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Race to the Top
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Moses v. Tweed

Slavery

The Genealogical Possibilities of Manumissions in the Old Town Records

The Department of Records and Information Services is currently digitizing New York colonial and early statehood administrative and legal records dating from 1645 through the early 1800s under a grant generously funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. The records pertain to Dutch and English colonial settlements in New York City, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley.

Families have a sense of themselves. Who they are, where they came from, how they came to be the group they are now. It’s a sense of identity. Many African Americans today are exploring their genealogy but can only go so far because of the legacy of slavery in America and a past obscured by the lack of records. However, there are records in the Municipal Archives that might help fill this knowledge gap. One collection is the Old Town Records, which includes documentation of manumissions and slave births in New York City. While the information may not be new, access to it over the years has been limited. This is changing thanks to a new digitization project. With a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the Municipal Archives has been processing the collection. It is comprised of records created in the villages and towns that were eventually consolidated into the Greater City of New York in 1898. They date back to the 1600s and consist of deeds, minutes from town boards and meetings, court records, tax records, license books, enumerations of enslaved people, school-district records, city charters, and information on the building of sewers, streets and other infrastructure.

Manumission of Benjamin Matt by Jacob Hicks, March 4, 1817. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Manumission” is a legal term that is similar to “emancipation” but slightly different in the way it was performed. Manumission refers to the legal release of enslaved people when slavery is still sanctioned by law, as opposed to emancipation, which follows abolition and releases all people formerly enslaved. Most slave manumissions were conferred by slaveholders who released their slaves either by a living deed of gift or last will and testament. For the Record  examined the subject in The Slow End of Slavery in New York Reflected in Brooklyn’s Old Town Records. Additionally, several collections in the Municipal Archives contain records documenting enslaved people, notably the Common Council Papers. A sampling of NYC Slavery Records can be viewed online in “From the Vaults.”

Manumission of Nancy by Jeremiah Remsen, June 30, 1820. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

Manumission of Betsey by Gerreta Polhemus, August 29, 1820. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

More than 11,000 pages from the 189 Old Town Ledgers have been digitized to date. The digitization is 20% complete and the final count will be exponentially higher at the project’s end. This process can seem slow at times, requiring care for the material that’s being worked on. Sometimes there are opportunities to review the books being worked on and sometimes the entries stick out. This was the case with many manumissions as they were digitized for the collection. Individual names of former slaves along with their former owners are in plain ink on the pages—their lives dramatically changed so many years ago. Most manumissions are only a few simple lines of text, yet their ramifications are so powerful.

Manumission of Sylvia by John Van Nostrand, April 10, 1799. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

I’m not African American but I am a New Yorker. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for over twenty years and am familiar with the city’s history. I was aware of the city’s past connections to slavery but I had never seen written evidence of it until I began digitizing the records of places I walk through so often—Bushwick, Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay and other locations. People of all heritages live in these places now, but at the time the manumissions were written these were small farm towns and slavery was common. It is easy for that past to never come to mind; it’s a stretch of imagination to envision the humble towns they were when walking in the urban centers they have become. But that past is very real and the people in the Old Town Records Collection walked many of the same streets we walk today. It is possible their distant relatives may also tread those same streets and not know the connection to their past.

I recently saw similar records of emancipation change how a person thought about herself. After I had been digitizing this material during the day I put on Finding Your Roots, a popular TV show about genealogy on PBS. [https://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/] The program has aired over eight seasons and has previously consulted the Municipal Archives to research its guests’ histories.

Manumission of Phillis by Joseph Fox July 11, 1812, and Dianna Orange by Nicholas Beorum, April 12, 1813. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

Manumission of Cornelia Brown by Andrew Mercein, April 13, 1813. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

This was an episode that featured the musician/actress Queen Latifah and as the story of her heritage unfolded she found some of her ancestors had been manumitted from slavery. The documents presented on the show were from another state and another archive but their value was the same as the lines of text I had digitized during the day. It was freedom; it was another life; it was a new beginning for that person and their family. Those events occurred so long ago and as Queen Latifah read out the words for the camera she had no idea this had ever happened. [https://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/watch/extras/queen-latifah-meets-the-woman-that-freed-her-ancestors]. As she talked about what she read she noted that it changed the way she thought about herself, her own personal struggles and how she thought of her family. She was eager to share that information with the people she holds dear. Her whole family would see their history differently. They would see themselves differently. A family that didn’t previously know their past, a family that didn’t know with whom or when their freedom came would now have an entire history opened up by a few lines of writing found in a book in an archive. As the TV show played I reflected on the digitization I perform and knew the same impact is possible through the Old Town Records Collection. The way entire families see and know themselves could shift in an instant from the few words the Municipal Archives makes electronically accessible.

Many things shape family identity but few are as profound and long lasting as information. Personal past. Collective past. They can shape who you are, who you think you are and who you can be. Who an entire family can be. The wider availability of the Old Town Records Collection has the potential to do that for so many families who research their genealogy. We can look forward to more Americans finding themselves.

Manumission of Margarett by Anna Vanderbilt, September 4, 1820. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

The slow end of slavery in New York reflected in Brooklyn’s Old Town records

New York is a commercial city, created by the Dutch as a trading hub and expanded over centuries to become a financial and commercial center. It was governed by the rules of capitalism more than enlightenment thought or statements about freedom and equality. Nowhere is this more evident than in New York’s actions regarding enslaved people. Several collections in the Municipal Archives contain records documenting enslaved people, most notably the Common Council Papers and the Old Town Records. A sampling can be viewed here https://www.archives.nyc/slavery-records

Town of Flatlands Slaves: Birth Register, Manumissions; Records of Personal Mortgages, 1799-1838, volume 4054, Index to manumissions. Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

New York City’s population of enslaved people was second only to Charleston, South Carolina. As the Northern state with the largest number of enslaved people, New York was the second-to-last to eliminate slavery—New Jersey was the last.

Chapter fourteen of the publication A Century of Population Growth from the first census to the 12th (1790-1900), issued by the United States Census Bureau, details the population of enslaved people. Titled Statistics of Slaves, it notes that the first census for the United States conducted in 1790 enumerated the 3,929,214 people in the country. The report cites 697,624 enslaved people residing in twelve states as well as Kentucky and the Southwest Territory. Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine are omitted from the analysis because slavery had either been eliminated or was not a practice in those locales.

New York State counted 21,193 enslaved people in the 1790 population as well as 4,600 free Black people. The number of enslaved people diminishes in succeeding decades due to State legislation “gradually” emancipating