Livingston's household in Columbia County held forty‑four slaves. The size of the holding for another 494 households is unknown.20
The average slaveholder in the southern six counties of New York owned 2.7 slaves in 1790. As table 3 shows, holdings were generally largest in Kings and Richmond counties and smallest in New York and Suffolk counties. Voluntary manumission slowly reduced the size of slaveholdings between 1790 and 1820. The average number of slaves held per household fell sharply in Kings, New York, Queens, and Westchester counties, only moderately in Richmond County, and remained the same in Suffolk County. The average slaveholding in the combined southern six counties of New York lost half a slave other these thirty years.
Slaves held by the Dutch lived in larger units, with a larger number of other slaves, than did blacks owned by the English or other ethnic groups. The average holding in Dutch‑dominated Kings County between 1790 and 1820 was larger than in any of the other counties. While the average slaveholding in New York City in 1790 contained 2.1 slaves, the average slaveholding in the Dutch‑populated Harlem Ward
of New York City contained 3.8 slaves. Although the average Queens County slaveholding contained three slaves in 1790, the heavy Dutch population in the Queens County town of Newtown raised its average slaveholding size to 3.8 slaves. Black family life, while still dependent on the vicissitudes of chance ownership together under one roof, was more of a possibility in a holding of 4.6 slaves than in areas where the average holding was 2.1 persons.
Both the small average size of New York slaveholdings and the shrinkage in size after 1790 that was revealed in census data are confirmed by the small average size of slaveholdings found in wills and estate inventories over successive time periods in the southern six counties of New York:
1669‑ 1721‑ 1771‑ 1791‑ 1801‑
1720 1770 1790 1800 1829

wills 1.8 2.4 2.4 2.3 2.0

inventories 3.0 3.1 2.9 2.3 ...

miscellaneous
wills 3.9 3.5 2.9 2.7 2.1

miscellaneous
inventories 3.7 ... 5.4 ... ...

NOTE: Miscellaneous wills and inventories contained unknown variables as to the number, sex, or age of slaves listed Where plural blacks were mentioned ("my negroes," "some negroes"), they were counted as two slaves, although the real total could have been higher. The miscellaneous group of wills and inventories contained a larger average number of slaves. See below for the will and estate inventory sample.
Census data displayed in table 4 indicate that as owners voluntarily freed their slaves between 1785 and 1827 the proportion of masters who held either one or two slaves increased while the proportion of masters who held three or more slaves decreased. The proportion of slaveholders who owned only one or two slaves rose from 61.6 percent in 1790 to 66.7 percent in 1800, to 75 percent in 1810, and then fell slightly to 73.5 percent in 1820.21 The sharpest increase between 1790 and 1820 came in the proportion of owners who held only a single slave. Data on the patterns within each county reveal that the proportion of slaveholders who owned either one or two slaves was highest in New York, Suffolk, and Westchester counties and lowest in Kings and Richmond counties, where average holdings were larger.22
Census data displayed in table 5 also indicate that as the size of the average slaveholding decreased between 1790 and 1820 and as larger proportions of slaveowners held only one or two slaves, larger proportions of slaves lived in the smaller‑sized holdings which either totally precluded or reduced the chances for resident family life. The proportion of slaves who lived in single‑slave or two‑slave households rose while the proportion of slaves who lived in households with three or more slaves declined from 1790 to 1820. As slaves became more concentrated in the smaller
TABLE 4

SIZE AND PERCENT DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVEHOLDINGS,
SOUTHERN SIX COUNTIES COMBINED, 1790 TO 1820

Size of Slaveholdings (Number of Slaves Held)

12 and
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Over

1790

Number of Slaveholdings
This Size 1,530 617 421 310 217 129 88 59 39 27 18 28

Percent Distribution
of Slaveholding Sizes 43.9 17.7 12.1 8.9 6.2 3.7 2.5 1.7 1.1 0.8 0.5 0.8

1800

Number of Slaveholdings
This Size 1,669 687 423 259 172 119 80 46 31 23 5 20

Percent Distribution
of Slaveholding Sizes 47.2 19.4 12.0 7.3 4.9 3.4 2.3 1.3 0.9 0.7 0.1 0.6

1810

Number of Slaveholdings
This Size 1,397 591 297 168 97 49 18 12 9 5 5 4

Percent Distribution
of Slaveholding Sizes 52.7 22.3 11.2 6.3 3.7 1.8 0.7 0.5 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.1

1820

Number of Slaveholdings
This Size 762 255 125 95 50 41 24 18 2 2 5 5

Percent Distribution
of Slaveholding Sizes 55.1 18.4 9.0 6.9 3.6 3.0 1.7 1.3 0.1 0.1 0.4 0.4

SOURCES: Compiled from data in Bureau of Census, Heads of Families, 1790; 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1800 Census, Printed Population Schedules, NYGBR; 1810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules.
NOTE: Each of the white slaveholdings (3,483 in 1790, 3,534 in 1800, 2,652 in 1810, and 1,384 in 1820) which appeared in these four federal censuses was grouped according to the number of slaves owned in each unit. For detailed figures for each individual county, see app. 5. Owners who held only slaves and masters who employed both slaves and resident free blacks (only the slaves were counted to determine the size of the slaveholding) are both included.

TABLE 5

NUMBER OF SLAVES LIVING IN VARIOUS SLAVEHOLDING
SIZES, BY COUNTY, 1790 TO 1820

Total Number of Slaves in this Size Slaveholding
Numberof 12 &
County Slaves 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Over

1790

Kings 1,475 61 80 126 152 165 120 182 176 90 100 77 146
New York 2,372 554 480 462 336 165 162 63 64 27 10 ... 49
Richmond 755 81 80 75 124 120 72 91 8 72 20 ... 12
Suffolk 1,102 270 160 144 164 110 96 49 24 9 30 ... 46
Queens 2,311 314 246 273 296 320 216 189 136 108 50 77 86
Westchester 1,418 250 188 186 168 205 108 42 64 45 60 44 58

Total 9,433 1,530 1,234 1,266 1,240 1,085 774 616 472 351 270 198 397

1800

Kings 1,519 104 132 153 176 170 180 189 128 81 60 11 135
New York 2,822 812 690 483 340 215 72 63 72 9 40 ... 26
Richmond 675 87 64 114 100 95 84 42 40 36 ... ... 13
Suffolk 890 229 148 126 88 85 42 42 32 36 20 ... 42
Queens 1,547 201 208 222 156 175 198 140 64 63 50 33 37
Westchester 1,227 236 132 171 176 120 138 84 32 54 60 11 13

Total 8,680 1,669 1,374 1,269 1,036 860 714 560 368 279 230 55 266

1810

Kings 1,118 109 162 180 164 175 102 56 64 54 30 22 ...
New York 1,654 728 418 255 112 70 30 21 ... 9 ... 11 ...
Richmond 437 84 102 105 92 30 24 ... ... ... ... ... ...
Suffolk 412 131 108 57 36 25 24 ... 8 ... 10 ... 13
Queens 791 150 182 147 152 100 36 14 ... ... 10 ... ...
Westchester 973 195 210 147 116 85 78 35 24 18 ... 22 43

Total 5,385 1,397 1,182 891 672 485 294 126 96 81 50 55 56

1820

Kings 879 101 108 114 116 75 114 91 80 ... 10 33 37
New York 498 287 100 39 44 10 18 ... ... ... ... ... ...
Richmond 532 61 78 63 96 80 60 42 32 9 ... 11 ...
Suffolk 322 74 68 42 48 15 18 21 8 ... ... ... 28
Queens 557 147 106 90 68 55 30 7 24 9 10 11 ...
Westchester 205 92 50 27 8 15 6 7 ... ... ... ... ...

Total 2,993 762 510 375 380 250 246 168 144 18 20 55 65

TABLE 5‑‑Continued

PERCENT DISTRIBUTION OF SLAVES LIVING IN VARIOUS
SLAVEHOLDING SIZES, 1790 TO 1820

Proportion of Slaves in This Size Slaveholding
12 &
County 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Over

1790

Kings 4.1 5.4 8.5 10.3 11.2 8.1 12.3 11.9 6.1 6.8 5.2 9.9
New York 23.3 20.2 19.5 14.2 7.0 6.8 2.7 2.7 1.1 0.4 ... 2.1
Richmond 10.7 10.6 9.9 16.4 15.9 9.5 12.1 1.1 9.5 2.6 ... 1.6
Suffolk 24.5 14.5 13.1 14.9 10.0 8.7 4.4 2.2 0.8 2.7 ... 4.2
Queens 13.6 10.6 11.8 12.8 13.8 9.3 8.2 5.9 4.7 2.2 3.3 3.7
Westchester 17.6 13.3 13.1 11.8 14.5 7.6 3.0 4.5 3.2 4.2 3.1 4.1

Total 16.2 13.1 13.4 13.1 11.5 8.2 6.5 5.0 3.7 2.9 2.1 4.2

1800

Kings 6.8 8.7 10.1 11.6 11.2 11.8 12.4 8.4 5.3 3.9 0.7 8.9
New York 28.8 24.4 17.1 12.1 7.6 2.6 2.2 2.6 0.3 1.4 ... 0.9
Richmond 12.9 9.5 16.9 14.8 14.1 12.4 6.2 5.9 5.3 ... ... 1.9
Suffolk 25.9 16.6 14.2 9.9 9.6 4.7 4.7 3.6 4.0 2.2 ... 4.7
Queens 13.0 13.4 14.4 10.1 11.3 12.8 9.0 4.1 4.1 3.2 2.1 2.4
Westchester 19.2 10.8 13.9 14.3 9.8 11.2 6.8 2.6 4.4 4.9 0.9 1.1

Total 19.2 15.8 14.6 11.9 9.9 8.2 6.5 4.2 3.2 2.7 0.6 3.1

1810

Kings 9.7 14.5 16.1 14.7 15.7 9.1 5.0 5.7 4.8 2.7 2.0 ...
New York 44.0 25.3 15.4 6.8 4.2 1.8 1.3 ... 0.5 ... 0.7 ...
Richmond 19.2 23.3 24.0 21.1 6.9 5.5 ... ... ... ... ... ...
Suffolk 31.8 26.2 13.8 8.7 6.1 5.8 ... 1.9 ... 2.4 ... 3.2
Queens 19.0 23.0 18.6 19.2 12.6 4.6 1.8 ... ... 1.3 ... ...
Westchester 20.0 21.6 15.1 11.9 8.7 8.0 3.6 2.5 1.8 ... 2.3 4.4

Total 25.9 21.9 16.6 12.5 9.1 5.5 2.3 1.8 1.5 0.9 1.0 1.0

1820

Kings 11.5 12.3 13.0 13.2 8.5 13.0 10.3 9.1 ... 1.1 3.7 4.2
New York 57.6 20.1 7.8 8.8 2.0 3.6 ... ... ... ... ... ...
Richmond 11.5 14.7 11.8 18.0 15.0 11.3 7.9 6.0 1.7 ... 2.1 ...
Suffolk 23.0 21.1 13.0 14.9 4.7 5.6 6.5 2.5 ... ... ... 8.7
Queens 26.4 19.0 16.2 12.2 9.9 5.4 1.2 4.3 1.6 1.8 2.0 ...
Westchester 44.9 24.4 13.2 3.9 7.3 2.9 3.4 ... ... ... ... ...

Total 25.5 17.1 12.5 12.7 8.3 8.2 5.6 4.8 0.6 0.7 1.8 2.2

SOURCES: All slaves who appeared in white households listed in the 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1820 federal censuses (whether or not free blacks were also included in the households) were grouped according to the number of slaves held in the unit. Bureau of Census, Heads of Families, 1790; 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1800 Census, Printed Population Schedules, NYGBR; 1810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules.
NOTES: Slaves who lived in free black‑headed households (four slaves in 1790, ten in 1800, nine in 1810, and twenty‑one in 1820) and slaves who lived in independent slave‑headed households (twenty‑four in 1800, four in 1810, and one in 1820) are excluded. Slaves who lived in institutions (ten in 1790, thirty‑one in 1800, twenty in 1810) and one New York City slave not individually enumerated in the 1820 census also do not appear in this table.
sized holdings, chances for resident family life worsened.
Between 1790 and 1820 the proportion of slaves who lived in single‑slave households rose from 16.2 percent to 25.5 percent in the combined southern six counties of New York. Resident family life was ruled out for this sector of the slave population. Family life on the master's premises was also improbable for slaves held in two‑slave households. Although in 1790 61.6 percent (66.7 percent in 1800, 75 percent in 1810, and 73.5 percent in 1820) of slaveholdings contained either one or two slaves, data in table 6 shows that a smaller 29.3 percent (35.1 percent in 1800, 47.9 percent in 1810, and 42.5 percent by 1820) of the slaves themselves lived in units which contained one or two slaves. This discrepancy exists because larger holdings accounted proportionately for bigger segments of the slave population. While ten single‑slave holdings accounted for ten slaves, ten five‑slave holdings housed fifty slaves.
Although opportunities to live with a family member improved for slaves who lived in three‑slave households, full nuclear families could not be accommodated and the likelihood was strong that some or all of the resident slaves would be unrelated. A large 42.7 percent of slaves in 1790 (49.7 percent in 1800, 64.4 percent in 1810, and 55 percent in 1820) lived in holdings of three or fewer slaves, making family life problematical. The vast majority of slaves lived in units of five or fewer slaves (67.4 percent in 1790, 71.5 percent in 1800, 85.9 percent in 1810, and 76.1
TABLE 6

PROPORTION OF SLAVES WHO LIVED IN THIS SIZE
SLAVEHOLDING OR SMALLER

Two or Three or Four or Five or Six or
Year Less Slaves Less Slaves Less Slaves Less Slaves More Slaves

KINGS

1790 9.5 18.0 28.3 39.5 60.5
1800 15.5 25.6 37.2 48.4 51.6
1810 24.2 40.3 55.0 70.7 29.3
1820 23.8 36.7 49.9 58.5 41.5

NEW YORK

1790 43.6 63.1 77.2 84.2 15.8
1800 53.2 70.3 82.4 90.0 10.0
1810 69.3 84.7 91.5 95.7 4.3
1820 77.7 85.5 94.4 96.4 3.6

RICHMOND

1790 21.3 31.2 47.6 63.5 36.5
1800 22.4 39.3 54.1 68.2 31.8
1810 42.5 66.5 87.6 94.5 5.5
1820 26.1 38.0 56.0 71.1 28.9

SUFFOLK

1790 39.0 52.1 67.0 77.0 23.0
1800 42.3 56.5 66.4 76.0 24.0
1810 58.0 71.8 80.6 86.6 13.4
1820 44.1 57.1 72.0 76.7 23.3

QUEENS

1790 24.2 36.0 48.8 62.7 37.3
1800 26.4 40.8 50.9 62.2 37.8
1810 42.0 60.6 79.8 92.4 7.6
1820 45.4 61.6 73.8 83.7 16.3

WESTCHESTER

1790 30.9 44.0 55.8 70.3 29.7
1800 30.0 43.9 58.2 68.0 32.0
1810 41.6 56.7 68.6 77.4 22.6
1820 69.3 82.4 86.3 93.7 6.3

SIX COUNTIES COMBINED

1790 29.3 42.7 55.9 67.4 32.6
1800 35.1 49.7 61.6 71.5 28.5
1810 47.9 64.4 76.9 85.9 14.1
1820 42.5 55.0 67.7 76.1 23.9

NOTE: This table is based on the sources and findings in table 5
above.
percent in 1820),23 with from none to only moderate chances to live with other family members. The minority of slaves who lived in holdings which contained six or more slaves (32.6 percent in 1790, 28.5 percent in 1800, 14.1 percent in 1810, and 23.9 percent in 1820) were the most likely to be able to enjoy family life under one roof. Chances for family life were best for slaves in Kings County, where large holdings of six or more slaves were very common, and worst for slaves in New York City, where large holdings were very rare. The small size of New York City slaveholdings is demonstrated by the fact that in 1820 the three largest holdings contained only six slaves each.24
As data in table 7 shows, the number of slaves listed in individual wills and estate inventories25 also indicates that high proportions of slaves lived in holdings which contained three or fewer slaves and that after 1800 slaves increasingly lived in these smallest slaveholdings. Of the 2,451 black slaves listed in 1,078 wills written between 1669 and 1829, 54.5 percent lived in units which contained three or fewer slaves, as did 39.5 percent of the 980 slaves listed in inventories. Estate inventories showed a broader distribution of slaveholding sizes since inventories may have been disproportionately taken only of larger estates with higher numbers of slaves.
A division of this entire 1669 to 1829 group of wills into time periods26 shows a preponderance of holdings which contained only one, two, or three slaves in the early 1669
INSERT TABLE 7 HERE
to 1720 period: 66.5 percent of slaves lived in such units. Holdings then increased in size with a lower 51.2 percent (1721 to 1770), 55.4 percent (1771 to 1790), and 56.2 percent (1791 to 1800) of slaves living in the smallest one, two, or three‑slave units. As voluntary manumissions mushroomed after the 1790s, however, increasing proportions of slaves who were listed in wills lived in holdings which contained three or fewer slaves (68.6 percent of slaves in the 1801 to 1829 period). Only 27.8 percent of slaves listed in wills from 1669 to 1829 lived in holdings of six or more slaves, and 42.2 percent of the slaves listed in inventories; these were the blacks most likely to be able to live with other family members.
Data from both censuses and wills indicate that over half of the enslaved black population lived in units of three or fewer slaves from the late seventeenth century through the early nineteenth century. For this half of the slave population family life under one roof was unlikely. Information from censuses and wills also show that only approximately one quarter of New York slaves lived in holdings which contained six or more slaves; they were the minority of slaves whose possibilities for family cohabitation were the greatest.
From the beginnings of slavery in British New York in 1664 through the abolition of slavery in 1827, large slaveholdings were always rare and were still of modest size compared to southern plantation holdings. Eleven large manors were formed in the late seventeenth century; they formed an ongoing, interlocking directorate of prominent families who intermarried, did business together, and exchanged slave property during the next hundred years.27 The owners of these great manors and estates controlled large numbers of slaves. Lewis Morris of the Manor of Morrisania was the largest slaveowner in the 1698 census with thirty slaves.28
In New York City in 1703 Peter Pieret held fourteen slaves and Derick Ten Eyck held thirteen; they were the largest slaveholders in the city.29 In 1755 the Manor of Morrisania contained twenty‑nine adult slaves; Peter Delancey of Westchester with twelve slaves was the next largest slaveowner. Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, David Jones of Oysterbay, Rutgert Van Brunt, Jr. of New Utrecht, and Isaac Willitt of Westchester shared third place with ten slaves each.30 In the 1776 Suffolk County census Nathaniel Woodhull of Manor of St. George‑-Patent Meritches and Nicoll Havens of Shelter Island were the largest holders with fifteen and fourteen slaves each. Several other families held twelve slaves: Edmund Smith, Jr. of Smithtown, Thomas Tredwell of Smithtown, and both William Floyd and Richard Floyd of Manor of St. George-Patent Meritches.31
The Philipse family on the Manor of Philipsburgh in Westchester County owned very large numbers of slaves by New York standards for over a century. Frederick Philipse, first lord of the manor, came to New York in about 1653 and was employed as a carpenter‑builder by the Dutch West India Company. He prospered, acquired properties, and managed to buy an interest in a plantation in Yonkers in 1672. Philipse slowly gained full control of the estate and expanded its borders; it was granted to him in 1693 as the Manor of Philipsburgh.32 In 1698 "the negers of Mr. fillips Sqier" included twenty slaves , some of whom had been freshly imported from Africa.33 When Frederick Philipse died in 1702 at age seventy‑six he owned well over twenty‑one slaves who were divided between his son Adolphus and his grandson Frederick (Philip's son), who became second lord of the manor. His October 26, 1700, will left Frederick the lower half of Philipsburgh Manor (the Jonckers plantation) with all of its negroes and negro children. Besides these slaves Frederick was to receive negro Harry with his wife and child, a negro man Peter, and a negro man Wan. The will gave Adolphus the upper half of Philipsburgh Manor plus ten negro men, one boy, two negro women, and one Indian woman with her child. Philipse ordered that his negro woman Old Susan was to dwell on the plantation at the Upper Mills during her life.34 Frederick Philipse's slaves were fortunate in that their two new prospective owners both resided on the manor; the holding would not be widely scattered as so often happened at the death of a master.
Between 1702 and 1750 Adolphus Philipse's white tenant population grew from 200 to 1,100 persons, and his slave force totalled 27 persons by 1750. His slaves must have worked with the bolting equipment he added to the gristmill operation and in the plantation's coopering shop on the production of barrel staves. A bakery at the Upper Mill prepared ship biscuits, which, along with flour, were shipped to New York and foreign markets.35 One of the problems of Adolphus's stewardship over this prosperous plantation economy included the indictment of his slave Coffee for setting fire to his nephew Frederick Philipse's house during the 1741 negro plot.36
After Adolphus Philipse died in 1750 two estate inventories survived. One, dated February 12, 1749, included the following slaves: six men, five women, seven boys aged one to nine years, and one girl aged three years. Four men were described as not fit for work.37 The other inventory and administration of the estate extended from 1749 to 1763. It listed one negro man John worth L75 who owed the estate L26.19.0, one woman Sarah, one "mallotto" girl Molle at Mr. Goelets (probably hired out to him), and old Bess. Also listed were "two old wip Saws, one old broken iron pott and some rubbish" in the Negro house.38 Fifteen of these twenty‑seven slaves were sold at auction shortly after his death; the disposition of the others is unknown. In an advertisement placed in the New York Weekly Post Boy on April 9, 1750, his properties were "to be sold at public vendue at ten o'clock on Thursday morning the 19th at the house of the late Adolph Philipse." This property included four negro men (a miller, a boat‑man, and two farmers), three negro women, six negro boys, and two girls in addition to household goods, forty head of cattle, twenty‑six horses, a number of sheep and hogs, and all the utensils belonging to the manor. Philipse's death meant familial breakup and sale for most if not all of his slaves.
The death of bachelor Adolphus Philipse meant reconsolidation of the manor as the sole property of Frederick, second lord of the manor, who died only one year later than his uncle Adolphus. His will, dated June 6, 1751,39 divided sixteen slaves between his wife, his son Philip, three daughters, and one granddaughter. He left all of his negroes on both farms at the upper and lower mills to his son Frederick who became the third and last lord of the manor: the thirty‑three slaves included thirteen men, five women, eleven boys, and four girls. At the time of the American Revolution the manor comprised 92,160 acres, extending for twenty‑four miles along the Hudson River.40 Since Frederick Philipse was a loyalist during the Revolution his estate was confiscated on October 22, 1779; Philipsburgh Manor was sold in 311 conveyances in 1784. The number of slaves Philipse held in 1779 is unknown, but based on his inheritance of thirty‑three slaves in 1751, his holdings were probably large. New York State wound up supporting eight of his former slaves, either aged or infirm, from 1786 until 1818 or later.41
The slaveholdings of Frederick and Adolphus Philipse had been parallel in time‑‑they both received their inheritances in 1702 and died a year apart, in 1750 and 1751. They both lived on the vast Philipsburgh Manor, and between them owned seventy‑six slaves at the end of their tenures. In this pre‑1750 period their combined slaveholdings approached the size of slave workforces on large southern plantations. There were undoubtedly many matings and kinship connections among the separately owned groups of Philipse slaves who were all within extended walking (twenty‑five miles) and communication distance of each other.
The holdings of the original Frederick Philipse (over twenty‑one slaves), his son Adolphus (twenty‑seven slaves), and his grandson Frederick (forty‑nine slaves), were all large enough to accommodate and permit slave family life. The relationships between the Philipse Manor slaves are largely unknown, except for the references in Frederick Philipse's 1700 will to "Harry with his wife and child," and to "the Indyan woman Hannah and her child." The recurring use of a group of names over time‑‑Squire, Diamond, Harry, and Wan/Wau, and the use of "old" or "young" to separate members of different generations with the same name indicate familial connections. In 1700 Susan the Younger had to be demarcated from Old Susan, and in 1751 Young Charles from Charles, little Diamond from Diamond, and little Coezar from Coezar. Little Jenny‑Wall's parents in 1751 may have been Jenny in the same holding and Wall who belonged to Frederick Philipse III.42
While slaves on the large Philipse Manor lived with high numbers of other blacks and were probably able to enjoy family life on the premises, ownership on a large manor did not imply lifetime family security. The sale of fifteen out of Adolphus Philipse's twenty‑seven slaves in 1750 rippled through the familial networks among the seventy‑six slaves who lived on Philipsburgh Manor. When Frederick Philipse died in 1751 the other forty‑nine slaves on the manor were divided between his heirs. Thirty‑three would remain on the manor with his son and main heir Frederick, along with the seven left to his wife, but the other nine were bequeathed to his son Philip, three daughters, and one granddaughter. From a combined Philipsburgh Manor slave community of seventy‑six slaves in the 1750 to 1751 period, fifteen were sold, the disposition of twelve is unknown, and nine were probably removed with relatives who lived away from the manor. Only forty remained on the estate--the death of the two Philipse proprietors shattered the stability of their slaves' lives.
At the end of the eighteenth century the number and proportion of slaves who lived in large (for New York) slaveholdings of twelve or more slaves was small; it decreased even further from 1790 to 1820.43 In 1790 397 slaves (4.2 percent of slaves) lived in such units, 266 in 1800 (3.1 percent), 56 in 1810 (1 percent) and 65 (2.2 percent) in 1820. The twenty‑eight large slaveholdings which contained 397 slaves in 1790 were distributed as follows: ten in Kings, six in Queens, four each in New York and Westchester, three in Suffolk, and one in Richmond County.44 The largest four individual holdings in 1790 were of seventeen slaves each, belonging to Jacob Bennet in Brooklyn, Samuel Martin in South Hempstead, Lewis Morris at Morrisania, and Augustus Van Cortlandt in Yonkers.
By 1800, only twenty such large holdings remained, containing 266 slaves: ten in Kings, three each in Suffolk and Queens, two in New York, and one each in Richmond and Westchester.45 The largest single holding in 1800 was of eighteen slaves in the town of Flatbush. In 1810 only four slaveholders in the southern six counties owned twelve or more slaves‑‑three in Westchester County and one in Suffolk (totalling fifty‑six slaves). In 1810, the four large holdings were of sixteen slaves in the town of Westchester, fifteen in Yonkers, thirteen in Brookhaven, and twelve in Mount Pleasant. By 1820 five slaveowners remained in the southern six counties of New York with holdings of twelve or more slaves (totalling sixty‑five blacks)‑‑three in Kings County and two in Suffolk. In 1820 the five large holdings consisted of twelve slaves, twelve slaves, and thirteen slaves in Kings County, and twelve slaves and sixteen slaves in Suffolk County. Slaves in these largest of New York holdings of from twelve to eighteen slaves had the best chance to live in settled family units on their masters' properties. While large holdings did not guarantee that spouses or several children would not be sold away, the holding was large enough to theoretically contain several family members under one roof.
As New York slaveowners voluntarily freed large numbers of their slaves between 1785 and 1827, the size of slaveholdings shrank and chances for family cohabitation worsened. Slaves lived in white households which contained progressively fewer other slaves. This trend was counteracted for many slaves by the widespread residence of freed blacks in white slaveowning households during these years. After freedom many blacks sought employment as resident workers in white households; jobs for free blacks were concentrated among current and recent white slaveholders who had traditionally housed and used black labor. In 1790 46.1 percent of free blacks lived in white households (with slaves or other free blacks on the premises), 42.1 percent in 1800, 44.5 percent in 1810, and 40.2 percent in 1820.46
As table 8 shows, a large proportion of slaveholders employed resident free blacks: 12.2 percent of slaveowners in 1790, 20.5 percent in 1800, 38.3 percent in 1810, and 29.7 percent in 1820. Whites who employed both free black and slave labor had a larger average combined workforce per household than either slaveowners or whites who used only resident free black labor.47 They also generally held a larger average number of slaves than did whites who held only slave labor. As table 9 shows, in 1790 an average of 2.9 slaves and 1.4 free blacks were maintained by

TABLE 8

NUMBERS AND PROPORTIONS OF SLAVE‑OWNERS WHO HELD
UNITS COMPOSED OF BOTH SLAVE AND
FREED BLACK LABOR, 1790 TO 1820

Counties

1790 1800

Kings 319 297 22 6.9 398 260 138 34.7
New York 1,117 1,015 102 9.1 1,483 1,209 274 18.5
Richmond 238 190 48 20.2 231 185 46 19.9
Suffolk 493 307 186 37.7 410 326 84 20.5
Queens 776 776 0 0.0 532 426 106 19.9
Westchester 540 474 66 12.2 480 404 76 15.8

Total 3,483 3,059 424 12.2 3,534 2,810 724 20.5

1810 1820

Kings 370 192 178 48.1 286 211 75 26.2
New York 1,074 759 315 29.3 366 259 107 29.2
Richmond 203 99 104 51.2 183 171 12 6.6
Suffolk 225 106 119 52.9 146 135 11 7.5
Queens 357 145 212 59.4 270 150 120 44.4
Westchester 423 336 87 20.6 133 47 86 64.7

Total 2,652 1,637 1,015 38.3 1,384 973 411 29.7

SOURCES: Bureau of Census, Heads of Families, 1790; 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1800 Census, Printed Population Schedules, NYGBR; 1810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules.
NOTE: Free black heads of household who owned slaves are excluded from this study: most such slaves were really family members. This table measures normal white slaveholding patterns. Each slaveholding household which appeared in the 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1820 censuses was classified as to the presence and number of slaves held alone or of both slaves and resident free blacks included in the household.

TABLE 9

AVERAGE NUMBER OF FREE BLACKS AND OF SLAVES (PLUS AVERAGE
SIZE OF COMBINED SLAVE/FREE WORK GROUPS) IN WHITE
HOUSEHOLDS WHICH CONTAINED BOTH SLAVE
AND FREE BLACK LABOR, 1790 TO 1820

County

1790

Kings 22 23 1.0 115 5.2 6.3 4.6
New York 102 129 1.3 279 2.7 4.0 2.1
Richmond 48 61 1.3 159 3.3 4.6 3.1
Suffolk 186 303 1.6 465 2.5 4.1 2.1
Queens 0 0 ... 0 ... ... 3.0
Westchester 66 82 1.2 217 3.3 4.5 2.5

Total 424 598 1.4 1,235 2.9 4.3 2.7

1800

Kings 138 244 1.8 542 3.9 5.7 3.8
New York 274 399 1.5 489 1.8 3.2 1.9
Richmond 46 56 1.2 183 4.0 5.2 2.7
Suffolk 84 141 1.7 251 3.0 4.7 2.0
Queens 106 159 1.5 298 2.8 4.3 2.9
Westchester 76 116 1.5 212 2.8 4.3 2.5

Total 724 1,115 1.5 1,975 2.7 4.3 2.4

1810

Kings 178 418 2.3 595 3.3 5.7 2.7
New York 315 512 1.6 478 1.5 3.1 1.5
Richmond 104 211 2.0 257 2.5 4.5 1.8
Suffolk 119 265 2.2 262 2.2 4.4 1.4
Queens 212 472 2.2 509 2.4 4.6 1.9
Westchester 87 158 1.8 183 2.1 3.9 2.3

Total 1,015 2,036 2.0 2,284 2.2 4.3 1.9

1820

Kings 75 123 1.6 212 2.8 4.5 3.2
New York 107 169 1.6 147 1.4 2.9 1.3
Richmond 12 19 1.6 40 3.3 4.9 2.9
Suffolk 11 12 1.1 21 1.9 3.0 2.2
Queens 120 233 1.9 226 1.9 3.8 2.2
Westchester 86 206 2.4 147 1.7 4.1 1.2

Total 411 762 1.8 793 1.9 3.8 2.3
SOURCES: Each white household which contained both slaves and free blacks in the 1790, 1800, 1810, and 1820 federal censuses was analyzed as to the number of slaves and free blacks held in the unit. Bureau of Census, Heads of Families, 1790; 1800 Census, Printed Population Schedules, NYGBR; 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules; 1820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules.
NOTE: See tables 8 and 10 for figures from which the average number of slaves held in white households which contained only slaves (and no free labor) was compiled. See table 3 above on the average size of slaveholdings in New York (which included slaves in both households which contained only slaves and in households which contained both slaves and free blacks).
slaveholders who also employed free black labor, 2.7 slaves and 1.5 free blacks in 1800, 2.2 slaves and 2.0 free blacks in 1810, and 1.9 slaves and 1.8 free blacks in 1820 in the combined southern six counties of New York. The number of slaves in slave/free white households always exceeded the number of free blacks in the unit.
The average number of slaves held in white slaveholding households which also used resident free blacks fell between 1790 and 1810 while the number of free blacks per unit rose to maintain an unchanging workforce size of 4.3 blacks during these years. By 1820, however, several changes had occurred. Both the number of slaves and of free blacks per household had declined; slaveholders who also employed free black workers on the premises reduced the total size of their labor complement to an average of 3.8 blacks. A smaller proportion of slaveholders than in 1810 chose to use both slave and resident free black labor. As a result of both this change in slaveowner labor preferences and the dwindling numbers of slaves left in the area, smaller proportions of the free black population lived in slaveholdings; free blacks who sought positions in white homes increasingly lived instead in white households where no slaves were present.
The majority of slaves between 1785 and 1827 lived in white households which contained only slaves; their ability to live with family members decreased as slaveholdings grew smaller. The average number of slaves per white household which contained only slaves fell from 2.7 slaves in 1790 to 2.4 slaves in 1800, 1.9 slaves in 1810 (but rose again to 2.3 slaves in 1820 among the remaining group of determined slaveholders). The average number of slaves per white household which contained both slaves and resident free black workers also declined during this period, from 2.9 slaves in 1790 to 2.7 slaves in 1800, 2.2 slaves in 1810, and 1.9 slaves in 1820, but the real size of these "slaveholdings" was enlarged by the addition of an average of one to two free blacks.
Slaves who lived in white households which also contained free blacks between 1785 and 1827 enjoyed the greatest chance of living with family members; they also had an immediate demonstration that the condition of bondage could be transcended. Between 1790 and 1810 "slaveholdings" began to consist more and more often of slaves and free blacks. As table 10 shows, the proportion of all slaves who lived in white households which also housed free blacks rose from 13.1 percent in 1790, to 22.8 percent in 1800, to 42.4 percent in 1810; in 1820 the proportion dropped to 26.5 percent.
The proportion of slaves who lived in white households which also contained free blacks not only changed over time but differed from county to county. Apart from owner decisions, the degree to which free blacks were included in white slaveholding households was determined by three variables: the proportion of blacks who were free, the size

TABLE 10

NUMBERS AND PROPORTIONS OF SLAVES WHO LIVED IN
WHITE HOUSEHOLDS WHICH CONTAINED BOTH SLAVES
AND FREE BLACKS, 1790 TO 1820

Counties

1790 1800

Kings 1,475a 1,360 115 7.8 1,519 977 542 35.7
New York 2,372b 2,093 279 11.8 2,822c 2,333 489 17.3
Richmond 755 596 159 21.1 675 492 183 27.1
Suffolk 1,102 637 465 42.2 890d 639 251 28.2
Queens 2,311 2,311 0 0.0 1,547 1,249 298 19.3
Westchester 1,418 1,201 217 15.3 1,227e 1,015 212 17.3

Total 9,433 8,198 1,235 13.1 8,680 6,705 1,975 22.8

1810 1820

Kings 1,118 523 595 53.2 879 667 212 24.1
New York 1,654f 1,176 478 28.9 498h 351 147 29.5
Richmond 437 180 257 58.8 532 492 40 7.5
Suffolk 412g 150 262 63.6 322i 301 21 6.5
Queens 791 282 509 64.3 557j 331 226 40.6
Westchester 973 790 183 18.8 205 58 147 71.7

Total 5,385 3,101 2,284 42.4 2,993 2,200 793 26.5

SOURCES and NOTES: See table 8 above.
aFour slaves living in a free black‑headed household in Brooklyn are omitted from this total.
bThis figure excludes ten slaves in institutions.
cThe eight slaves on Blackwell's Island are included here. These figures exclude five slaves in free black‑headed households, nineteen slaves in slave‑headed households, and thirty‑one slaves in institutions.
dFive slaves who lived in a slave‑headed household in Smithtown are excluded.
eThis figure excludes five slaves who lived in a free black‑headed household in Rye.
fThis figure excludes thirty‑two slaves who lived either in slave‑headed households, free black‑headed households, or in institutions.
gOne slave living in a slave‑headed household in Brookhaven is omitted here.
hThis figure excludes one slave in a slave‑headed household, eighteen slaves in free black‑headed households and one slave whose residence was among a group of households not enumerated in the census on Governor's, Bedlow's, and Ellis's islands and at the Battery.
iThis figure excludes one slave who lived in a free black‑headed household.
jTwo slaves who lived in free black‑headed households are excluded here.
of the free black population, and the living circumstances of free blacks in each area. As an example, in Kings County in 1790 only 3.1 percent of the black population were free; there were only forty‑seven freed blacks in the county.48 Although 48.9 percent of them lived in white slaveholding households,49 their numbers were so small that only 7.8 percent of Kings County slaves were able to live with resident free blacks.
By 1810, as more blacks were freed in Kings County, a larger proportion of slaves (53.2 percent) lived in white households with freed blacks also domiciled on the premises. In the five rural towns of Kings County very large proportions of the slaves (from 57.8 percent in Bushwick to 80.1 percent in New Utrecht) lived in households which also contained free blacks. This was because high proportions (from 80 to 94.9 percent) of free blacks in these five towns lived on white slaveholding farms rather than in free black‑headed households. Brooklyn, however, had become a large town by 1810; its blacks behaved more like their cosmopolitan New York City neighbors than like the blacks in the rural towns which it bordered in Kings County. Only 19.1 percent of its slaves lived in white households which contained free blacks because only 10.7 percent of Brooklyn's free blacks lived in this type of white household (55.4 percent of free blacks were in their own domiciles).
New York City slaves less commonly lived in white households which contained free blacks. Although large proportions of New York City blacks were free and available as laborers between 1785 and 1827, space restrictions and generally smaller slaveholdings meant that owners could not accommodate both slaves and freed blacks in their homes. Freed blacks in the city were also more successful in setting up independent households and resorted less often to continued residence in a white household.
* * * * *
Small New York slaveholders provided limited housing accommodation for their slaves. Whereas bondsmen on large southern plantations lived in separate slave quarters which afforded room and independence to create black family and social life, New York slaves were usually haphazardly housed somewhere within the master's residence. New York owners needed and could only shelter a precise number of workers; both their limited labor requirements and limited available housing space caused owners to possess individual slaves rather than family groups and to sell off unneeded children produced by their female slaves.
The physical area within which New York slaves could sustain family life consisted of sleeping space in attics and cellars, rooms in the kitchen area of the dwelling, or in small separate out‑buildings.50 Such shelter was generally overcrowded, offered small protection against weather and disease, and provided little privacy from both white scrutiny and other slaves. "A small windowless, stone‑walled building, which tradition tells us was used as a slave house" stood near the Jan Mebie house built by Daniel Janse Van Antwerpen in the 1670s.51 In 1713 Rev. John Sharpe inadvertently provided information on slave housing in his comments on Elias Neau's religious work among the negroes in New York City: "They see him creeping into garrets, cellars, and other nauseous places, to exhort and pray by the poor slaves when they are sick."52
The June 21, 1742, issue of the New York Weekly Journal advertized a prosperous estate for sale. The farm, belonging to the late Robert Freeman, fronted Flushing Bay on Long Island and contained 270 acres of upland and 12 acres of salt meadow, with 600 trees in the orchard. "The house is about eight years old, with an entry in the middle, a large parlour on each side, and back of them two bedrooms; over the parlours are two large rooms with closets; adjoining to the house is a room of 14 by 16 foot for white servants, over it lodging rooms and a back stairs; behind it a kitchen with a room fit for negroes; a very good barn and stables for horses and cows and a coach house and a bolting house." The room "fit for negroes" behind the kitchen was probably smaller than the 14 by 16 foot room for the white servants.
The slave housing accommodations on the prestigious Philipsburgh Manor in Westchester County were as follows: "From the upper South Hall, one ascends to the attic--the old slave quarters. The rude plank floors, thin partitions and doors, wooden latches, wooden hinges with leather washers to prevent squeaking, the unceiled attic roof showing the ancient hewn timbers of the gambrel or curb roof, and the little dormer windows."53 Thirty black and twenty‑six white servants lived in this third story dormitory. Little privacy could be afforded family members in these close quarters.
A Hessian officer travelling through upstate New York during the American Revolution saw many houses that had "a negro family living nearby in an out‑house."54 Provisions in the 1778 will of Tunis Covert indicated how his slave was housed: "Allowing to my negro man Tom the kitchen room where he now lives, for his dwelling room, and the privilege of one acre of land for him to plant and till for himself."55 Caesar, a slave on the 1,300 acre Nicoll estate in Bethlehem, New York, spent his old age supported by the Nicoll family, from 1817 to 1852. He was settled in a room on the ground floor of the kitchen extension of the old house, which room had an outdoor entrance, a stoop, and a large open fireplace.56 Ulster County slave Sojourner Truth recalled the slave accommodations provided by Charles Hardenbergh in his comfortable limestone house during the first decade of the nineteenth century. His fourteen slaves slept in the same room in the cellar:57
Its only lights consisting of a few panes of glass, through which she thinks the sun never shone, but with thrice reflected rays; and the space between the loose boards of the floor, and the uneven earth below, was often filled with mud and water. . . . Its inmates, of both sexes and all ages, sleeping on those damp boards, like the horse, with a little straw and a blanket.
* * * * *
In addition to low black population density, unbalanced sex ratios, and small holdings, the random distribution of slaves into white households prevented slaves from living with kin‑related other slaves and reduced their opportunities to find mates on or near their masters' properties. For all New York slaves, whether the majority who lived in holdings of from one to five slaves or the minority who lived on large estates, the ability to live with family members depended on the age, sex, and relation composition of the holding even more than on the number of slaves on the premises. Where masters or employers required the labor of two male farm hands or only one female domestic, slave family life had to transcend both distance and slavery.
The nature of New York slavery, characterized by small holdings and limited labor requirements, worked against the ownership of black family members together. Slaves were dispersed among white households according to white labor needs rather than according to black family groups. Owners were not eager to purchase or maintain more slaves than they really needed in order to keep slave families together. Some owners traded slaves with other owners or purchased a particular slave over other choices in order to satisfy their slave's wish to live with a spouse or child. Most owners, however, bought and sold slaves over their lifetimes solely in accordance with their changing labor needs and financial circumstances.
In order to ascertain what proportion of the slave population in the southern six counties of New York could have lived with family members based on the sex and age composition of their master's slaveholding, a study was made of slaves listed in wills and in estate inventories from 1669 to 1829. All male and female adult slaves in the same holding were counted as a potential husband and wife. An adult male, an adult female, plus children present in the household were considered to comprise a nuclear family. Any woman with a child or children were treated as a parent and child. Male adult slaves with children, slaves of the same sex, and groups of children alone were assumed not to be related.58 In holdings where Indian and black slaves were both held, no intermarriage or kin relationship is assumed, although many interracial unions existed.
Only rarely were slave family relations definitely ascertained from the content of wills and estate inventories; owners infrequently mentioned the interpersonal relations of their slaves. While some marriages, mother and child units, and nuclear families were clearly identified by the testator, most such relationships were estimated by the age and sex divisions within each slaveholding. These assumed family units vastly inflate the real number of married couples, mothers with children, and nuclear families that lived together under slavery. Not all adult male and female slaves owned together were really spouses; the absence of specific ages for most listed slaves leaves ninety‑year‑old women and twenty‑five‑year‑old men incorrectly paired together statistically as spouses in one holding. Many women lived with children other than their own, and men, women, and children living together were not necessarily a biologically related family.
Based on an analysis of the 2,523 slaves listed in 1,092 wills and the 1,043 slaves in 349 estate inventories over a 160 year period, possibilities for even temporary family life emerge.59 As shown in table 11, data from wills indicate that in all time periods a little over half of the
INSERT TABLE 11 HERE
slave population at any given time could not have been living with a family member. These slaves either lived in a white household as single slaves or with other slaves whose sex or age ruled them out as probable family members. Two men held together, two women, adult men with children, and several children together were slaveholdings composed of presumably non‑related workers. A greater proportion of slaves listed in inventories appeared to reside with family members than slaves listed in wills due to the larger average size of slaveholdings found in estate inventories. Although almost half of the slave population (and almost two‑thirds of those listed in inventories) seemed to live with a close relative, a large proportion of this group were really living with unrelated slaves. For most New York slaves, relationships with parents, spouses, children, and more distant relatives involved separated residences and irregular contact.
A far greater proportion of adult female slaves were able to live with some family members than male adult slaves. Unbalanced sex ratios (an excess of males) during the first three‑quarters of the eighteenth century meant that many men were unable to find wives and lived in holdings where other men were the only other blacks present. The fact that women and children owned together are here presumed to be related enlarges the proportion of women able to live with family members. Mothers were more likely to live with their children (at least temporarily) than fathers because all slave children started out in life as the property of their mothers' masters. Of the 1,331 blacks listed in wills who were theoretically unable to live in family units, 418 were men, 271 were women, and 584 were children (plus 58 whose sex or age is unknown). Of the 389 slaves listed in inventories who were theoretically unable to live in families, 195 were men, 85 were women, and 103 were children (plus 6 whose sex or age is unknown). Males, disproportionately to females, lived with non‑related slaves; women and children were more often grouped in holdings with possible other family members.
Most New York censuses taken prior to 1820 failed to list the ages and sexes of slaves they enumerated, preventing speculation on the familial composition of slaveholdings. Only seven colonial censuses provided enough information to estimate family cohabitation based on the age and sex distribution of the slaveholdings. As table 12 shows, the New Rochelle 1698 census provided a detailed breakdown of slaveholdings in the town. Out of forty‑three slaves, six lived alone in white households with no other blacks. In all, eight men, one woman, and two children (aged eight and fifteen) could not have lived with family members (25.6 percent of the town's blacks). The other thirty‑two slaves theoretically could have lived with relatives, forming five nuclear families, two marriages, and two mother and child units.60 Out of eleven black women in town over the age of fifteen, seven could have lived with
INSERT TABLE 12 HERE
husbands in nuclear families or marriages (63.6 percent); of the sixteen adult males, seven lived with possible wives (43.7 percent). The remaining nine men had only four women in town to choose as "abroad spouses," with five extra males left to find mates in nearby towns or not at all.
In the holding which contained John, Charls, Jeams, An, John, and Peter, An and her possible husband Charles could have named their six‑year‑old John after sixty‑five‑year‑old John, conceivably the child's grandfather. In the holding of eleven slaves headed by Jacoab and Mary, four‑year‑old Jacoab may have been named for his father, indicating that this was a real nuclear family. Although 74.4 percent of the slaves in New Rochelle in 1698 could have lived with spouses and children, the reality may have been far less. As examples, Manveall and Dan and Beateay with either John or Jeafrye may not have been married. An, rather than being the wife of Charls, may have been the sole resident parent of John or Peter (or of neither).
As table 13 shows, based on the sex and age composition of individual slaveholdings which appeared in seven censuses taken between 1698 and 1783, from 54.9 to 85.2 percent of the enslaved black populations in these towns could have been living with other family members. All marriages, nuclear families, and parent with child categories were based on assumption, as no definite identification of family relationships was possible. As with slaves listed in wills and estate inventories, males
TABLE 13 GOES HERE
were disproportionately unable to live with family members: out of 635 slaves unable to live in families, 346 were men, 159 were women, and 130 were children. Overall, 63.9 percent of this census sample of 1,760 slaves could theoretically have been living with immediate family members, although the reality was far lower (compared to 47.2 percent of the 2,523 slaves listed in wills and 62.7 percent of the 1,043 slaves listed in estate inventories).
This methodology used to analyze possible black families in slaveholdings produces an estimate of the highest possible proportion of slaves who could have lived with black family members at a given time. It vastly exaggerates the real number of such favorable situations--far less than from half to two‑thirds of the slave population lived in family units. As a theoretical model, it indicates that a definite one‑third to one‑half of the slave population were deprived of family cohabitation. A large proportion of the slaves placed into theoretical family units were actually also living apart from real spouses, parents, and children. The haphazard arrangement of adult men, adult women, and children into slaveholdings made them often neatly appear as countable nuclear families, married partners, and mother and child units, but this framework cannot reach beyond sheer demography into the real emotional and biological underpinnings of these statistically defined hypothetical families.
* * * * *
The small size of New York slaveholdings and the random distribution of slaves into these holdings usually prevented traditionally defined families (husband, wife, and children) from continuous, stable cohabitation. In this context it might be more appropriate to consider the holding as the meaningful social unit on a day to day basis rather than the biologically or legally constituted conventional family. The notion of "family" needs to be redefined for enslaved New York blacks; the cohabiting slaves within a white household may have functioned as a de facto family. Since the traditional slave family based on emotional and biological relationships commonly transcended the boundaries of a particular household, with "abroad" marriages and scattered children, it may have been unable to perform the companionship and supportive roles for its members. Slaves owned together could have fulfilled "familial" obligations towards each other on a practical everyday basis, bridging the gap between visits and communications with blood‑related kin.
The Reverend Robert Jenney, a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, was stationed at Rye, New York in 1725. He held three slaves: a young man, a woman, and a child. The Jenney slaveholding appeared statistically to contain a nuclear family based only on the age and sex distribution of its slaves, illustrating the great possibility of overestimating real cohabitating family units based on sex and age criteria alone. The holding really consisted of a mother and child with an unrelated man. The quality of their relationship to the adult male slave in the household is unknown--he may have substituted for the missing father. The woman's husband lived in New York City, by whom she had had four children. Although this indicated the persistence of their long‑distance relationship, her marital infidelity was noted by her owner as a consequence of their marriage separated by slavery. Because of the twenty mile distance between them, Jenney found it difficult "to keep them faithful at any considerable distance from one another."61 In 1727, Rev. Robert Jenney moved to Hempstead; if his slaves went with him, his female slave remained at a walkable but still inconvenient distance from her husband, 17 1/2 miles away.
Flatlands farmer John Baxter recorded some local gossip in his diary on January 29 and 30, 1807. He had heard that slaveowner Douwe Stoothoff's "wench got bamboozled by his negro Sam an old married Ethiopian"; she subsequently gave birth to his daughter.62 A slaveholding which began with a married male and an unrelated female evolved into a biological unit composed of a married man, his mistress, and their offspring. This surrogate family became a family in fact.
Another case illustrates both the concept of the holding as the family and the fact that the high proportions of slaves who seemed to live in family units based on the sex and age characteristics of the holdings alone were widely inflated. On April 26, 1799, Betty and Charles, black children of Belinda, were baptized at St. Ann's Episcopal Church in Brooklyn,63 with Belinda and Jephthah standing as sponsors. Belinda, Jephthah, and the children were all owned together by Cornelius Stevenson of New York. Diana, the daughter of Jephthah and of a free woman named Liana, was also baptized on the same date, with parents Jephthah and Liana as sponsors. Belinda and Jephthah were adult male and female slaves who lived together with two children, but not as sexual mates or spouses. Betty and Charles were Belinda's children--the father is unknown. Jephthah was involved with Liana, a free woman and the mother of his child. Although Jephthah's child must have been free because she was born of a free woman, this slave father was responsible for having her baptized, perhaps at his owner Stevenson's insistence.
The experience of Belinda and Jephthah may have been the common familial mode for New York slaves; they lived together but they were still two distinct black families. Jephthah replaced the father in standing as sponsor for Belinda's children and may have served routinely as a practical surrogate father on the premises. Both adult slaves lived together with children in a slaveholding large enough to accommodate a nuclear family of four persons, composed, however, of a single mother and children and an unrelated man with a separated family of his own.
The partition of the New York slave family into separate slaveholdings meant that families were not only divided by residence, but often by considerable distance.64 At the May 20, 1805, legal registration of the birth of a child to his slave woman, Samuel Bayard of New Rochelle certified that the child Henry's parents were Katy and "a black man in New York (as I am informed, named Frank)."65 The mother and newborn son lived in New Rochelle, thirteen miles away from Frank in New York City. The ability to preserve contact with family members was made even more difficult as spouses and children were shifted from household to household and from town to town during their lives due to changes in ownership.
Marital and parental relationships had to and often did survive these impediments imposed by isolated enslavement from other family members. The love that slave spouses, parents, children, and siblings felt for each other cannot be measured by their separate living patterns. It should rather be measured by the actions they took to reach each other and to reunite their families, often in defiance of their masters. Slaves attempted to visit their kin as often as they could, with or without owner permission. Slaves ran away from their masters in order to be with their loved ones. Slaves implored their masters not to sell their relatives away to new owners. Black men worked hard to buy the freedom of their wives and children.
Many slave families maintained their emotional connections over many years and preserved their links to each other. On February 22, 1795, an adult slave named George who belonged to Peter Culver of Bushwick was baptized at Newtown by clergy from the Grace Episcopal Church of Jamaica. His daughter Diana was baptized there on the same date; she was owned by her mother Jane's master Peter Duryee, probably of Newtown.66 Either their respective masters or George in Bushwick and his wife Jane in Newtown (approximately four miles apart) arranged for father and daughter to be baptized together, consolidating religious and personal rituals important to familial integrity.
Some slaves made determined efforts to maintain their families and reunite themselves through self‑purchase. John Moranda's family was split three ways: John was owned by John DeBaan in New York City, his wife Elizabeth and son John were owned by a physician Gardner James also in New York City, and his four‑year‑old daughter Susan was held by John Haring in Bergen County, New Jersey. John and his wife and son could have visited, but seeing their daughter was more problematical. Over a 2 1/2 year period John spent $410 to first free himself and then to gather together his family. He purchased the daughter in New Jersey first, perhaps from a sense of urgency created in the family by her enslavement at so great a distance from both the mother/son branch of the family, and from the newly freed father.
On October 29, 1795, a lawyer paid John DeBaan $200 for John Moranda's freedom (money probably accumulated by John for his self‑purchase). Two months later, John bought the freedom of his daughter Susan for $50 from her New Jersey owner. On May 18, 1798, John bought the freedom of his thirty‑three‑year‑old wife Elizabeth for $150 and of his son John for $10 from their one owner.67 In 1810 both John "Marander" and his son John "Morandum" were successfully independent free heads of households (each with three members) in New York City. By 1827 John Moranda (either the father or son) had become prominent in free black community affairs. Moranda served as chairman of the arrangement committee which organized the July 4, 1827 church service to celebrate the end of slavery in the state.68
Joseph Way, a slave, lived with his owner Eleanor Rapelye in Newtown, and his wife and two children lived with Christopher S. Bird, also in Newtown. On January 2, 1800, Joseph bought his wife Jenny (or Jane) and sons Philip (age four) and William (age two) on an installment plan from Bird; the family received their freedom on January 2, 1801 upon full payment ( 83.10.0) to Bird. Jane, however, soon found it necessary to bind son Philip Way (shortly before his sixth birthday) as an apprentice to Peter Faulkner on January 25, 1802 for ten years. Joseph Way only purchased his own freedom on March 16, 1802 for 65. It took two years and 148.10.0 for Joseph Way to liberate his family. This separated, enslaved family lived no more than six miles apart (and perhaps far closer) while the father successfully struggled to bring them all out of slavery.69
Isaac Menix's family was also divided among several owners, all in New York City. On October 30, 1800, Tunis Rapelye freed Isaac Menix, and five weeks later William Bowne freed his two children, Betty Menix and Isaac Menix, Jr. Six months later Isaac Menix paid Abraham Bloodgood $125 for the unexpired time of his forty‑two‑year‑old wife Betty's term (five years and five months of service), effecting her freedom on June 13, 1801. Although this family was held by three separate masters (the father was held alone, the mother was owned alone, and the two children were owned together), both children bore their parents' given names and the last name Menix, and family ties were preserved until they all achieved freedom within eight months of each other.70
1See pp. ‑ above and app. 2 on the number of slaves in other colonies and states.
2"Easthampton, 1687," Doc. Hist., 3:219.
3See table p. above on the size of the black population from 1698 through 1830 in both the southern six counties of New York and in New York colony and state.
4See app. 2 on the proportion of blacks in the populations of southern colonies and states.
5See pp. ‑ below on sex ratios.
6"Flushing, 1675," Doc. Hist., 2:263‑64; "Flatlands, 1683," Doc. Hist., 2:288‑89; Southold, 1686, L.I.H.S.; N.U., Bergen Papers, St. Francis.
7"Kings Co., 1698," Doc. Hist., 3:87‑89.
8Mamaroneck owners averaged one slave per holding, 2.2 in Flushing, 2.3 in Newtown, and 3.1 in New Rochelle. In Fordham, once the unusually large Philipse holding of twenty slaves is excluded from the sample, the average holding was 2.8 slaves for the twenty‑three other slaveowning households in town. Gardner, "Census of Newtown"; "Flushing, 1698," Doc. Hist., 1:432‑37; Randolph, "Census of 1698, Mamaroneck, Morrisania, and New Rochelle"; Miller, "Census of Westchester, Eastchester, Fordham, and Bedford, 1698."
9"N.Y.C, 1703," Doc. Hist., 1:395‑405.
10N.U., Bergen Papers, St. Francis.
11The six towns in Kings County in 1731 ranged from average slaveholdings of 1.9 slaves in Gravesend, Flatlands (2.2), Brooklyn (2.6), Flatbush (2.9), Bushwick (3.1), and 4.4 slaves per household in New Utrecht. "Kings Co., 1731," Doc. Hist., 4:122‑31.
12The New York legislature probably ordered this census to be taken of all slaves over the age of fourteen less to ascertain the black manpower pool than to calculate the potential danger from the colony's black adult population. Zebulon Seaman counted the number of slaves in Oysterbay; he added in his letter to James Delancee, Commander in Chief of the Province, that "whereas there is Sundry free Negroes Melattoes and Mustees Resideing within ye Township of Oysterbay that may probably be Likely In case of Insurrections To be as Mischevious as ye Slaves, Therefore I Thought it my Duty to Acquaint Your Honour Therewith. . . ." "1755 Slave Census," Doc. Hist., 3:518. For six of the twenty‑one towns in the southern six counties, and for the majority of towns in Ulster and other counties, the census specifically states that it only counts slaves over the age of fourteen. I am therefore assuming that the entire 1755 census only counted slaves over fourteen, and that children were not included.
13A comparison of the 1755 slave census with the 1756 provincial census reveals that the 1755 census counted only 47 percent of the adult blacks in Westchester. The 1755 census included 364 black adults, while the 1756 census counted 775 (364/775 = 47 percent) black adults in the county. It covered only the Westchester County towns of Philipsburgh, Westchester, Pelham, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, Rye, North Castle, and Morrisania. The 1755 census included 55.9 percent of the adult slaves in Queens County (608/1,088 = 55.9 percent), covering the towns of Hempstead, Newtown, and Oysterbay. The 1755 census counted only 40.4 percent of Richmond County's adult slaves (90/223 = 40.4 percent), all in the North Division of Staten Island. The 1755 census for Suffolk counted 30.5 percent of the adult slaves in the county since it only included the towns of Smithtown, Islip, and Huntington (175/573 = 30.5 percent).
14Thomas Davis, "New York's Long Black Line: A Note on the Growing Slave Population, 1626‑1790," Afro Americans in New York Life and History, 2, no. 1 (January 1978): 55.
15This model treated these slaves as the total slave population although only adults were represented. The revised model proposes new estimated total figures which include the missing under‑fourteen population.
16The 1755 census counts only slave adults. By using the 1756 census as a basis of comparison, one can estimate the true numbers of blacks in a town by adding in the missing slave children. The methodology involves computing the proportion of adults and children in the 1756 slave population for each county. As an example, Kings County in 1756 had 295 male and 197 female adult slaves, totalling 432 adults out of a black population of 845 persons. These 432 adults formed 51.1 percent of the total black population. The proportion of adults in the total population is found as follows for the 1756 census:
adults = 432 X 100 total population 845 = 51.1%
The total population is 845 persons--the difference between 845 and 432 adults is the number of children (413). Since there is only one year between the 1755 and 1756 censuses, it is assumed that the proportion of adults to the total population was the same: the proportion of adults to the total population in 1755 is 51.1 to 100. For the 1755 Kings County census, a total of 225 male and 196 female adults (421 combined) are listed. Thus the total population in 1755 is:
421 X 100 = 824 people 1 51.1
Thus there are 824 minus 421 adults, or 403 children in 1755 in Kings County, close to the known total of 413 children one year later in 1756. The 1755 census covers all Kings County towns, including 201 slaveholders with an estimated population of 824 blacks, averaging 4.1 slaves per owner. This figure would have been impossible to obtain from the 1755 census alone, which included only adults--the average would have been 2.1 slaves per owner. For the other fifteen towns in the 1755 census I am comparing their populations to the proportions of black men, women, and children in those towns' counties in the 1756 census; the 1756 census gives only county rather than town totals. This methodology unfortunately hides differences between the individual towns which composed the 1756 county populations. As an example, for the towns of Philipsburgh, Westchester, Morrisania, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, North Castle, Rye, and Pelham in 1755, I calculated that 57.9 percent of their black populations were composed of adults, since 57.9 percent of the total black population was adult in Westchester County in 1756. The 1755 census counted only 57.9 percent of their real population--the other 42.1 percent were the uncounted children.
17The estimated average holding of four slaves per owner is higher than other averages for the eighteenth century. The heaviest slaveholding areas in the southern six counties of New York are overrepresented in this sample of only twenty‑one towns. The Dutch areas of Bushwick, Brooklyn, New Utrecht, Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, Staten Island‑North Division, and Newtown normally had greater numbers of slaves per owner than other towns. The large size of the average slaveholding in Pelham reflected the wealth of the several branches of the Pell family on the Manor of Pelham. The single large slaveholding of the Manor of Morrisania alone raised the size of the average slaveholding for the twenty‑one combined towns from two adults to 2.1 adults and from an estimated total of 3.9 slaves to four slaves.
18"New Rochelle, 1771," NYGBR 107 (1976):196‑98; "Suffolk, 1776," Force, ed., American Archives, 4:1236‑52. A total of 831 slaves were owned by 313 households in Suffolk. Several large holdings skewed the town averages upward for the two towns of Shelter Island and Patent of Meritches/Manor of St. George. On Shelter Island William Nicoll owned ten slaves while Nicolls Havens held fourteen; they were two of the seven slaveholders in town. In Patent of Meritches/Manor of St. George three men held unusually large numbers of slaves--William Floyd with twelve, Richard Floyd also with twelve, and Nathaniel Woodhull with fifteen slaves.
19"Brooklyn, 1783," Manual Common Council Brooklyn; N.U., Bergen Papers, St. Francis, p. 63.
20Bureau of Census, Century of Population Growth, p. 136. According to Davis, "New York's Long Black Line," p. 55, New York State in 1800 had 20,663 [20,613] slaves owned by 8,439 households, averaging 2.4 slaves per owner. It had fewer slaves but more owners than in 1790, and a smaller average holding size. Of the 8,439 owners, 3,858 held a single slave, 1,758 held two slaves, 1,005 owned three slaves, and 633 owned four slaves. Small numbers of households held five or more slaves: 434 held five, 267 held six, 164 owned seven, 99 owned eight, 62 owned nine, and 112 households held ten slaves. Davis's analysis contains an error in that it omitted holders of more than ten slaves, unless the 112 households really included holders of more than ten each. In the southern six counties alone, twenty‑five households contained eleven or more slaves in 1800. Although flawed, this model indicates the general size distribution of slaveholdings in the state.
21The rise in the size of the average slaveholding from 1810 to 1820 (table 3) and the slight decline in the proportion of very small slaveholders between 1810 and 1820 in the figures for the combined southern six counties of New York is due to the reinvigoration of the institution of slavery in Richmond County (see pp. ‑ below).
22See app. 5 for figures on each individual county.
23While the proportion of slaves that lived in either one-slave or two-slave households rose from 1790 to 1820, the proportion of slaves that lived in each size category of three or more slaves fell during this period. The overall proportion of slaves that lived in holdings of "three or fewer slaves" or "five or fewer slaves" rose in spite of the fact that smaller proportions of slaves lived in size three, four, or five holdings due to the increase in size one and two holdings which were included in these groups.
241820 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules, New York City, Ward 9, William A. Davis, James Blackwell, and Sampson A. Benson, pp. 103, 111, 113.
25A sample of 1,470 wills (1669‑1829) and 384 inventories (1675‑1829) were located for the southern six counties of New York which listed slave property. Wills and inventories were divided into four descriptive categories: regular, miscellaneous, listing both black and Indian slaves, and listing only Indian slaves. Regular wills and inventories included only negro slaves and provided full information on them. Miscellaneous wills and inventories excluded one or more variables such as the age, sex, or exact number of slaves in the testator's holding.
Estate
Wills Inventories
Number Number
of of
Number of Slaves Number of Slaves
Type of Document Documents Listed Documents Listed
Regular 1,078 2,451 327 980
Miscellaneous 354 1,111 29 98
Blacks 50 31
Blacks and Indians 14 72 22 63
Indians 22 32
Indians Alone 24 26 6 8
Total 1,470 3,660 384 1,149
26A breakdown of estate inventory holdings into time periods is less meaningful due to the small sample sizes in the 1791 to 1800 and 1801 to 1829 periods of only eighteen and fourteen slaves.
27These eleven men obtained land patents which evolved into substantial manors: Col. William Smith, Manor of St. George at Brookhaven (1693); James Lloyd, Manor of Queens Village (1697); Stephen Van Cortlandt, Cortlandt Manor, 83,000 acres (1697); Lewis Morris, Morrisania; Frederick Philipse, Manor of Philipsburgh, 1,500 square miles (1693); Thomas Pell, Pelham Manor, 9,000 acres (1687); Caleb Heathcote, Scarsdale Manor (1701); John Archer, Fordham Manor (1671); Lionel Gardiner, Gardiner's Island, 3,300 acres (1639); Christopher Billop, Bentley Manor, Staten Island, 2,000 acres (1687); and John Palmer, Cassilton Manor, Staten Island (1687). Viscount De Fronsac, "Lords of Manors of New York," NYGBR 39 (October 1908):292‑300; Hall, Philipse Manor Hall, pp. 82‑84.
28Randolph, "Census of 1698, Mamaroneck, Morrisania, and New Rochelle."
29"N.Y.C., 1703," Doc. Hist., 1:395‑405.
30"1755 Slave Census," Doc. Hist., 3:510‑21. These figures include only adult slaves over the age of fourteen.
31"Suffolk, 1776," Force, ed., American Archives, 4:1236‑1252.
32Edward Hall, Philipse Manor Hall at Yonkers, N.Y.: The Site, The Building, And Its Occupants (New York: American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, 1912), chaps. 4 and 5.
33Miller, "Census of the Inhabitants of Fordham and Adjacent Places, 1698," p. 218. See pp. ‑ above on Philipse's importation of African slaves.
34Will of Frederick Philipse, October 26, 1700, Tom Paine Memorial House, New Rochelle, N.Y. An abstract of this will is published in Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 1:369‑72.
35Kammen, Colonial New York, p. 174.
36Hall, Philipse Manor Hall, p. 108.
37Estate Inventory of Adolph Philipse, Manor of Philipsburgh, February 12, 1749, photocopy, Tom Paine Memorial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.
38Adolph Philipse, Inventory and Administration of Estate, 1749-1763, Manuscript Room, New York Public Library. See p. , n. on Bess.
39Will of Frederick Philipse, June 6, 1751, Tom Paine Memorial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.
40Harry Yoshpe, The Disposition of Loyalist Estates in the Southern District of the State of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939; reprint ed., New York: AMS Press, 1967), pp. 51‑53.
41See pp. ‑ below.
42See app. 6 on the names of Philipsburgh Manor slaves.
43See tables 4 and 5 above.
44Bureau of Census, Heads of Families 1790. The twenty-eight holdings (and number of slaves per holding) were located in the following towns: South Hempstead (17), Morrisania (17), Yonkers (17), Brooklyn (17), Flatbush (two size 16 holdings), New Utrecht (15), Gravesend (14), New Utrecht (14), N.Y.C., Outward (14), Brookhaven (14), Oysterbay (two size 14 holdings), Newtown (13), North Hempstead (13), Brookhaven (13), N.Y.C., West Ward (13), Flatbush (13), Brooklyn (13), North Hempstead (12), Mamaroneck (12), Westchester (12), Smithtown (12), Westfield (12), N.Y.C., Harlem Division (12), N.Y.C., West Ward (12), Flatbush (12), and Brooklyn (12). Ten of the twenty-eight were in Kings County, where average slaveholdings were larger, and where the largest slaveholdings were concentrated.
451800 Census, Printed Population Schedules, NYGBR; 1800 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules. The twenty holdings (and number of slaves per holding) were distributed among the following towns: Flatbush (18), Flatbush (16), New Utrecht (16), Brookhaven (15), N.Y.C., Seventh Ward (14), Brookhaven (14), Hempstead (14), Harrison (13), Flatbush (13), Gravesend (13), Westfield (13), Smithtown (13), Newtown (12), Oysterbay (12), N.Y.C., Seventh Ward (12), New Utrecht (12), Gravesend (12), Flatbush (12), and Brooklyn (two size 12 holdings). Ten of these twenty large holdings were in Kings County, where slaveholding was most deeply entrenched.
46See table , p. below.
47See table , p. below.
48See table , p. below.
49See table , p. below.
50In New England slaves slept in the garret or cellar, or sometimes on the same floor as the master. Where slaveholdings were larger, as in the Narragansett region, slaves lived in separate out-buildings as on southern plantations. Greene, Negro in Colonial New England, p. 223.
51Lee Douglas Van Antwerp, "The Family Van Antwerp in America," NYGBR 72 (January 1941):19.
52"Reverend John Sharpe's Proposals," p. 350.
53Hall, Philipse Manor Hall, p. 227.
54William Stone, transl., Letters of Brunswick and Hessian Officers During the American Revolution (Albany: n.p., 1891), p. 142, in Zilversmit, The First Emancipation, p. 5.
55Will of Tunis Covert, Jamaica, March 19, 1778, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 12:1.
56Dunkin H. Sill, "A Notable Example of Longevity, 1737-1852," NYGBR 56 (1925):67.
57Olive Gilbert, narrator, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, The American Negro: His History and Literature (Battle Creek, Mich.: By the Author, 1878; reprint ed., New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968), pp. 14‑15. Also see Bernard, Journey Toward Freedom, pp. 6‑7, 33. John Dumont, Sojourner's later owner, housed his ten slaves "together in a single large room located directly behind the regular kitchen and called the slave kitchen."
58Where ages and adult or child status were not clearly specified in a will or estate inventory, it was assumed that "wench" or "woman" referred to an adult woman and that "man" or "negro" referred to an adult male. The expressions "boy" or "girl" were assumed to refer to children.
59For a list of sources used to compile the sample of wills and estate inventories, see the bibliographical essay. The sample of 2,523 slaves in 1,092 wills includes 2,451 black slaves in 1,078 regular wills and 72 slaves (50 black and 22 Indian) in 14 wills which listed both black and Indian slave property. The sample of 1,043 slaves in 349 estate inventories includes 980 black slaves in 327 regular estate inventories and 63 slaves (31 black and 32 Indian) in 22 estate inventories which listed both black and Indian slave property.
60Beateay and either John or Jeafrye could have been married, as could Manveall and Dan, forming the two hypothetical resident marriages in town. The five nuclear families could have contained Couffe or Pouledoer with wife Hannar and child Catren; Weallam, wife Hannar, and children Marye and Susan; Tom Pat with wife Catron and child Franseas; Charls, wife An, and children John and Peter; and Jacoab and Mary with children Tony, Jacoab, Tonye, Susan, Will, Andro, and Stoan. The two parent and child units could have been Gras with Marye and Nana with Agneas.
61Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, pp. 156‑57.
62Journal of John Baxter of Flatlands, Long Island, 1790‑1826, vol. 2, LIHS.
63Josephine Frost, transcriber, St. Ann's Episcopal Church at Brooklyn--Births, Marriages, Deaths, 2 vols., New York Public Library (Typewritten.)
64See David Humphreys, An Account of the Endeavors Used by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to Instruct the Negroe Slaves in New York, together with Two of Bishop Gibson's Letters on that Subject (London: n.p., 1730), p. 7. McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 65, also noted that "the typical slave family was divided among several owners."
65Katy had also given birth 2 1/2 years earlier to a girl Betty, whose father is unknown. Samuel Bayard, Registration of Slave Children Betty, b. Feb. 5, 1802 and Henry, b. August 1804, Tom Paine Memorial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.
66Horatio Ladd, The Origin and History of Grace (Episcopal) Church, Jamaica, N.Y. (New York: The Shakespeare Press, 1914), p. 332.
67Yoshpe, "Record of Slave Manumissions," pp. 81, 84, 85.
681810 Census, Manuscript Population Schedules, New York County, Ward Five, pp. 103, 111a; "Extract from the Minutes of a large and respectable Meeting of the People of Colour, held in the Mutual Relief Hall, April 23d, 1827," New York Freedom's Journal, 29 June 1827, p. 63.
69Register of manumissions of slaves, and of agreements respecting the liberation of slaves, given to the society for promoting the manumission of slaves and protecting such of them as have been or may be liberated, pp. 182, 183, MCNY. Whether this family proceeded to live under one roof after 1802 is unknown; one child had already been indentured out to service before Joseph Way gained his freedom. Joseph Way does not appear as a free black head of household in Newtown in the 1810 federal census. Many free blacks continued to live as dependent workers in white households, still separated from family members. Slaves like Joseph Way, however, who struggled to collect and free their families were probably more likely to also insist on and achieve the independence of their own households.
70Register of manumissions of slaves . . . , pp. 121, 122, 123, 139, MCNY.

Chapter Five

2007-08-18T21:42:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 5
CANDLES IN THE WIND: SLAVE FAMILIES IN CRISIS
Now, my brethren, it seems to me that there are no people that ought to attend to the hope of happiness in another world so much as we. Most of us are cut off from comfort and happiness here in this world, and can expect nothing from it. . . . If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.
Jupiter Hammon (1787)
The slave family in New York functioned under a powerful set of disadvantages. Since family members were generally owned separately and spread out among several white households, family life involved an ever‑changing network of long‑distance relationships. On a day to day basis the slaveholding may have served as the most meaningful social unit for non‑related slaves who lived together. In addition to this trauma of family separation as a way of life, New York slaves shared with southern slaves the risks common to all bondsmen: sale and the death of their owners. These catastrophic events could shatter a slave's fragile family stability and also destroy the security and comfort that many slaves may have found in friendships with other slaves in their masters' households.
The personal fortunes and life cycle of an owner drastically affected the family life of his slaves; his financial fluctuations, marriage, the settlement needs of his children and his death interacted with the rhythms of his slaves' personal lives to interrupt their normal lifelong processes of family formation. Sale or the death of an owner changed both the lives of individual slaves and the lives of black families as ongoing systems. Sale could drastically alter a slave's living circumstances; he could be removed from relatives and friends with whom he may have been living, or placed farther away from already separately domiciled family members. At the death of an owner another major crises developed for a slave; the holding which served as either his biological or fictive family was likely to be sold off, bequeathed away, sundered, and scattered.
The total number of sales that took place during 201 years of slavery in the southern six counties of New York is unknown, as is the incidence of sale during the lifetime of the average slave. For the continuous flow of immigrant slaves reaching New York, sale was their initial American experience. All New York slaves stood at risk of sale during their entire lives. Indications of a large number of undocumented sales appear in manumission certificates, runaway slave advertisements, and provisions in wills; sale touched the lives of most if not all slaves. Some owners who freed their slaves mentioned that at some time in the past they had purchased the slave, indicating that the slave had been sold at least once during his lifetime.1 Advertisements for twenty‑six runaway slaves mentioned former owners, places of birth, or residence of the missing slave property. Out of 3,484 slaves disposed of in wills between 1669 and 1829, 326 were ordered to be either sold (or hired out and then sold) immediately or at some future date; 82 other slaves were marked as sold in estate inventories. These 453 undocumented sales and the 312 sampled sales described below undoubtedly constitute only a shadow of the true volume of New York slave sales.
A sample of 312 bills of sale which were written between 1660 and 1817 involved the sale and purchase of 245 slaves.2 For some of the slaves sale was a repeated occurrence; within the sample of 312 sales, 108 of the separate sales involved 41 slaves who were sold from two to six times each. The other 204 sales represented only one known sale per slave.3 In addition to the sample of 312 bills of sale, a random sample of newspapers, 1701 to 1827, provides a sample of fifty‑seven advertisements for the sale of 125 slaves.4 Bills of sale and for sale advertisements sometimes listed the reason that the slave was being sold.
As table 1 shows, the single most common reason for the sale of a slave was the division of a testator's estate; it was at this point that slaves would be separated from friends and family members. Most of the reasons in the completed bills of sale emphasized the property nature of slaves--they were used as currency and collateral. Slaves were traded along with lands and farms, put forward as security for mortgages, and used to raise cash or repay debts. Owners offering their slaves for sale stressed other reasons, primarily that they no longer needed extra labor. Eight owners sold adult women because of their childbearing activities; children were not considered an economic asset in small New York holdings.5

TABLE 1

REASONS LISTED FOR SLAVE SALES

Reasons for Sale Bills of Sale Sale
(1660‑1817) Advertisements
(1701‑1827)

To free the slave immediately 12

Need to raise cash temporarily 7

Part of a land or business transaction 5

Slave used as payment for lands bought 2

Mortgage‑‑slave pledged as security to creditor 6

Indebtedness‑‑slave used to repay debt to buyer 4

Financial deal‑‑exchange of property 5

Payment for caretaking arrangement 1

Estate division‑‑sale by executor 16 24

Owner leaving the country 4

No need for the slave's labor 9

No need for slave's labor and need for cash 4

Excessive childbearing by slave woman 8

At slave's own desire 1

None listed 254 75

TOTAL 312 125

Men and women were equally represented in contracted bills of sale and in sale advertisements: 120 males and 125 females were sold and 44 men and 43 women were offered for sale. Where the age of the slave is known, the preference among buyers was for young slaves under the age of thirty‑five:6

Number and Percent Each Age Group Formed of Total Sales

Sale Ads Bills of Sale

Number Percent Number Percent

Children under 14 29 38.7 41 40.6

Age 15‑19 17 22.7 17 16.8

Age 20‑34 26 34.6 33 32.7

Over age 35 3 4.0 10 9.9

Total 75 100.0 101 100.0

Bills of sale and newspaper advertisements reveal the personal impact of sale on the slave and his immediate social organization. As table 2 shows, slaves were sold and offered for sale with or without family members or other blacks from the same original slaveholding in a number of familial and non‑familial combinations.7 A major difference emerged between slave advertised for sale and those actually sold and purchased in bills of sale. A comparison of the two groups reveals that while large proportions of slaves were initially offered for sale with coresident slaves or family members, the majority of slaves were eventually sold off individually. For most slaves sale meant separation from other blacks with whom they had lived on a daily basis.
Sale Ads Bills of Sale

Number Percent Number Percent

Offered/Purchased Alone 29 23.2 215 68.9

Offered/Purchased With Other
SlavesFrom the Holding 45 36.0 14 4.5

Offered/Purchased With Other
Family Members 51 40.8 83 26.6

Total 125 100.0 312 100.0

Although in the advertisements for sale only 23.2 percent of slaves were available for purchase alone, 68.9 percent of those actually sold were bought alone. These blacks were cut off from friends and relatives in their former owners' households. Thirty‑six percent of slaves were advertised for sale along with other unrelated slaves from the same holding, but only 4.5 percent of real purchases consisted of several slaves from the same holding. These few slaves would be able to preserve some connection to their former environment and to important personal relationships. A large 40.8 percent of slaves offered in newspapers were listed with other family members, but only 26.6 percent of slaves were ultimately purchased with relatives. Sale was least traumatic for this group, although some of their family members may have been left behind in or near their old owners' homes.
INSERT TABLE 2 HERE
Slave families who were sold together were fortunate: Harry, his wife Bett, and their child Peg were all purchased by Abraham Wyckoff of Flatlands in 1800 from the Widow Lott for 180.8 The following nuclear slave family was advertised together for sale in the New York Daily Advertiser on July 24, 1793. These five slaves, however, may have eventually been separately purchased, splitting up the family unit:
To be sold--A black family, for town or country, consisting of a man, his wife, a girl of about twelve, another girl about five years old, and a fine male child capable of running about alone. The parents are sober neat and well‑disposed--have heretofore lived in the country. The woman excellent in a Dairy, Cooking, etc. The eldest girl very handy in attending at table. The younger a girl of hopes--in short, it is a useful, trustworthy family, and of late years has been accustomed to live in this city, where the man can earn from five to six shillings a day.
A New Jersey slave family endured a variety of separation stages due to scattered ownership and frequent sale of members. Thomas, aged approximately twenty‑five years, was owned by William Sears of Long Hill, New Jersey. His wife, Sarah, was owned by Matthias Mount of Machiponux or Freehold, New Jersey. In 1794 she was sold to Dr. Stephen De Hart of Staten Island, along with her one‑year‑old child. Thomas ran away from his New Jersey master the next year (probably to see his wife and child) and was caught and placed in jail on Staten Island. His master came to Staten Island and sold him later in 1795 to Stephen De Hart, the owner of Thomas's wife and child. Thomas, Sarah, and their child were finally united under one roof in late 1795, but that winter the now Widow De Hart sold the child to John Walton of Englishtown, New Jersey. The family was again disrupted and split between owners and states.9
The location of the homes of both buyer and seller are known for 156 of the 312 sampled completed sales. Of this group 128 slaves (82.1 percent) were sold to a new owner who lived within a distance of twenty‑five miles (the outer mileage limit that slaves could hope to travel by foot).10 The other twenty‑eight sales removed slaves too far away for plausible visitations.11 While most slaves were sold individually out of sight and daily communication with coresident friends and families, most also remained near enough to visit at least occasionally. Owners of slave property tended to sell their labor to neighbors, friends, and relatives within their own easy orbit of communication and contact distance, inadvertently also keeping slave families within the same nearby distances which defined eighteenth and early nineteenth‑century travel. Where sales took place between white friends or family members, slaves had greater chances of maintaining contact with blacks left behind as a by‑product of communications and visits between old and new owners.
In forty‑four of the sales specific towns for both old and new owners were listed in the sale contract. The median distance to the new home was 7.8 miles.12 The distances ranged from a low of four miles between Newtown and Bushwick or five miles between Eastchester and Mamaroneck, to 37 1/2 miles between Rye and Brookhaven (involving a water crossing as part of the journey) or forty miles between Brookhaven and Jamaica. Thirty‑one of the 156 sales were within New York City (13 by 2 1/2 miles), and another thirty‑two were within the same town, which meant that sundered family members could still maintain close relationships. Nine sales were within Richmond County, easily permitting visitations anywhere within its 13 1/2 by 6 1/2 mile boundaries.
Of the 156 sales, 33 were across state lines, usually between New Jersey and New York. Eleven of the thirty‑three were close enough for visiting and contact, as in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to Staten Island. Seven sales shifted slaves from one county to another, from Richmond to Queens (an average of thirty miles apart), New York to Kings (ten miles apart), and Kings to Queens (twenty miles apart). No specific locations within the counties were indicated; if the towns involved were adjacent, the distances could have been somewhat shorter.
Between 1664 and 1785 most slaves were bought and sold for life; manumission was rare. With the growth in manumission sentiment and the implementation of gradual emancipation between 1785 and 1827, however, several new types of sales became common.13 After 1785 the time of a slave was frequently sold rather than his services for life. These limited‑term sales also disrupted family relations but held out the hope of freedom. Slaves were sold with a stipulated manumission proviso; some slaves were sold repeatedly, each time with an eventual manumission clause included. Children born to slave women in New York State after July 4, 1799, were legally born free but owed twenty‑five or twenty‑eight years of service to their mothers' masters. The unexpired time of these children had market value; 24 of the 312 sampled sales involved children sold with a provision that they were entitled to freedom at age twenty‑five (females) or twenty‑eight (males). On October 19, 1812, John H. Livingston sold twelve‑year‑old Ruth to Leonard Bleecker for $190 until age twenty‑five. Bleecker, however, noted on the document that he planned to free Ruth early at age eighteen.14
Other slaves were sold for a limited number of years only, but with no future manumission intended; the slave would probably revert again to the original owner, to be either retained, sold again, or freed. Ten of the 312 sales (concluded between 1796 and 1815) involved this type of arrangement. It served as a method of labor redistribution--owners could sell slaves off for a few years when their labor was not needed, profiting from the limited‑sale price. Abraham Polhemus of New York City, on August 29, 1798, sold nineteen‑year‑old Bill as a slave for fifteen years to Simon Van Nip, a Morris County, New Jersey, miller, for 108. At the end of fifteen years, Van Nip was to return Bill to Polhemus, if Bill was still alive.15 John Halsey, in 1805, sold his twenty‑year‑old slave Ceasar to Amos Curtiss for fifteen years for the sum of $200. The disposition to be made of Ceasar upon the termination of his period of service was unstated; he would presumably be returned to Halsey.16
Recently purchased slaves were often able to bargain with new masters for future freedom in exchange for a specific number of years of good service. When James Nicholson purchased Saul on October 13, 1798, they reached an agreement as to the terms of their work relationship. Nicholson "promise[d] to free, at the expiration of six years, his Negro man Saul, purchased this day from Mrs. Melmoth, for 175 dollars. If Saul conducts himself well, to the satisfaction of me and my family, he will be freed in five years."17 Eighteen such slaves struck a bargain with their new masters between 1794 and 1812 out of the sample of 312 sales.
Sales were sometimes arranged with the purpose of freeing the slave immediately. Whites, often New York Manumission Society officials, purchased a slave to secure his freedom from a master who was reluctant to either free the slave or allow the slave to buy his own independence. Blacks, themselves, sometimes induced whites to buy them from their present masters with the expectation of manumission. George Janeway bought George E. Moore from Jacob Moses for 40, the money having been provided by Moore "for that purpose." Janeway then freed Moore and released all claim to any goods or money which Moore might have acquired since his purchase.18
* * * * *
If a slave escaped sale during the lifetime of his owner, he could experience a severe crisis at the death of the owner. Family members who lived together and coresident blacks in the holding who enjoyed mutual support and friendship could be dispersed among several new owners. For some slaves the death of an owner set off a chain reaction of forseeable insecurity; these slaves were bequeathed temporarily to a wife or child with stipulated subsequent ownership changes.
The possibilities for slave family members to live together in small New York holdings were ascertained based on the age and sex distribution of slaves listed in individual wills, 1669 to 1829.19 A total of 1,192 slaves were counted as potentially able to live with conventionally defined family members--as spouses, nuclear families, or mothers with children. Analysis of the effects of owner death on slaves who lived in both real and theoretical (where information on their real relationships is missing) family units reveals that biological families and especially surrogate "holdings‑as‑families" were at great risk of separation during this crisis.
As table 3 shows, in all time periods there was a sharp difference in the incidence of family disruption through will provisions between definite slave families and those assumed to be families based on their sex and age composition alone. Although sample sizes were very small for known biological slave families, a distinct pattern characterizes the known and assumed family groups. In a total of 9 known marriages, only 1 was broken at the death of an owner (11.1 percent), but 56 out of 106 assumed marriages (52.8 percent) were broken. Out of 55 definite mother with child units, 12 (21.8 percent) suffered the removal of one or more children in a will, while 76 out of 95 assumed mother and child units experienced a separation (80 percent). Only 13 definite nuclear slave families who lived together were located. None were completely destroyed and none of the spouses were separated, but 5 suffered a break by the removal of some or all children (38.5 percent of families). Among the 103 assumed nuclear families, 82.5 percent suffered some kind of break: 51 (49.5 percent) were completely broken up 8 (7.8 percent) had the spouses separated, and 26 (25.2 percent) lost some or all of their
TABLE 3 should go here
children.20
This difference between the two groups illustrates the fact that many of the assumed families were not really related;21 at their death owners broke up slaveholdings with little regard for the holding as a social unit which often provided the main source of interpersonal relationships for slaves. The much lower incidence of breakup among real spouses and parents and children indicates owner recognition of these relationships and some effort to keep slave families together. The very small sample size of known families indicates that very few slave families lived together at all. Among those that did, the married couples may have lost all their children in prior sales, the mother and child units were all already without fathers, and small nuclear families were likely to be missing some of their children previously sold away.
Testators made many different kinds of provisions for their slave property.22 A full 26.5 percent of slaves disposed of in wills were given to their owners' wives under a variety of circumstances. Husbands left their wives slaves that the wives had themselves brought to the marriage as an inheritance from their fathers' slaveholdings; the wives retained the slaves as widows.23 Slaves were often given to wives only during widowhood or until the children came of legal age. Slaves left to widows could expect future insecurity; upon her remarriage, the children's maturation, or the widow's death, the slaves would once again suffer disruption and change--usually transferred to a child or sold. Twelve slaves were given the option of choosing their new master at the widow's remarriage or death. Thirty slaves served as wedding presents from the testator to his wife upon her remarriage. Slaves might also be hired out or sold at any time to support the testator's dependents.
The largest single type of disposition for slaves bequeathed in wills between 1669 and 1829 was to the owner's children; 38 percent were given to offspring. The slaveholding or the slave family, when broken up, was generally divided among several children. Testators in early New York did not practice primogeniture; slaves were dispersed equally among all children and between sons and daughters. Henry Brevoort, a New York City ironmonger, gave a wench Bet to his wife Mary, a boy Joe to his son Abraham, a girl Cill to his daughter Hester, a girl Diana to his son Nicholas, and ordered that his negro man Harry be sold with the rest of his personal estate. If the Brevoort children were adults, the three slaves would immediately be removed to different households. Bet, however, remained with the wife for fifteen years. When Mary Brevoort died in 1791 she freed Bet and her child Rebecca, who had been born during the interim. This holding of five slaves was completely dislocated by Henry Brevoort's death.24
The slaves owned by Nathaniel Sylvester in his large holding on Shelter Island lived in four family groups. In his 1679/80 will he gave his wife the negroes that belonged to her already (probably her parental inheritance): negro Jaquero, Hannah his wife, and their daughter Hope. Three married slave couples were bequeathed to his three sons. Tony and his wife Nanny went to son Giles, Joffet and his wife Jenine went to son Nathaniel, and Tamus and his wife Pym were bequeathed to his son Peter. Nathaniel Sylvester also gave each of his five daughters a negro girl. His estate inventory listed a total of twenty slaves worth 113, some of whom he owned in partnership; the disposition of the other six slaves is unknown. Sylvester bequeathed the nuclear family and the married couples in such a manner as to keep them together. The five girls, however, were probably the children of some or all of these four sets of slave spouses. The need to provide legacies for five daughters dictated that the children of his adult slaves would be sent to five households, all separated from their parents.25
Persons settling their estates sometimes stipulated that slaves were to be sold or hired out to raise cash or provide income for the family. A total of 322 slaves (9.2 percent) out of 3,484 slaves disposed of in wills were ordered to be sold under a variety of circumstances. The largest proportion, 287 slaves, were ordered to be sold outright. Twenty‑two slaves were to be sold at the wife's death or remarriage, six were to be sold for a limited period of time and then freed, four were sold to children, two were ordered to be either sold or set free, and one was to be sold upon bad behavior or freed upon good behavior. Ten slaves were ordered to be hired out, of whom two were to be hired out and then to be sold eventually, one was to be hired out for a period of time and then freed, and two were to be either hired out or sold, at the discretion of the executors.
The incidence of sale was higher in estate inventories than in wills due to the different purposes of these two types of documents. While wills were concerned with the distribution of slave and other property, estate inventories were straightforward property lists taken for business accounting purposes in order to settle the estate. Estate inventories did not ordinarily mention the distribution of slave property except when it was sold; dispositions for ninety‑four slaves in estate inventories indicated that eighty‑two were sold. Sales were also more common in estate inventories than in wills because they included sales which took place at both the bequest of the testator and the heirs who preferred to sell rather than retain their newly acquired slave property (which would not be reflected in wills).
Sale could entirely end the slaveholding as a stable social unit. The estate inventory of Johannis Rypell, a New York City baker, indicated that five of his six slaves were sold. The executors sold two negro men, Joe and Primus, for 95 each, a negro woman Dianna and her child for 100, and a woman Venus brought 79. One negro man named Tiortin was listed as "unsold." Three "negro's old bedsteads" were also listed as part of the estate's property.26
The other major category of disposition involved freedom. Out of 3,484 slaves disposed of in wills, 389 had some provision for either immediate or future manumission (11.2 percent). Most of these 389 slaves (366) were simply freed either immediately or later, often also with a legacy (135 slaves). For the other twenty‑three slaves freedom was one of the options given to themselves or their new owners; three slaves could have either freedom or the right to choose their new owners. Six slaves were to be sold for a period of time but then to be freed. Ten slaves were to be freed at the owner's wife's death; two of them would also receive a legacy at that time (in addition to the 135 above‑mentioned slaves). One slave was to be hired out and then freed, two were to be either sold or set free, and one was to be sold upon bad behavior or freed upon good conduct.
Barnabus Wines of Southold, in his 1762 will, not only freed two of his slaves, but gave them generous legacies:27
To negro man Peter, his chest and wearing apparel, and 10, also my gun and small iron pot, hoe, one scythe, one sickle. To my negro woman Peg, all her wearing apparel, and her beding, three pairs of sheets, two chests, one pot, one trammel, one pewter tongs, four old chairs, two basins, a linnen wheel, one cow and calf, one box. My negro man Peter and my negro woman Pegg are to be freed at my death, and I give Peter and Pegg one‑half acre of land with all the building preparations thereon, and some wood and timber during their lives. They shall keep a cow if they so choose. To negro man Tom, all his wearing apparel, bedding, and 1 in money. To my negro boy Ruben, 5. My executors shall give a bond that the negroes shall not be a burden to any town. . . .
Wines freed Peter and Peg with the ability to support themselves on a farm; they were given implements with which to hunt, raise crops and livestock, make linen, and house themselves. Tom and Ruben were given legacies but do not seem to have been manumitted.
As table 4 shows, in addition to being left to wives (26.5 percent) and children (38 percent), sold (9.2 percent), hired out, or freed (11.2 percent),28 slaves were disposed of in several other ways in wills. The will and estate inventory of Richard Charlton, Rector of St. Andrew's Church on Staten Island, illustrate the use of multiple types of dispositions in the settling of one estate:29
negro girl Bett‑‑to granddaughter Bayley family

negro boy Bremus‑‑to two granddaughters

negro man Adam‑‑to grandson Dongan family

negro boy Titus

negro wench Phebe to son John

negro man Carlos

negro wench Nan‑‑to Elizabeth Nicolls, but sold instead during testator's lifetime

negro man Jack‑‑sold to Jas. Guyon, Sr. for 40

negro Kinch‑‑sold to Alex Wallace for 80

negro wench Belinda and her children, a boy Jon age 3 and girl Silvia age 19
months‑‑sold to Justice Lake for 100

negro Cato‑‑sold to John Decker for 80

Charlton held thirteen slaves at his death; they were distributed among nine owners, consisting of one granddaughter, two granddaughters in joint ownership of one slave, one grandson, one son, and five buyers. The holding as an entity, with familial or friendship relationships, was destroyed. The only known family grouping in the holding consisted of Belinda and her two children; they were sold together and not separated. The six slaves bequeathed to family members would have had the greatest chance to maintain contact as a by‑product of the communications between their new owners. Until the grandchildren reached their majority, Bett, Bremus, and Adam would in fact remain with Titus, Phebe, and Carlos under the management of son John.
The ways in which persons writing wills disposed of their slaves changed from 1669 to 1829. Progressively fewer slaves were bequeathed to wives, children, friends, and relatives. While a high of 24 percent of all slaves bequeathed were given to wives for life in the 1721 to 1770 period, only 11.7 percent were disposed of in this way by 1801 to 1829. In the 1669 to 1720 period, 46.4 percent of slaves were simply left to children, but only 20.9 percent by the early nineteenth century. The incidence of sale also decreased over time. The major change occurred in the proportion of slaves who were offered immediate or delayed freedom. Far greater proportions of slaves were freed at their owners' deaths after 1791 due to relaxed manumission laws and a favorable public attitude toward both private manumission and the phasing out of slavery in the state. Slave families and slaveholdings were still disrupted by the deaths of owners, but increasing proportions of slaves were freed rather than kept by the testator's family or sold.
* * * * *
Slaves reacted to sale or the death of their owners with a mixture of fear, apprehension, sorrow, joy (in the case of a bad master), and resignation. They also sometimes responded by running away. On September 7, 1795, Abraham Van Alen of Kinderhook, Columbia County, sold Simon, age twenty‑five, to John Peter De Lancey of Mamaroneck for 100. Seven months later, Simon ran away. De Lancey described him as follows: "Likes wenches. Speaks low Dutch. Was seen going toward White Plains," and offered a twenty dollar reward for his return.30 Although there was no explicit connection between his sale and his disappearance seven months later, the events probably were related. White Plains was the next town to the north of Mamaroneck--Simon may have been heading north back toward Kinderhook.
A common impetus to flight was the death of the owner; it implied imminent sale and disruption for the slave family and the slaveholding. The estate inventory of Patrick McKnight, a New York City merchant, listed one negro woman called Isabella "eloped away this eighteen days." A note later added that she had been since found and sold by vendue for 34.31 After the death of Rem Remsen, an auction was held to sell off his slaves; five were sold, but "two negro men, Abel value 80 and Dick value 32.10.0 ran away and Cornelius Remsen was paid 9 for going to Boston in quest of them."32 These two slaves probably absconded in anticipation of being sold.
Estate executors as well as owners often expended time and money to locate runaway slave property.33 John Baxter, a Flatlands farmer, schoolteacher, and amanuensis, recorded in his diary his actions following the flight of his slave Taaft:34

April 2, 1797 Taaft the negro eloped.

April 3, 1797 Went after Taft as far as Thomas Bets

April 5, 1797 Went a negro hunting as far as Jamaica
in Co. with A. Wyckoff

May 3, 1797 Sold a negro Taft to Jacobus Lott for 90

When Taaft ran away, Baxter personally searched for him as far away as the 7 1/2 miles to Jamaica. Taaft was recaptured and sold away, either as previously planned or as punishment for the escape.
A random sample of 189 runaway slave advertisements for blacks who absconded in the southern six counties of New York between 1726 and 1814 listed 245 fugitives.35 This group included 220 blacks and 25 Indians and was composed of 170 men, 38 women, and 37 children. There were 218 primary runaways among the 245 slaves, defined as slaves who left on their own initiative. Children are considered to be secondary runaways, taken by parents involuntarily, except for ten children who ran away on their own.
Indians appeared with blacks in the steady stream of runaways. Indians may have been more likely to escape than blacks due to the familiarity of home turf for many and the proximity of friendly Indians.36 Black runaway slaves were also often welcomed and sheltered by Indian tribes.37 Out of the total of twenty‑five Indian runaways, seven were referred to as racially mixed. Masters seemed uncertain as to which group these slaves really belonged; owners generally labelled them as mulattoes or half‑Indians.38 Two of the seven obviously considered themselves to be Indian. Peter Huggeford's slave was a "negro man, a short well‑set Indian looking fellow," who "it is supposed will attempt to get among the Indians, as he has done twice before." He either perceived himself as Indian, was part Indian, or accepted Indian protection commonly offered to runaways.39 William Smith's "mulatto slave, half Indian half negro," ran away in the company of an Indian fellow from another owner, obviously identifying with this group.40 Black‑Indian miscegenation was also indicated in other cases in addition to the seven runaways referred to as half‑Indians. On December 18, 1793, a negro girl Tamer, age fourteen, with a yellow complexion, ran away. Her owner added that "an Indian fellow St. Murray would steal said girl."41 He could have been her father, a male relative, or a suitor. Such runaways were ostensibly negroes but had blood or other ties to the Indian community.
Most runaways (82 percent) were young adults between the ages of fifteen and thirty‑four, based on the known ages of 150 out of 218 primary runaway slaves:42
Age of Primary Voluntary Runaways, Blacks and Indians, Sexes Combined

Age Group Number of Runaways

5 ‑ 9 1

10 ‑ 14 9

15 ‑ 19 28

20 ‑ 24 49

25 ‑ 29 29

30 ‑ 34 17

35 ‑ 39 7
40 ‑ 44 5

45 ‑ 49 2

50 ‑ 54 2

55 ‑ 89 ..

90 ‑ 94 1

Unknown 68

Total 218

Ten children ran away as independent actors. Only one was under the age of ten;43 most children under the age of ten were secondary runaways taken by adult parents. A trickle of independent runs was undertaken by children aged ten to fourteen years (five boys and four girls) who were first experiencing biological maturity and new psychological independence from adults, both parents and owners. Escapes from slavery were more common among older teenagers aged fifteen to nineteen years; they began to initiate autonomous, assertive behaviors. Five of these twenty‑eight older teenagers had already experienced sale: three women with children (two had been sold recently), and two blacks for whom places of birth were listed, hinting at previous sales. No evidence of prior ownership exists for the other twenty‑three late teenagers, although runaway slave advertisements may simply have excluded this information. With slave labor first becoming valuable at puberty, many of these twenty‑three blacks had also probably already experienced separation from parents and sale, perhaps motivating them to escape.
The incidence of running away was highest in the twenty to twenty‑four age bracket, representing about a third (32.7 percent) of all runaways.44 This age‑related change in behavior could reflect certain events at this juncture in the life cycle of the slave: young spouses sold apart, young nuclear families split up, and young adults visiting parents and friends. Running away was a phenomenon of the young; only 11.3 percent of runaways were over the age of thirty‑five, with the numbers dropping precipitously after the age of fifty.45
New York slaves who ran away hesitated to leave in the cold winter months of December, January, February, and March. Escapes rose with the advent of warm weather in April and May, with an unexplained lull in June. The most popular month for running away was August, followed by a sharp dip in September. Another small peak occurred in October and November, as slaves intending to leave hastened to depart ahead of the coming winter weather:

Seasonality of Slave Runs, Blacks and Indians Combined

Month Definite Guess Total

January 4 6 10

February 5 1 6

March 10 5 15

April 19 1 20

May 19 6 25

June 11 5 16
July 15 7 22

August 21 11 32

September 14 1 15

October 19 1 20

November 7 13 20

December 13 3 16

Total 157 60 217

NOTE: One of the 218 primary runaways was excluded from this study as the month of escape could not be ascertained. The exact date of the run was available for 157 slaves; for 60 slaves, the date used was the date of the runaway slave advertisement. Since an ad could run for several months, unless the owner mentioned the date of departure, the ad itself provides only an estimate of the actual date.
Slave flights peaked at certain phases in the agricultural season, perhaps related to the workload for rural New York farm slaves. Peaks occurred in Spring at plowing and planting time, in August before harvest time, and after the crops were in, in October and November. Such rhythms, however, may have had more impact on the runaway patterns of southern plantation slaves, whose work routines were more seasonally determined and less varied than on small northern farms.
In only twelve cases could the local distance travelled by the runaway be guaged from the place of residence of the master and the destination suggested in his advertisement--to a former home or owner, to a black relative, or to a site where the slave had been spotted. Another eleven cases involved runs to or from outside New York State, some entailing longer than average distances; nine other additional cases involved imprecise routes. The twelve trackable slaves journeyed from four to thirty‑five miles away,46 mainly within a twenty‑five mile walking limit. These short distances suggest flights to relatives and friends with whom the runaway usually communicated and visited when permitted.
Masters generally had fairly good ideas both as to the reason for flight and the destination of their runaway slaves. Owners knew about their slaves' families and with which relatives in which towns slaves maintained contact--even though they did not recognize these relationships in law. Although lack of documentation shrouds the immediate reasons for most slave flights, some masters surmised that slaves were heading for former masters' homes or to see family members, indicating that sales and separations had taken place in the past. For 69 (31.7 percent) of the 218 primary runaways, the owner's advertisement suggested a motive for the escape and a possible future direction for the slave.
As table 5 shows, family reasons accounted for forty‑five of the sixty‑nine runs (65.2 percent) where motivations were known.47 The owners of twenty‑six slaves expected them to head for a former owner's home or neighborhood or a place of birth, presumably to visit friends, fictive kin from former holdings, and family members still there.48 Previous owners were listed in these advertisements as clues to the slaves' destinations. For two of the slaves, two prior owners each were mentioned, meaning that these blacks had run away from at least their third owner. In two cases where the purchase was recent, the runaway slaves were women who left with infant children, probably to see husbands or relatives still living with their former owners. Samuel Pearce's nineteen‑year‑old slave Charity took her two‑year‑old son with her when she left. Pearce noted that "it is probable they will endeavor to go to White Plains, as she was bought from Dr. Graham ten months ago and seemed anxious to get back."49 When Justus Thompson of Bushwick advertised for nineteen‑year‑old Jane, he stated that she took her nineteen‑month‑old daughter with her, and that they were purchased five months ago from J. Jackson of Brooklyn.50
TABLE 5 SHOULD GO HERE
The owners of nineteen other slaves specifically mentioned that the slave either ran away with or ran away to family members.51 John Decker and Widow Haughwout, both of Staten Island, were aware that their two blacks, either married or courting, were having a relationship separated only by enslavement. When Decker's man ran away and Haughwout's pregnant negro woman ran away, Decker and Haughwout jointly offered a forty shilling reward for their capture, adding that "it is supposed they went together."52 These two spouses or lovers fled two separate masters to be together. One slave couple who were owned together ran away to set up their own free household: Will and Betty "were last seen at a house in Roosevelt Street, owned by Mrs. Abijah Arden, of whom they had hired a tenement."53
Two men ran away to see their wives; no women ran away to visit their husbands, indicating the more passive role played by slave women. Hugh Grangent advertised for his mulatto slave John in the New York Weekly Postboy on January 14, 1750/51, writing that John "is supposed to be in this town, having a wife at the Widow Bowne's in Smith's Fly." Peter Keteltas, in advertising for his runaway slave, estimated that Jack, age thirty‑three, would run to either his wife or his mother. Jack "was purchased from Hendrick Emons of Rocky Hill, New Jersey, about nine years ago, and it is supposed he is either gone that way, where he has a mother, or else to Anthony Ten Eyck's at Albany, where he has a wife."54
The four nuclear families that ran away chose flight as a method of either reunion or family redefinition under freedom; in three of the four cases, family members were split between two masters. Owners considered the male slave as the instigator and main actor, who stole both himself and the owner's other property (his wife and children). Thomas Pell of Pelham Manor advertised for a slave family which had already been at large for two months. His negro man Abraham, age forty‑five, ran away and "took with him a small mulatto wench by the name of Moll, which he claims as his wife, and two negro children--one a boy age three and the other a girl five months." They had recently been seen on Long Island.55 Two owners, Adrian Martense, Jr. and William Berry, both of New Utrecht, advertised together for the return of their slaves. Sam, age twenty‑three to twenty‑four, ran away and took with him clothing, his wife named Bet, aged twenty years, and two female children aged one year and three years old.56
Ulster County slave Sojourner Truth recollected several family‑motivated slave escape attempts among the bondsmen that she knew. After Charles Hardenbergh sold his slave woman, her husband disappeared with three of their children to prevent any further sales. "It was rumored that all four of them were living with the Indians, way up in the hills." Sojourner's husband Tom once pursued his second wife on foot all the way from Ulster County to New York City after she had been sold away from him:57
He had tramped the rutted dirt roads and wet swamps, sleeping in the woods at night, dodging behind trees to avoid the wagons that rolled past. . . .
On reaching the city, Tom had hidden out for a month in those dark alleys that sheltered so many runaways. But he never had found his wife. Instead, the slave hunters had found Tom and returned him to Dumont. The scars on his back were what remained of his master's greeting to him that day.
Most runaway slaves set out alone: in this sample 155 slaves (63.3 percent) escaped on their own and 90 slaves (36.7 percent) left in the company of other slaves. Of the 189 newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves, 155 described a single slave and 34 described multiple slaves who had run away in groups of from two to six persons. The thirty‑four group runs were undertaken by various combinations of slaves. In thirteen cases two slave men ran away together; in six of the cases they had been owned together, and in seven cases they had been owned separately.58 Three black men who had been owned together ran away together. Two children who fled together had belonged to the same owner. Two sets of spouses ran away; one set had been owned together, the other set apart. Four nuclear families ran away together. Three of the four had had members who were owned separately; two owners each jointly placed the three newspaper advertisements.59 Nine mothers ran away from their owners, each taking a single child. Four large runaway groups consisted of three, six, and six slaves (each of these groups had been owned together) and six slaves who had been divided among three different owners.60 Twelve of the thirty‑four group runs involved separately owned slaves. While some of the escapes must have involved prior contact between the slaves and coordination of plans, others may have occurred spontaneously when a runaway suddenly appeared and urged his family member or friend to accompany him.
Women were far less likely to run away than men. Out of 208 primary adult runaways, 170 were men (81.7 percent) and only 38 (18.3 percent) were women.61 Both sexes exhibited similar flight patterns: 47.4 percent of women ran away alone, while another 23.7 percent of women ran away alone but took children along, totalling 71.1 percent of women who left independently compared to 75.9 percent of men. It took perhaps more courage for women slaves to depart alone, unaided by other adults, with the added burden of infants and young children.
The major difference between male and female runaways was in the proportions who ran away with spouses, families, or in large, sexually mixed groups; 28.9 percent of women left in this way, and only 7.1 percent of men (another 17 percent of men left in the company of one or two other presumably unrelated males).62 Women, more than men, ran away in supportive groups protected or led by males. Men engaged in another style of running away which no women used--men ran away together in twos or threes. Women did not band together with other women slaves to flee. Women either ran alone, ran alone with children, or in male accompanied groups.
A total of twenty‑seven children were taken along by adult runaways; twenty were under the age of five, three ranged in age from seven to eleven, and four had no age listed. Most of the children were infants or toddlers, burdensome in any runaway situation. Mothers who ran away alone took only one child each, while mothers who left in the company of husbands or large groups commonly took more children along (in five out of nine cases). The nine women who ran away alone and took only one child each generally brought along very young children (eight out of the nine cases), aged two months, nineteen months, twenty‑two months, one year, two years, two years, three years, three years, and ten years old. The nine mothers who took only one child probably either left other children behind or had some who were already sold off. The ages of these women (19, 19, 19, 24, 25, 25, 27, 32, and 1 unknown) indicate that at least five had probably given birth to more than the one child. Twenty‑seven‑year‑old Molly took with her her ten‑year‑old daughter Amey, who was probably her first‑born, but probably not her only child.63
Eight children were taken along by their parents as part of four nuclear families (one, two, two, and three children each). Four large runaway groups consisted of bands of three, six, six and six slaves. They included five mothers (one group had two sets of mothers with children) with one, one, one, three, and four children apiece. These mothers were accompanied by men runaways of unspecified relationship, enabling them to bring along larger numbers of children than could single women running alone.64 All but one of these eighteen children were under the age of five years.65
While the four women in nuclear families and the five women who left in large groups were often able to take along more children than could women who absconded alone, they also probably left other children behind. One twenty‑two‑year‑old woman brought along only a nine‑month‑old infant, and one thirty‑year‑old woman brought only her four‑year‑old son. Bet, age twenty, probably ran away with all of her children, aged three years and one year. Nan was eighteen when she ran away, and had probably only given birth to the eighteen‑month‑old child which accompanied her.66
Slaves who ran away alone, men who ran away with friends, mothers who ran away with children, spouses who fled together, and nuclear families who fled as a group were most often separated from some of their family members when they absconded. Flights undertaken for the short‑term purpose of visiting with a particular parent, child, or spouse for as long as possible meant that the runaway would be out of contact with other separately domiciled relatives during this period. When flights were undertaken in order to strike out for complete freedom, unless the plans included a series of stops to collect scattered family members, the escape to freedom could mean a permanent break in the established visitation routines between fleeing/hiding and stationary family members; they would not know where the runaway was.
While most slaves ran away in order to be with loved ones, unless the flight resulted in long‑term liberty and family reunion, it could prove as traumatic to family relations as sale or the death of an owner. A slave who successfully passed into freedom alone could be sundered from his relatives forever; attempts to see them could result in capture. Slaves who were recaptured by their owners could be beaten, killed, or sold even further away from their families than before. To the continual stream of runaway slaves in New York, the chance to be with parts of their families and perhaps to achieve freedom must have seemed worth the risk.
1Sixteen manumission documents mentioned the prior sale of nineteen slaves, eighteen of whom were now being freed. These nineteen cases were not included in the sample of 312 bills of sale, as information on the previous sale was often not in adequate detail. The sales described in runaway ads, wills, and inventories were also excluded from the bills of sale sample.
2This sample of 312 documents was collected randomly from town records and from miscellaneous slavery manuscript collections: Slaves--Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Folders one and two, New York Public Library; Slavery Collection and Plimpton Collection, Columbia University; Westchester County Historical Society; New‑York Historical Society. Isolated references to slave sales occurred in family genealogies in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Register of manumissions of slaves . . . , Museum of the City of New York, also contained regular bills of sale unconnected to manumission cases. The New York Manumission Society--Reports of the Standing Committee, January 26, 1797‑March 11, 1807, reels one and two, New‑York Historical Society, contained case histories of slaves who sued for freedom often on the basis of fraudulent out‑of‑state sales.
3Of the forty‑one slaves who were sold more than once, twenty‑five were sold twice, ten were sold three times, three were sold four times, two were sold five times each, and one slave changed hands six times. Each sale of the same slave was counted as a separate sale in this sample. Some of the 204 slaves may also have been sold more than once during their lifetimes, but no documentation exists for their multiple sales.
4Newspaper issues were randomly sampled for the following publications and years: New York Gazette (Bradfords), 1726‑1744; Suffolk Gazette, 1804‑1810; Long Island Weekly Intelligencer, 11 June 1807 and 27 November 1806; Long Island Star, 1809‑1814, 1827; Frothingham's Long Island Herald, scattered issues 1791‑1798; New York Weekly Post Boy, 1747‑1767; New York Mercury, 1768‑1781; Loudon's New York Packet, 1785; The Argus, or Greenleaf's New Daily Advertiser, 1796; New York Commercial Advertiser, 1799, 1802, 1804, 1809; New York Journal and Patriotic Register, 1799; New York Spectator, 1799, 1802, 1804, 1809; New York Evening Post, 1802, 1804, 1809, 1827; New York Daily Advertiser, 1802, 1804, 1827. All at New‑York Historical Society.
5Female slaves who were sold because they bore too many children are overrepresented in the group where reasons for sale are given; these eight cases were not randomly selected.
6Children are treated as individuals in tallying sales even when they were sold with parents, since they were purchased on the same commodity basis as adults. Children may form a disproportionate amount of the group with known ages, as their specific age may have been more likely to be featured in the ad than for adults. Children form 30.4 percent of the advertised slaves (38/125), but form 38.7 percent (29/75) of advertised slaves with known ages. In completed bills of sale, children comprise 21.5 percent of all slaves sold (67/312) but 40.6 percent (41/101) of the group where an age is known.
7See pp. ‑ below on the sale of slave children.
8Journal of John Baxter of Flatlands, Long Island, 1790‑1826, vol. 1, June 30, 1800 entry, LIHS. Baxter commented that this slave family were "no great bargain."
9Thomas Eddy, Letter to New York Manumission Society, December 28, 1797, New York Manumission Society-Reports of the Standing Committee, January 26, 1797‑March 11, 1807, reels one and two, pp. 105‑6, NYHS. These slaves were entitled to their freedom by virtue of their having been sold into New York State; slave importations were prohibited in 1788.
10These 128 sales included 11 of the 33 out‑of‑state sales, the 31 within New York City, the 32 within the same town, the 9 within Richmond County, 6 of the 7 cross‑county sales, and 39 of the 44 sales where specific towns were listed for both old and new owners.
11These 28 sales included 22 of the 33 out‑of‑state sales, one cross‑county sale from Richmond to Queens, and 5 of the 44 cases where specific towns for both old and new owners were listed.
12The forty‑four sales were between the towns of Newtown and Bushwick (4 miles apart), Southfield and Westfield (5), Eastchester and Mamaroneck (5), White Plains and Mamaroneck (6), Bushwick and New York City (6 1/2), Mamaroneck and Rye (6 1/2), Rye Neck to White Plains (6 1/2), Rye and Mamaroneck (6 1/2), Flatbush and Newtown (7), Flushing and Jamaica (7), New York City to Westchester, six cases (7 1/2), Eastchester and Harrison's Purchase, Rye (7 1/2), Eastchester and Westchester (7 1/2), Oysterbay and Huntington (7 1/2), Hempstead and Flushing, two cases (8), New York City and Flatbush (10), New Utrecht and New York City (12 1/2), New Rochelle and New York City (13), New York City and Mamaroneck, seven cases (15), Bedford and Scarsdale, two cases (15 1/2), North Hempstead and New York City (17 1/2), Rye and Hempstead, four cases (20 miles partially across water), Southold and Brookhaven (25), Southampton and Brookhaven (30), Northfield and Mamaroneck (30), Rye and Brookhaven (37 1/2 miles, partly over water), Brookhaven and Jamaica (40), and Easthampton and Brookhaven, also separated by forty miles distance. These calculations were taken between the central points of the two respective towns.
13See pp. ‑ below.
14Leonard Bleecker, Manumission of Ruth, October 19, 1812, Yoshpe, "Record of Slave Manumissions," p. 94.
15Register of manumissions of slaves . . . , p. 229, MCNY.
16Bill of Sale, John Halsey to Amos Curtiss, August 6, 1805, Register of manumissions of slaves . . . , p. 230, MCNY.
17Register of manumissions of slaves . . . , p. 124, MCNY.
18George Janeway, Manumission of George E. Moore, April 22, 1801, Yoshpe, "Record of Slave Manumissions," p. 85.
19See pp. ‑ above. Although this methodology usually inflates the real number of slaves who lived with relatives, in some cases it hides real family members such as adult siblings, who were not counted as family members. Henry Beekman left his wife Gertruyd the use of negroes Robin and his brother Sam, and "such other two of my slaves as she shall choose." The executors were ordered to manumit Robin and his brother Sam after the wife's death or sooner if she consented. Will of Henry Beekman, New York City, October 23, 1775, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 12:341‑43. Based on their sexes alone, Robin and Sam would have been counted as unrelated male adults held together. In this case, their relationship was mentioned, and they would be kept and eventually freed together.
20It is possible that the 47.2 percent of unbroken assumed marriages, the 20 percent of unbroken assumed mother and child units, and the 17.5 percent of unbroken assumed nuclear families represent most of the core of real families within the assumed group.
21My methodology paired off all adult men and women in a holding as potential spouses and any children were distributed among them to make composite assumed nuclear families. As an example, Obadiah Smith's will listed a boy Micah, a negro wench Judah and two negro men, James and Dick. Judah went to his wife for life, and Micah to her during her widowhood. The two men were given to his two sons. This was counted as an assumed nuclear family; Judah was theoretically paired off with one of the men, and Micah was their child. The will broke up the spouses, with Micah remaining with his mother until the testator's widow remarried. Will of Obadiah Smith, Smithtown, November 17, 1761, William Pelletreau, comp., Records of the Town of Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y., with Other Ancient Documents of Historic Value [1650‑1836], 2 vols. (n.p.: By authority of the town, 1898), 1:55.
22The sample of 3,484 slaves bequeathed in wills includes 2,451 slaves in regular wills, 1,111 slaves in miscellaneous wills, and 50 blacks in wills that listed both black and Indian slaves, totalling 3,612 slaves (from which 128 elderly blacks are subtracted), leaving 3,484 slaves for whom dispositions are listed. Provisions for elderly blacks are discussed in chap. 9. Miscellaneous wills included dispositions for 1,111 slaves; they contained uncertainties as to the number of slaves in the holding. Words like "some," "certain," or "my" negroes were uniformly counted as two slaves. In the abstract of John Lawrence's will, he left his wife Elizabeth certain negroes, and to daughters Charity and Sarah, each a negro girl. Based on the abstract alone, two slaves to a wife and two to children would have been tabulated. The original will was more specific; he left two negroes, James and Bess, to his wife during widowhood, and two negro girls, Nell and Dianna, to his two daughters. In this case, the assumption that plural references refer to two slaves would be correct. Will of John Lawrence, Flushing, September 29, 1712, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 2:146; Original Will No. 391, Historical Documents Collection, NYGBS.
23Will of Daniel Betts, Newtown, May 27, 1762, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 6:186. Betts left his wife Deborah the negro wench she had brought with her.
24Will of Henry Brevoort, New York City, June 10, 1776, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 10:298; Will of Mary Brevoort, New York City, July 19, 1791, Coll. NYHS, Abstract of Wills, 14:256.
25Will of Nathaniel Sylvester, Shelter Island, 1679/80, probated November 27, 1680, Liber 2, Wills, Surrogate Court, New York City, in Helen Z. Wortis Collection, Boxes 351 A, B, C, LIHS. Wortis relied on the original manuscript will at the Shelter Island Public Library. Estate Inventory of Nathaniel Sylvester, Shelter Island, September 22, 1680, Manuscript No. 160, Shelter Island Historical Society, copied in Helen Z. Wortis Collection, LIHS.
26Estate Inventory of Johannis Rypell, New York City, December 4, 1761, Scott and Owre, Genealogical Data from Inventories.
27Will of Barnabus Wines, Southold, February 3, 1762, New York County Wills, 1758‑1764 reel, p. 397, NYGBS.
28These figures apply to the entire sample of will dispositions of slaves, combining evidence from all will types. Among the group of slaves who were listed in regular wills and in wills listing both blacks and Indians (the Indians were excluded from the dispositions sample), 28.9 percent were bequeathed to wives, 40.8 percent to children, 7.2 percent were sold, and 12.1 percent were freed. Among slaves listed in the group of miscellaneous wills, 23 percent were bequeathed to wives, 34.6 percent to children, 12.3 percent were sold, and 7.6 percent were freed. Some slaves were counted in more than one category, as they had serial or optional dispositions (sold for a period of time and then to be freed, etc.).
29Will of Richard Charlton, Richmond County, June 23, 1777, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 13:250; Estate Inventory of Richard Charlton, October 20, 1777, Manuscript Room, New York Public Library.
30De Lancey Family Papers, MCNY. This case was not included in the sample of 189 runaway advertisements.
31Estate Inventory of Patrick McKnight, New York City, October 5, 1738, Inventories of Estates--New York City and Vicinity 1717‑1844, NYHS.
32Estate Inventory of Rem Remsen, May 1, 1790, Scott and Owre, Genealogical Data from Inventories.
33The executors of the estate of Captain Beezley had to advertise for Domingo, a Spanish negro man, age forty, who was "supposed to be in or near the Swamp, having been with one Mary Carney, a white woman, who frequently used to harbor him near the Stockade." Domingo may have taken advantage of his transitory ownership position and the gap in authority after the death of his owner to escape. Runaway Slave Ad, New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, 27 June 1748.
34Journal of John Baxter of Flatlands, Long Island, 1790‑1826, vol. 1, LIHS.
35For a list of the newspapers used to compile the sample of runaway slave advertisements, see n. 4 above. One additional advertisement was derived from a 1679 legal case. Three of the 189 ads were placed by New Jersey owners, and two by Connecticut owners; they were included here because the slaves were either originally from New York or were running to a destination in the southern six counties of New York.
36Eleven percent of this sample of 218 primary runaways (24 out of 218) were Indian; Indians were probably over‑represented among runaways. The proportion of all slaves who were Indians is unknown, but 11 percent is probably too high an estimate. Although many of the Indian slaves were from other colonies and therefore as unfamiliar with New York as were their black counterparts, the many local enslaved or bound Indians found flight easy. McManus, Negro Slavery, pp. 102‑3, points out that both Indians and negro runaways received asylum with the Senecas and Onondagas in northern New York, and the Minisinks on eastern Long Island.
37Black runaway slaves were taken in by such Indian tribes as the Matinecocks, Montauks, Shinnecocks, and Massapequas on Long Island, with whom they often intermarried. Slave recovery clauses were included in colonial Indian treaties, indicating white concern over the haven afforded black runaways by local tribes.
38I counted all racially mixed runaways as Indians rather than negroes, as their society probably also did. Runaway Slave Ad, Loudon's New York Packet, 15 August 1785; Runaway Slave Ad, Long Island Star, 10 August 1814; Runaway Slave Ad, New York Weekly Post Boy, 30 July 1744.
39Runaway Slave Ad, New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, 19 November 1770. This racial confusion reflected the intermarriage of black and Indian slaves and of negro runaways with tribe members; their descendants often passed into the Indian group in terms of racial and cultural identification. McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 103.
40William Smith, Manor of St. George, Runaway Slave Ad, in Henry Onderdonk, "Suffolk County in Olden Times," Journal of Long Island History, 6, no. 1 (1966):19.
41Micah Smith, Smithtown, Runaway Slave Ad (also see Samuel Thompson, Brookhaven, Runaway Slave Ad), in Henry Onderdonk, "Suffolk County in Olden Times," Journal of Long Island History, 6, no. 2 (1966):25, 27.
42New England's runaway slaves were also young; two‑thirds of the runaways were age twenty‑five or younger. Lorenzo Greene, "The New England Negro as Seen in Advertisements for Runaway Slaves," Journal of Negro History 29 (April 1944): 125‑46. Also see McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 106.
3Charlotte, age nine, ran away with thirteen‑year‑old Harriet from the same New York City holding; they were later seen in Bushwick. Runaway Slave Ad, Long Island Star, 29 December 1813.
44Kulikoff, "Beginnings of the Afro‑American Family in Maryland," p. 187, develops a similar timetable. "Few men . . . ran away in their late teens, but the numbers rose in the early twenties when the search for wives began, and crested between twenty‑five and thirty‑four when most men married and began families."
45See McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 107. He found only six slaves over the age of fifty in runaway ads in the eighteenth century.
46These twelve slaves travelled from Bushwick to Brooklyn (4 miles away), New York City to Bushwick (5), Brooklyn to New Lots (6), Newtown to New York City (7 1/2), New York City to Kingsbridge (7 1/2), Lower Yonkers to New York City (10), Jamaica to the New York Ferry (12 1/2), Hempstead to Westchester (15), New York City to White Plains (20), Oysterbay to Brooklyn (25), Staten Island to Tappan, Bergen County, New Jersey (30), and New York City to Smithtown, 35 miles away.
47Research on runaway slaves in the South also found that the prime reason for flight was to visit with family members and friends. Wood, Black Majority, pp. 248, 253, 264, noted that three types of slaves were most likely to run away: slaves with family ties, newly arrived Africans, and blacks who had recently changed masters. He also noted the frequent description of slaves as "the former property of someone" in advertisements, indicating the instability of ownership which threatened family relations. Kulikoff, "Beginnings of the Afro‑American Family in Maryland," p. 190, noted that 54 percent of all slaves whose destinations were described by masters, ran away to visit. Nine percent of runaways (20 out of 233) left to join their spouses. McManus, Negro Slavery, pp. 108‑9, ranked family reasons as one of the most common grievances which resulted in flight.
48The owners of seventeen other slaves suggested a particular destination for the runaway not identified as a former owner's home or place of birth. These locations sometimes included areas in which the runaway had recently been seen lurking. Some of these destinations may also have been former owners' homes, but were not designated as such in the advertisement.
49New York Mercury, 30 June 1777.
50Long Island Star, 25 January 1810.
51Another sixteen slaves ran away with family members but were not included in this group. Two adult brothers who ran away together and fourteen mothers who ran away with children were not considered as families running together; the children were taken along as dependent property. Owners did not list causes or destinations for the flights of these sixteen adults--they were excluded from the motivation sample. Spouses and families running away together were included in the group running away to visit kin. Kulikoff, "Beginnings of the Afro‑American Family in Maryland," table 8.5, p. 190, also included husbands and wives who ran off together in the "to visit spouse" runaway category. Both groups ran away in order to be with family members.
52Runaway Slave Ad, 5 July 1756, in Richard M. Bayles, ed., History of Richmond County, New York, from Its Discovery to the Present Time, 2 vols. (New York: L. E. Preston & Co., 1887), 1:150.
53Runaway Slave Ad, Long Island Star, 13 July 1814.
54Runaway Slave Ad, New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, 8 February 1773.
55Runaway Slave Ad, New York Mercury, 30 June 1777.
56Runaway Slave Ad, Long Island Star, 22 September 1813.
57Bernard, Journey Toward Freedom, pp. 10, 47‑48.
58In these thirteen cases, nine of the pairs of men were both black, three of the pairs were Indians (one set were brothers), and one pair was a separately owned black and Indian.
59Thomas Pell, Manor of Pelham, Runaway Slave Ad, New York Mercury, 30 June 1777; Adrian Martense, Jr. and William Berry, New Utrecht, Runaway Slave Ad, Long Island Star, 22 September 1813; George Ramsee and Nicholas Carmer, New York, Runaway Slave Ad, Loudon's New York Packet, 23 May 1785; Johannes Remsen and John Schenck, Flatlands, Runaway Slave Ad, New York Spectator, April 1814.
60John Pugsley, John Hunt, and Arabella Hedy, all of the town of Westchester, advertised together for their six slaves who fled as a group on September 23, 1759. Two negro men, Jerrey (age thirty to forty), and Bohenah (age thirty‑five), were described as the leaders of the plot; they took a negro wench with three children (aged eleven, four, and two years) with them. New York Mercury, 8 October 1759. No relationships were indicated between the woman and either of the men--one could have been a husband, father, brother, or friend.
61High sex ratios in the southern six counties of New York did not account for the disparity between the proportion of male and female runaways. In the 1703 to 1771 period, the median sex ratio for the southern six counties was 133.2, meaning that 57.1 percent (133.2/233.2) of the adult population was male. From 1771 to 1820 sex ratios dropped until by 1820 sex ratios were low or even in every county except Richmond. Even though males formed 57.1 percent or less of the population they constituted 81.7 percent of runaways. Males ran away disproportionately to their share of the total population, and to women.
These findings also held true for the South. Kulikoff, "Beginnings of the Afro‑American Family in Maryland," p. 187, found that only 9 percent of all southern Maryland runaways between 1745 and 1749 were women, using a sample size of 223 slave runaways. Wood, Black Majority, p. 241, concluded that 77 percent of all runaways were males. The overall sex ratio was not so imbalanced as to account for this pattern. Wood, however, noted that women runaways tended to visit and then voluntarily return more often than men, and so may not have been advertised for in true proportion to their runaway numbers. Greene, "New England Negro as Runaway Slave," pp. 125‑46, used a sample of sixty‑two runaways, most (fifty‑four) of whom were males.
62Out of thirty‑eight adult female runaways, eighteen ran away alone, nine ran away alone and took one child along, four ran away with both husbands and children, two ran with husbands/lovers, and five ran as part of large groups containing adult male slaves, bringing along their children. Out of 170 male adult runaways, 129 escaped alone, three ran away together as a threesome, twenty‑six left in thirteen two‑man teams, two ran away with wives/lovers, four left as heads of household with their nuclear families, and six ran away as parts of large groups of runaways accompanied by women and children.
63Runaway Slave Ad, Loudon's New York Packet, 2 May 1785.
64Three of the four large runaway groups consisted of slaves from the same holding. No familial relationships between the men and women in these groups were mentioned by owners (although they all could have been nuclear families). Assuming that they were not related, in these cases the slaveholding functioned as an acting family. It made and implemented the decision to leave, included several children, and would presumably stay together during flight.
65These eighteen children were aged five months, nine months, one year, eighteen months, three were age two, two were age three, three were four years old, one was seven, one eleven, and ages were unknown for four of the children.
66Runaway Slave Ad, Loudon's New York Packet, 23 May 1785; Runaway Slave Ad, New York Mercury, 12 November 1781; Runaway Slave Ad, Long Island Star, 22 September 1813; Runaway Slave Ad, Loudon's New York Packet, 15 August 1785.

PART II
THE SLAVE LIFE CYCLE

Chapter Six

2007-08-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

CHAPTER 6
SEEKING SHELTER FROM THE STORM: SLAVE CHILDHOOD

The parting the Husband from the Wife, and the Wife from the Husband, and their Children from them both, to make up their Masters Gains, they force them thus to break the Seventh Command, and commit Adultery with other Strangers, or other mens Wives or Husbands. . . . And their Children being sold from their Parents, they unavoidably cannot honour them; and here is the breach of the fifth.
John Hepburn (1715)
From the early eighteenth century through the end of slavery in 1827, almost 40 percent of the enslaved blacks in New York were children.1 The dual enslavement of children--in their traditional role as the subordinate property of parents and as the specific property of white owners--resulted in an early‑life experience substantially different from that of free black or white children. In return for dependence and obedience, children traditionally expect financial support, stability, love, and parental protection from responsibility and the world at large. Enslaved children could not count on their parents and the traditional family system to direct them through childhood. As white property, slave children could be removed from their mothers as infants and sold repeatedly thoroughout childhood, far from blood relatives. They could also be freed and then bound out to service while other family members remained as slaves. With each passing year slave children gained in labor and market value, increasing the likelihood of sale away from their families of origin. Although they would then be freed from parental supervision and given the independence and responsibility that come from chores and work, these children only exchanged the temporary subjugation of all children to related adults for lifelong servitude to owners.
The small size of New York slaveholdings, averaging only two or three slaves per household, meant that most slave children grew up separated from one or both parents and from some or all of their siblings. Born as the property of his mother's master, a slave child lived with his mother until either he or she was sold away. The widespread separate ownership of slave spouses meant that his father very often lived some distance away in another household. The child lived with his siblings until either he or they were sold or bequeathed to other owners. Although new‑born children were commonly separated from their fathers and from some other siblings, the fact that they were owned by their mothers' masters kept them with their mothers at least temporarily. Infants and young children were therefore the most "family‑connected" group of slaves; their need for care and their inability to perform useful labor prevented their independent sale away from their mothers.
While small children below the age of six were occasionally bound out to service or sold, they were generally dependents to be cared for and supported by their mothers' owners. Masters regarded slave infants as unprofitable burdens with no immediate value and of little potential use in small households able to absorb only limited numbers of slave laborers.2 Slave offspring who were unwanted as future labor eventually had to be distributed as gifts or legacies to other households or sold.
New York slaveholders therefore took a dim view of frequent pregnancies by their slave women and of the liabilities of supporting and raising young slave children to productive or salable age. Not only did such pregnancies produce unwanted slaves, but the ability of slave women to work was diminished during the late months of pregnancy, the period of post‑delivery recuperation, and nursing. Several owners during the eighteenth century placed "for sale" advertisements in newspapers offering fecund slave women to potential buyers. A notice in the May 17, 1756, issue of the New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy advertised an eighteen‑year‑old woman who "is sold for no other reason than that she breeds too fast for her owner to put up with such inconveniences." The child or children in question were not offered for sale with the mother.
The low labor utility of children before age six became a crucial issue in New York's gradual emancipation program, leading to a complex system of abolition based in part on estimations of the productivity of child and youth labor. New York debated a method for gradual abolition of slavery during the 1790s, focusing on proposals whereby the children of slaves were considered to be born free but owing service to their mothers' masters until age twenty‑five or twenty‑eight. This would prevent future generations of slaves from being born in the state, while preserving intact the existing adult slave property. The controversy heated over compensated or uncompensated abolition. Slaveowners argued that the limited period of service required of such children would not pay for the cost of raising them and pressed for a provision whereby they could abandon the children to avoid the expense of rearing them. Owners were adamant that they were being robbed of property rights if forced to support useless children for only a limited number of years of valuable labor. They were temporarily rewarded with a five‑year abandonment program (1799‑1804) whereby they could divest themselves of these unwanted slave infants.
A commentary by a pro‑abolition citizen signed "W" in a New York newspaper in 1796 is indicative of slaveowner and societal attitudes toward the labor value of young black children:3
It is objected that the emancipation will have a partial operation, as being a loss only to those masters who may be bound to give freedom to the children of their slaves. To this I would observe, that very few people would receive a negro infant as a gift--the risk, expense, and trouble of raising them to a state of profitable service, overbalancing their probable future value--And even when nurtured by their mothers, the same considerations with her loss of time, fully warrant the same conclusion. It is plain, therefore, if they are of any value at all, it is too inconsiderable to be worthy of serious estimation by the proprietor. . . . Until children arrive to the age of about six years, they may be considered as a charge, and no longer, because any person would then receive them for their services until they should arrive at the age of twenty‑one. . . . The expense of those six years should be sustained by the state at large.
Catharine Sharpe, a New York City widow, considered service until age twenty‑four to be of adequate value to compensate for the non‑productive years of early childhood. She bequeathed to her neice Mary Jenet a negro girl Parthenia, age two years and five months, until she reached twenty‑four years of age, at which time Parthenia was to be transferred to the testator's daughter. The widow Sharpe obviously deemed this period of service to be an acceptable legacy.4
More usual was owner awareness and recognition of the liability presented by young children. When William Walton, a New York City merchant, wrote his will in 1768,5 he left his servant Mando and her eight children to his wife Cornelia, along with all other children that Mando would have in the future. At his wife's death or remarriage, they were all to be freed. Walton provided that "for the support of my slaves during their minority I bequeath to my servant girls the sum of 14 per annum to be paid by my executors yearly to my wife to be applied to their use until they arrive at age eighteen." Mando's two sons were to be given 10 per annum for their respective support and education until age twenty‑one, at which time they were to receive 25 each to purchase tools for "enabling them to carry on the trades they may be bred to." Walton left funds specifically for the support of these eight children until they reached adulthood. They were expected to cost his wife and estate money rather than produce goods or deliver service of real value during their long childhoods.
Another owner, Nathan Cooper of Southampton, reached an agreement in 1803 with his slave couple that relieved him of the burden of raising their slave infants, but that maintained his entitlement to their services until age twenty‑eight as provided in the 1799 gradual emancipation law. On August 15, 1803, Nathan Cooper certified that "if Gad goes the voyage with Capt. William Fowler and continues the voyage to the end, the said Gad and wife Esther shall be free, only I reserve to myself the right of the male children of the said Esther to serve as the law directs at the age of seven years." These terms were satisfied; Cooper freed Gad (at age forty‑three) and Esther on April 22, 1811, eight years later. Cooper's plan enabled him to board the sons out with their parents until age seven, at which time he considered their labor to be of value and they would be returned to him.6
* * * * *
In addition to their role as prospective laborers, slave children were seen by parents, church bodies, and a minority of masters as beings capable of religious training and conversion. The protection that many young slave children enjoyed against sale away from family members was reflected in the common listing of a family identity for black children who appeared in baptismal records. Slave children were generally baptized either shortly after birth or within the first few years of life. Since most such infants were still with their mothers, whites saw them in a familial context more than any other group of slaves.
Church officials who registered black baptisms, marriages, and deaths, had the choice of labelling a slave as the property of his owner or as a black family member. Children were far more likely to be labelled as family members than were adults, probably because their connection to parent(s) was still immediate and apparent and perhaps currently more important than their future usefulness as property. Most baptized children were listed as the children of their parents rather than as simple property, although sometimes both connections were recorded. It is also possible that so many black parents were listed because parents who were either baptized themselves or who were church members had arranged the child baptisms rather than either parents who were unaffiliated with the church or masters. The only children who were baptized at all may have been the offspring of the minority of religious Christian slave parents (or the property of zealous owners).
The black religious events of baptism, marriage, and burial were recorded by white church personnel. They reflected a combination of black and white religious and familial practices. To churches, most of white society, and universally in law, the black family was an ignored inconvenience. Once past baptism during infancy, as slaves matured the owner‑slave property relationship was all that existed. Among slave couples who married in church, over 90 percent had one or both owners listed in the church register rather than a parent or black relative's name. In church records the black family was omitted as a significant institution at death; almost all slaves were identified in terms of their slavery, and freed blacks generally had no affiliation listed at all.
Approximately 178 churches were founded in the southern six counties of New York prior to 1827 by fourteen denominations. The records of 81 of the 178 churches were located; 55 were used in this baptism sample (30.9 percent of the 178 churches), in addition to six sets of vital records. The other twenty‑six church records either contained no blacks, or their extant records covered a later, post‑slavery time period. Of the fifty‑five churches, forty baptized blacks of free or unknown status; twenty‑seven of the forty also baptized slaves.7
A sample of 807 black baptisms, 1639 to 1827, were culled from the available church records.8 They include 295 adult baptisms and 512 child ceremonies.9 A slight excess of male children (53 percent of the child sample) over female children were baptized, partially reflecting high sex ratios brought about by importation of young males and the tendency for more males absolutely to be born in a population.10 The baptismal records reveal the extent to which black parents and other family members participated in the baptisms of their slave and free children.
In all time periods, a majority of baptized black children, whether slave or free, had their parents' names preserved in the baptismal register rather than either no one or the names of owners. As table 1 shows, a parent or parents were listed in the baptismal register for 68 out of 69 children in the 1639 to 1684 period (98.6 percent), for 154 out of 207 children in the 1706 to 1790 period (74.4 percent), and 190 out of 236 children during the years between 1791 and 1827 (80.5 percent). Overall, 80.5 percent of baptized black children (412 out of 512) had a parent or parent's name included in the church register in spite of the common multiple ownership and separate residence of New York slave family members. In only 15 percent of cases was the child's relation to its owner as property the primary badge at baptism.11 Another 4.5 percent of children had no relationship to either parent or owner recorded and were simply described as black children.
The proportion of children who had parents listed was very high in all time periods but was largest in the two time periods (1639 to 1684 and 1791 to 1827) where the greatest proportion of parents were of free or unknown status. The freed black family was more likely to be acknowledged by white church officials who offered baptism to their children. Personal freedom also meant that free parents could participate in the baptisms of their children.
INSERT TABLE 1 HERE

1639‑1684 1706‑1790 1791‑1827 Total 1639‑1827

Parental status No. % No. % No. % No. %
Both parents

slave ... ... 17 11.0 32 16.8 49 11.9

Single parent

slaves ... ... 81 52.6 38 20.0 119 28.9

One parent slave,

one free ... ... 12 7.8 8 4.2 20 4.8

Both parents

free ... ... 10 6.5 11 5.8 21 5.1

Single parent

free ... ... 13 8.4 10 5.3 23 5.6

Status unknown,

one parent 50 100.0 4 13.6 7 47.9 61 43.7

Status unknown,

both parents 18 17 84 119

Total Baptisms 68 100.0 154 99.9 190 100.0 412 100.0
In the 1639 to 1684 period, parents were listed for sixty‑eight out of sixty‑nine children; the parents were all of unknown legal status (probably free). In all time periods, the group of blacks with no status recorded are assumed to be largely composed of freed blacks.12 During the years 1706 to 1790, 74.4 percent of baptized children were labelled as the child of their parent even though virtually all blacks were still slaves during this period. In the 154 baptisms where parents were listed, 71.4 percent involved a child with one or more enslaved parents. Only 25.1 percent of children were identified as the servants of their owner and 0.5 percent simply as black children, with no parent included. By 1791 to 1827, most parents were either free or of unknown status (presumably free). Of 190 baptisms where parents were listed, only 41 percent now involved a child with one or more enslaved parents, down from 71.4 percent in the 1706 to 1790 period. The proportion of children described only as the servants of their owners declined to 10.2 percent, while the category of "black child" rose to include 9.3 percent of children.
Fathers alone were included in 67.6 percent of child baptisms where parents were listed between 1639 and 1684, perhaps because most or all of these black fathers were free or half‑free or because slave fathers were accorded the predominant parental and religious role by the Dutch Church. Reflecting solely the baptismal practices of the Dutch Reformed Church, baptisms for this period showed different characteristics from those in later periods where baptisms were compiled from several denominations.13 Almost all early Dutch black baptisms had witnesses present, and fathers rather than mothers or both parents were the most common parental listing.
Slavery was deeply entrenched between 1706 and 1790; almost all blacks were slaves. The most common type of parental listing during these years changed from fathers only to mothers only, representing 42.9 percent of listings. The black family was compartmentalized and often enslaved in separate households; owners and church officials could most easily pinpoint and bring along to the baptism the slave mothers. In spite of these familial disabilities, the listing of both parents was almost as common, appearing in 36.4 percent of cases. Fathers alone were the least common form of baptismal family listing, accounting for 20.1 percent of entries. Even during this period of almost universal black enslavement, fathers were included in 56.5 percent of child baptisms where any parents were listed at all.14
By 1791 to 1827, the clear majority of listings were of "both parents," in 71.1 percent of baptisms where any parents were listed. This reflected the increasing percentage of the black population that was free. The shift that occurred in church record listings between 1639 and 1827 from fathers only, to mothers only, to the listing of both parents for child baptisms, paralleled the evolution of black statuses from half‑free or free status under the Dutch, to widespread enslavement during the first three‑quarters of the eighteenth century, to widespread freedom after 1790.
While 80.5 percent of black children baptized between 1639 and 1827 had a connection to a family member included in the church record, almost no black adults had the names of relatives recorded at their baptism. Out of 295 adult baptisms, 22 blacks were of unknown sex, 130 were male and 143 were female (52.4 percent), in spite of generally high sex ratios (an excess of males over females). The tendency for adult women to be baptized more commonly than men suggests that owners feared religious female servants less than similarly educated males and permitted them more frequently to attend classes. In only two of the 295 adult baptisms were any family members mentioned; these two adults were listed as the children of their parents. Adult slaves were identified solely as their masters' property, and both those freed or presumably freed (black adults, status unknown) had no familial orientation included:

1639‑1684 1706‑1790 1791‑1827 Total 1639‑1827

Adult
Identifications

Servant of owner ... ... 125 71.8 49 41.2 174 59.0

Black adult 2 100 42 24.1 59 49.6 103 34.9

Free black adult ... ... 7 4.0 9 7.6 16 5.4

Child of parents ... ... ... ... 2 1.7 2 0.7

Total 2 100 174 99.9 119 100.1 295 100.0

In the 1706 to 1790 period, 71.8 percent of baptized black adults were described as the servants of their owners, reflecting the usual status of blacks as slaves in this period before massive voluntary manumission. In the 1791 to 1827 period, 41.2 percent were still labelled as slaves; this overrepresentation of slaves among baptized black adults suggests that many may have been taken to church by their owners. It also suggests decreased participation in white churches among freedmen, many of whom preferred to join the newly emerging black congregations after 1800. In the 1706 to 1790 period, only 4 percent of blacks were listed as free, with an only slightly higher 7.6 percent in the 1791 to 1827 period. Free blacks were hidden in the category of "black adult"; their numbers doubled from 24.1 percent of black adults who were baptized from 1706 to 1790 to 49.6 percent from 1791 to 1827 as freedom became common for New York blacks. Whether slave or free, black adults at baptism did not have their family relationships to spouses, parents, or children acknowledged.15
As table 2 shows, most black baptisms had no recorded witnesses16 except for seventeenth‑century baptisms in Dutch Reformed churches.17 For 81.8 percent of the 807 sampled black baptisms which occurred between 1639 and 1827, no recorded witnesses were present at the ceremony. Where witnesses were listed, the overwhelming majority were black. Blacks were present as witnesses in 119 (81 percent) of the 147 baptisms where any witnesses were recorded.18 Blacks alone were witnesses in 91 of the baptisms (61.9 percent), both blacks and whites appeared in 28 baptisms (19.1 percent), and owners or whites alone stood as witnesses in 28 (19.1 percent) of baptisms. The black witness's relationship to the child, child's parents, or adult being baptized was usually not specified. When "Jacob, son of
INSERT TABLE 2 HERE
Helena, the property of Mr. Wicoff, New Lots," was baptized on September 26, 1790, the sponsors were Peter belonging to Christopher Smith and Sarah belonging to Nicholas Jones.19 In this case the witnesses were slaves--friends or relatives of Helena or the unknown father. Blacks of unknown relationship were generally parents, grandparents, and relatives-- friends who performed traditional familial roles for each other.
* * * *
The initial dependency of slave infants superceded the otherwise paramount demands of the marketplace and kept them near their mothers at least until age five. Children aged from six to twelve years first began to be of economic benefit to their owners, evidenced by the brisk buying and selling of children in this age group apart from their parents.20 Children between the ages of six and twelve were desirable for purchase--their sale price was relatively low although only a few years remained before they would be prime teenaged labor. In fifteen advertisements for the disposal of African slave cargoes between 1749 and 1765, half stressed the youth of the blacks as a selling point. One vessel, noted a New York Mercury ad on June 16, 1760, carried "a parcel of likely negro boys and girls from nine to twelve years of age."21
When New York State amended its infant abandonment program in 1802 it stipulated that it would not reimburse local overseers of the poor for the support of slave children legally abandoned by their owners once they reached the age of four years. The state assumed that such children could be bound out to service at this age and would be acceptable as labor to potential employers.22 In the town of Southfield, twenty‑five children were indentured out between ages four and seven, fifteen of whom had been given up under the abandonment program. In New York City indenture agreements written between 1818 and 1831 for black children the average age at indenture was ten years (median age 9.5 years). This was more reflective of the real age at which child labor began to be economically productive than the abandonment program's provisions.
Domestic sales of slave children reflected the value placed on children over the age of six and sometimes even younger. The estate inventory of Solomon Hains listed four children, all of whom were sold by his executors. Three were sold to the same owner, Peter Gutrich, and the fourth was sold separately to John Wilkins. Their potential future labor value was enough so that buyers could be found even for children as young as three and four years of age:23

Dean age 3 sold for 20, but valued at 39
Gin age 4 sold for 40
Arre age 8 sold for 62
Suse age 9 sold for 40

Frederick Veghte of Brooklyn made the following provision in his 1716 will: "If I shall not have bought a negro boy for my son Regnier, then his brother Nicholas and his sisters shall buy a negro boy between the ages of six and thirteen years for him."24 Veghte intended to provide his son with a slave old enough to be useful, with a lifetime of service ahead. Henry Lloyd, second Lord of the Manor of Queens Village, purchased a negro girl, aged eight years, from the executors of Simon Cooper of Oysterbay for 40 in 1760. In 1773, John Lloyd II and Joseph Lloyd II jointly bought a negro girl Phebe, age six, from Joseph Conkling of Queens Village for 25.25 The Lloyd family, keenly interested in both the productivity and welfare of their slaves, considered these children prudent additions for the future to their slave labor force.
Newspapers occasionally contained advertisements from men who desired to purchase rather than sell slaves. An August 11, 1785, notice in Loudon's New York Packet offered a twenty‑year‑old boy for sale but also wanted "to purchase a negro girl between nine and twelve years of age, not exceeding the latter." Another advertisement, placed on September 1, 1792, in the Daily Advertiser indicated that the sponsor wanted to purchase "one, two, or three negro boys from seven to twelve years of age. . . . They will be sent into the country, be taught to read, and when able will work on a farm--it is the intention of the buyer to set them free at twenty‑eight years of age. . . ."
Children were considered valuable slave property from puberty upwards. Childhood for a slave was considered to end anywhere from age ten to sixteen, indicating the attainment of full labor value to the white community. In an 1801 "Act for the Assessment and Collection of Taxes," every able‑bodied slave held for life between the ages of twelve and fifty years was to be considered worth $100 as taxable property.26 Twelve‑year‑old slaves were accounted as valuable as fully matured adults. The slave census of 1755 counted only slaves over age fourteen. New York censuses variously used the ages of ten, fourteen, or sixteen to separate black children from adults.27 While puberty brought about increased work abilities and value to whites, the inclusion of adolescents in pass laws indicated that maturity also meant intractable behavior and an increased likelihood of running away. Concern about public order in New York City in 1702 caused slaves over the age of fourteen to be ordered off the streets by sunset unless accompanied by a member of the master's family.28
The attractiveness of teenage labor to buyers was reflected in a sliding scale of value assigned to freshly imported black children when marketed.29 In 1659, " . . . negroes had been sold to Stephan Van Bol [at New Amsterdam] at 180 dollars each, viz. those of 16 to 40 years old; those of the age from 12 to 16 were rated at 3 to 2 of the others, and those under 12 years at two for one."30 Cadwallader Colden, in 1721, wanted to purchase three slaves from a newly arrived cargo. He wanted two males about age eighteen and a girl of about thirteen years.31 In 1762 John Watts commented that "for this market they must be young the younger the better if not quite Children."32
The pattern of slave child sales illustrates the rise in labor value and consequent likelihood of sale away from parents as slaves passed from infancy to childhood and then to puberty and early adolescence. Child slaves were included in a sample of newspaper advertisements for the sale of 125 slaves between 1701 and 1827 and in 312 completed bills of sale written between 1660 and 1817. Children were as frequently sold as adults; children constituted almost 40 percent of the black population and formed 38.7 percent (29/75) of the advertisement sample and 40.6 percent (41/101) of all completed sales where the age of the slave is known.33
Slaves under age fourteen had a much greater chance of being sold with a family member than did adults. In newspaper advertisements offering slaves for sale, 68.4 percent of the children were put up for sale with family members contrasted with only 28.7 percent of the adults.34 In completed bills of sale, 64.2 percent of the children were sold with family members compared to 16.3 percent of the adults.35 Overall, approximately two‑thirds of slave children were sold with a parent because of the limited labor value of young children and their need for supervision and care.
Age Parental Status For Sale Ads Bills of Sale

0‑4 with parent 14 14

0‑4 with or without parenta 1 ...

0‑4 without parent ... 1

5‑9 with parent 4 3

5‑9 without parent 4 9

10‑14 with parent 1 ...

10‑14 without parent 5 14

unknown with parent 6 26

unknown without parent 3 ...

Total 38 67

aThis case was counted as a child offered with a parent.

Enslaved children, while still young, stood the greatest chance among the bond population of maintaining relationships with blood relatives. Need for parental care and their inability to perform useful labor afforded very young children some protection against sale away from parents. Infants under the age of four were almost always sold with a parent (fourteen of the fifteen infants in the completed bills of sale). All fifteen infants were offered with a parent in the sale advertisements (one of whom, however, was to be sold either with or without the mother). The June 17, 1805, issue of the Suffolk Gazette carried an ad for a twenty‑five‑year‑old negro woman who would be sold with or without a four‑year‑old girl. From age five to nine sales away from parents became common. Almost all children aged ten to fourteen years were both advertised and sold apart from parents; young teenage slaves began to have great labor and market value for both sellers and buyers.
* * * * *
Death in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries was not largely restricted to those at the end of the natural life cycle. Morbidity and mortality affected most severely the very young and the very old; New York slave infants probably experienced a 25 percent mortality rate, with an equal mortality rate of 25 percent for children.36 The Reverend Robert Jenney at Rye, New York, wrote in 1725 that his slave woman had given birth to four children--the first, second, and fourth children were already dead. The first‑born died seven months after baptism, and the other two died suddenly, before baptism. The surviving child was also young, "her tender age" preventing her attendance at church in bad weather. Out of four children born to this woman, only one survived past infancy.37
York and Jenne, both slaves of Ebenezer Prime, were the parents of six children born to them between 1746 and 1753. The first three children, Jupiter (December 11, 1746), Judith (December 6, 1747), and Peter (August 11, 1749), all survived to at least the age of four years; the next three children did not. Mortuus (January 4, 1750/51) and Mortuus Secundus (January 17, 1751/52) died at or shortly after birth, and Priscilla (September 8, 1753) died at one month of age.38
The deaths of the children born to the post‑slavery New York black family of James and Maria Lyon also reflect the high mortality rates for infants and children. Maria gave birth six known times during a sixteen year period, between December 1828 and November 1844. Only one child remained alive by 1845, surviving at least to age seven years and four months. The other five children were from age ten months to age five years at the time of death. The first‑born son, James Jackson, was named for his father; he died at age four. The third‑born son was named James for his dead sibling, surviving in turn only until age two years and six months.39
In a sample of 369 black deaths in the southern six counties of New York between 1697 and 1827, children formed the majority of mortality cases in the group where an age was listed:40
Age Group 1697‑1790 1791‑1827

Number Percent Number Percent

Infancy (under 4) 8 9.2 11 15.3
92 59.7
Childhood (4‑15) 72 82.8 32 44.4

Prime adulthood (16‑49) 6 6.9 14 19.4

Early old age (50‑69) 0 ... 4 5.5

Advanced old age (over 70) 1 1.1 11 15.3

An age was available for 87 out of 194 deaths in the 1697 to 1790 period and for 72 out of 175 deaths in the 1791 to 1827 period. Children, as well as the elderly, were overrepresented in the age distribution of deaths due to their greater susceptibility to illness and fatality. While children under fifteen were approximately 40 percent of the black population, they accounted for 92 percent (1697 to 1790) and 59.7 percent (1791 to 1827) of all deaths. The extremely high proportion of infants and children among deaths where an age was included may also have reflected a tendency by church officials to categorize and identify children as a specific group apart from variously aged adults. The advanced old aged may also have been particularly singled out at death; their longevity deserved notice.41
Male infants and children experienced higher mortality rates than females. The sexual distribution of deaths in 274 cases where ages and sexes were known42 reveals a pattern of more common male death, particularly in the early age groups. This descrepancy cannot be totally accounted for either by the normal excess of males in a population at birth or the heavy slave importations of male teens and young adults, which would not affect the sexual distribution of infants and young children:
infancy ‑ 22 male 12 female ‑ males account for 64.7 percent of deaths

childhood ‑ 42 male 28 female ‑ males account for 60.0 percent of deaths

prime adulthood ‑ 41 male 32 female ‑ males account for 56.2 percent of deaths

early old age ‑ 22 male 20 female ‑ males account for 52.4 percent of deaths

advanced old age ‑ 25 male 30 female ‑ males account for 45.4 percent of deaths

Death rates evened out in the early old age group until women formed a greater proportion of mortalities in the over‑seventy advanced old age category.
While 80.5 percent of black children baptized between 1639 and 1827 had a parent or family member listed in the record, at death only from 6.2 to 25.6 percent of such children during these same years had a relative included in the church registers. Since blacks were usually baptized within the first year of life they often still remained connected to their parents and were seen in a family context by whites; by the time that they died, many children had already been severed from their parents through sale.
The proportion of infants and children labelled as "child of parent" (a familial identification) at death rose as the black population was freed from 6.2 percent in the 1697 to 1790 period (5 out of 80) to 25.6 percent in the 1791 to 1827 period (11 out of 43) and up to 51.6 percent (48 out of 93) in the post‑1828 freedom period. Children were increasingly linked with parents rather than considered as the property of owners or having no affiliation at all. Even in the 1828 to 1911 period, however, when all blacks were free, almost half of deceased children did not have a parent's name listed in the record. The freed black family was seen as less connected to its members in church records than the white family.43
Affiliated as a

Family Member 1697‑1790 (%) 1791‑1827 (%) 1828‑1911 (%)

Children labelled as child of parent 6.2 25.6 51.6a

Adults (including age unknown category) labelled as family members 1.8 5.3 12.6

All blacks labelledas family members 3.6 11.4 22.6

aOne child who was listed as a grandchild was included in the parental/relative listing category.

At death black children were far more likely than adults to be labelled as a family member. Removing known children from the sample, only very small proportions of the black population were referred to in church burial records as family members at death.44
* * * * *
Most New York slave children grew up apart from their fathers; the majority probably lived with their mothers no longer than until age six, when they were often sold away. Brothers and sisters were scattered among various white households; many may not have even known the whereabouts of their siblings, especially if they no longer lived with their mother. The normal psychological growth stages of childhood, including initial deep dependency on mothers, sibling rivalry, prolonged attachment to parents, and eventual rebellion and assertion of independence through peer bonding were sidetracked by the overwhelming fact that these blacks were slaves first and children only second.
Children who had been separated from their families of origin had to accept as parental replacements the adult slaves in their master's holding, or the master and mistress themselves. Whether raised by a biological slave parent, a surrogate black parent, or the master, very little investment was made in the personal development, future, or education of the child. Slave children were not nurtured with the expectation of adult success or private fulfillment; if they were trained in a craft or nourished into good health or counseled by adults to accept their situation in life it was so that they could be skilled, strong, and cooperative workers for their owners rather than productive, sturdy, or happy individuals for their own sake. Slave children grew up with meager personal expectations and family separation as a way of life; as they began to form families of their own in late adolescence they must have approached marriage and parenthood with ingrained expectations of continued emotional and physical isolation from loved ones.
1Black children (based on a variable cutoff age for childhood at age ten, fourteen or sixteen) constituted 38.8 percent (median proportion) of the black population in the southern six counties of New York, 1703 to 1830. This figure is based on sixty‑three proportions of children in the black population, by counties, in app. 9.
2For a similar situation in New England, see Greene, Negro in Colonial New England, p. 216.
3"For the Argus--By an invariable Friend to the equal Rights of Man, from the year 1786 to the year 1796," The Argus, or Greanleaf's New Daily Advertiser, 3 February 1796, no. 231.
4Will of Catharine Sharpe, New York City, August 31, 1730, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 3:9.
5Will of William Walton, New York City, June 8, 1768, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 15:33‑34.
6William Pelletreau, comp., Records of the Town of Southampton, Long Island, New York, 1639‑1870, 6 vols. (Sag Harbor, N.Y.: John H. Hunt, Printer for the town, 1874‑1910), 4:6, 17. Gad's freedom was later certified in 1814 by a judge of the Court of Common Pleas (see p. , n. below). Nathan Cooper also owned a slave Violet who gave birth to a son Pyrus on March 17, 1814 (Records of Southampton, 4:25). It is likely that Pyrus later wed a daughter of Esther and Gad, thereby uniting by marriage these two separate slave families who had been held by Cooper. On August 20, 1847 the births of two female children were recorded to parents Pyrhus and Esther Gad. (Records of Southampton, 4:127). Gad had become a black family surname for Pyrhus.
7For a full discussion of church records and methodology, see the bibliographical essay. A listing of the fifty‑five church records and six vital records used in this study and the denominations involved appears in app. 7 and in the bibliography. Quaker and Jewish congregations were not included in the sample as neither group admitted blacks as members.
8These 807 baptisms took place in the southern six counties of New York as follows: Suffolk (286), New York (262), Queens (129), Kings (63), Richmond (40), and Westchester (27). The total number of black baptisms which took place in the southern six counties of New York, 1639 to 1827, is unknown. In the 1706 to 1790 period, the sampled church records contained 381 black baptisms. During these approximately same years, 1705 to 1780, the SPGFP baptized 1,407 blacks, only 41 of whom could have appeared in the baptism sample. Therefore, an additional 1,366 black baptisms took place during these years according to missionary reports to the SPGFP. These baptisms failed to appear in the ten Protestant Episcopal church records which were located for this period; eight had no records of black baptisms in the 1705 to 1780 period. St. Andrew's Church at Richmond, formerly Northfield, contained seven baptisms, Trinity Church in New York City had twenty, and the Register Book for the Parish of Jamaica kept by the Reverend Thomas Poyer included fourteen black baptisms; these were the forty‑one baptisms which were probably also listed in the missionary reports. St. Peter's Church in Westchester was one of the eight churches whose sampled records showed no black baptisms, but which was founded in 1693 and served as a missionary station for the SPGFP from 1702 to 1726.
9There were 69 children and 2 adults baptized in the 1639 to 1684 period, 207 children and 174 adults in the 1706 to 1790 period, and 236 children and 119 adults in the 1791 to 1827 period:
Number of Baptisms 1639‑1684 1706‑1790 1791‑1827 Total
Male adults 1 77 52 130
Female adults 1 78 64 143
Male children 38 100 118 256
Female children 31 89 107 227
Children ‑ sex unknown 18 11 29
Adults ‑ sex unknown 19 3 22
Total 71 381 355 807
Where the age of the black being baptized was not indicated, as in "slave of" or "negress of," it was counted as an adult baptism.
10George Barclay, Techniques of Population Analysis, 5th ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958), p. 64. At birth, boys are more numerous than girls. Higher male mortality during adulthood results in balanced adult sex ratios.
11Black children were often listed dually, as "Mingo, son of Maltby, servant of Thomas Dering." Where children were listed as both the child of a parent and the servant of an owner, it was counted as a listing as the child of a parent. The primary identification was as the parent's child--that either or both were owned by the master was secondary. Baptism was a familial event--the inclusion and recognition of black family members takes precedence over the routine acknowledgement of ownership.
12Since a slave's primary status was as property, most blacks who were slaves were likely to be listed as such in church records. Churches may have neglected to list the status of free persons. The proportion of listed parents who were free did not rise between 1706 and 1827 even though by the 1820 census 85 percent of blacks in the southern six counties were free. The free parents were most likely hidden in the vastly expanded group of parents of unknown status. In the 1791 to 1827 period, out of 91 parents listed who were of unknown status, 84 were sets of both parents, further indicating a "free" pattern of behavior; free parents were more likely to both be present at the ceremony. The legal status of the children of slave parents is usually not known. Those with slave mothers can be presumed to be slaves if born before 1799 (and born free but owing service until adulthood if born from 1799 to 1827), but children of parents of free or unknown status may be either slave or free. With the rise in voluntary manumission after 1785, parents and children often had different legal statuses.
13See pp. ‑ above for a discussion of black baptisms, 1639 to 1655. Out of seventy‑one black baptisms located during this period, sixty‑nine were at the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam, and two were from the Dutch Reformed Church at Flatbush.
14A substantial proportion of these eighty‑seven fathers may have been free black men rather than slaves. Ten of these eighty‑seven fathers were definitely free (the both parents free group). In the group of twelve slave/free parents, seven involved interracial unions between white women and black men (4 cases) or white men and black women (3 cases), and an eighth case involved an Indian man with a slave woman. None of these eight men were listed by name or status, and were probably slaves. At the most, four of the twelve slave/free unions involved free black men. Additionally, both the thirteen free single parents and the twenty‑one parent(s) of unknown status groups included many free fathers.
15This failure on the part of church officials to record the names of immediate black relatives in the baptismal record may reflect several circumstances. White society may have routinely discarded the black family as a nonexistent, transitory institution for enslaved blacks, and an irrelevant one for freed blacks. Alternately, this pattern may have reflected widespread dislocation and family separation within the black community during enslavement and for the initial generation of freed former slaves.
16The absence of witnesses at black baptisms may have been due to refusal by whites to serve as sponsors and reluctance on the part of church officials to accept slaves in this role. The absence of black witnesses in the record may also partially be a result of church indifference to the listing of persons connected with black religious events. The Reverend Robert Jenney wrote to the SPGFP on November 19, 1725, that "there are scarce any masters or mistresses, if they are willing that their slaves be baptized, that will be prevailed with to engage for them as their sureties, much less will Christian freemen engage for slaves. . . ." He added that some ministers in the area, although thinking it improper, let other slaves stand as sureties for slave baptisms. Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, p. 157.
17The procedures and record keeping practices of the Dutch Reformed Church at New Amsterdam dictated that the names of witnesses be written down; in later time periods, where records of black baptisms were mainly located in other denominations, almost 90 percent had no recorded witnesses. For later years only a very small proportion of the baptismal sample was from Dutch Reformed churches; 5 out of 381 (1706‑1790), and 37 out of 355 (1791‑1827). The Dutch Reformed Church itself later changed its witness recording practices, as most of its post‑1684 black baptismal entries also failed to include witnesses.
18The proportion of witnesses that were black remained high in all time periods: 89.9 percent (1639‑1684), 65.7 percent (1706‑1790), and 79.1 percent (1791‑1827). The drop in the 1706 to 1790 period is because five baptisms were of half‑white children (with white witnesses).
19One of the sponsors, Peter, and his wife Elizabeth (both owned by Chistopher Smith) had a son of their own baptized the same day. Ladd, Origin of Grace (Episcopal) Church, Jamaica, p. 329.
20Kulikoff, "Beginnings of the Afro‑American Family in Maryland," pp. 185‑86, found that "black children began to work in the tobacco fields between seven and ten years of age. . . . Beginning to work coincided with the departure of many children from parents, siblings, and friends. The ages of slaves in single‑slave households in Prince George's in 1776 suggest that children were typically forced to leave home between seven and fifteen years of age, and this included many between seven and ten."
21Lydon, "New York Slave Trade," p. 393.
22See chap. 13 on the abandonment program. The use of age four as a cutoff point may have reflected the state's desire to stop payments as early as possible rather than the real age at which black children could be productive.
23Estate Inventory of Solomon Hains, Westchester County, September 25, 1781, Scott and Owre, Genealogical Data from Inventories.
24Will of Frederick Veghte, Brookland, July 31, 1716, Coll. NYHS, Abstracts of Wills, 11:19‑20.
25Coll. NYHS, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 2:584‑85, 743.
26Journal of the Assembly of New York State, 24th Session (1801), p. 261, NYHS.
27A listing of the ages used in each census year to separate child and adult blacks, 1703 to 1830, is contained in the notes to app. 8.
28McManus, Negro Slavery, p. 81.
29The New England slave trade was also age conscious in regard to the importation and vendability of young slaves. For overseas contracts to supply slaves to Spanish America from 1713 to 1743, it was agreed that "none of the said 4,800 Negroes shall be under the age of ten years, nine parts in ten of the . . . Negroes so to be furnished shall be of the age of sixteen years at least, and none of them shall exceed the age of 40 years." Greene, Negro in Colonial New England, p. 23.
30"M. Beck, Vice Director at Curacao to Gov. Stuyvesant," May 16, 1659, in David Valentine, comp., Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, 28 vols. (New York: William C. Bryant, Printer, 1841‑1870), 22:593‑94.
31Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of Slave Trade, 3:444.
32Coll. NYHS, Letter Book of John Watts, p. 31.
33See pp. ‑ above on the sale samples.
34Thirty‑eight children were advertised for sale: 17 were advertised with mothers, 9 were offered with both parents, 8 were offered with coresident blacks from the holding, and 4 were offered alone.
35Sixty‑seven children were sold in completed bills of sale: 29 were sold with mothers, 14 were sold with both parents (in nuclear families), 2 were sold as part of a large group of slaves from the holding, 2 were sold together, and 20 were sold alone.
36Kulikoff, "Tobacco and Slaves," found a black infant mortality rate of 25 percent and a childhood mortality rate of 42 percent. Reynolds Farley, Growth of the Black Population--A Study of Demographic Trends (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1970), p.7 proposed an infant mortality rate of 25 to 30 percent for all United States blacks, 1830‑1865. Kulikoff's 42 percent childhood mortality rate is probably too high to apply to New York, which enjoyed a more favorable epidemiological environment in the eighteenth century than Maryland. Farley's estimate of 25 percent may more accurately project the New York pattern; his figures cover all slave states in the years just after the abolition of slavery in New York.
37Klingberg, Anglican Humanitarianism, p.156. See p. above on this case.
38Ebenezer Prime, "A Record of the Birth of the Negro Children of my servants, York and Jenne," in Records of the First Church in Huntington, L.I. 1723‑1779 from Records kept by Rev. Ebenezer Prime (Huntington, N.Y.: Printed for Moses Scudder, 1899), New York Public Library, last page of record. See p. ‑ below on York and Jenne's reproductive patterns.
39The James and Maria Lyon family baptismal and death records are located in Thomas T. Sherman, "Vital Records of Christ's Church at Rye, Westchester County, New York," NYGBR 46(1915):238‑42; 48(1917):128‑29, 229‑30.
40These 369 black deaths appeared in six sets of vital records and in burial or church membership lists from thirty churches. See app. 7 and the bibliography for a listing of these sources. An additional 363 black deaths were located for the years 1828 to 1911 and were excluded from this one section of the mortality study. The sample of 732 deaths includes the southern six counties of New York: Richmond (7), New York (30), Kings (33), Queens (82), Westchester (111), and Suffolk (469).
41Improved record keeping and age specification resulted in a broader proportional age distribution of deaths from 1697 to 1790 to 1791 to 1827 among children, prime adults, and the advanced aged.
42This analysis includes a broader sample of 732 deaths spanning the years 1697‑1911.
43In the list of deaths at the Presbyterian Church of Easthampton, 1696 to 1802, white children were always listed as the child of their father. White adults were generally listed by name only or as a spouse. Out of 112 blacks who died 1719 to 1802, 102 were labelled solely as their owners' servants. In white deaths, 1802 to 1881, white married women were usually listed as the wife of their husband. After a gap in the records from 1803 to 1819, blacks were simply listed as man, woman, or child; as of 1820 black listings came closer in form to those of whites, although with fewer familial references. "Records of the Church of East Hampton," in Osborne, comp., Records of Easthampton, 5:419‑647. In the Salmon Records of deaths in Southold, Long Island, 1697 to 1811, most blacks who died between 1697 and 1805 were referred to as their owners' negroes (76 out of 108). Of the other thirty‑two, only two were referred to as family members. After 1806, twelve out of the fourteen negro deaths had no owner mentioned, replaced by usually the name of the black or in two cases by a listing as "a negro's spouse." Robbins, "The Salmon Records," NYGBR 47‑49(1916‑1918), passim. Prior to freedom most blacks at death were recorded as a "servant of" their owner, and after freedom as simply a man, woman, or child. Familial references did not replace the category of ownership.
44See pp. ‑ below for additional analysis of family identification at death and on the deaths sample.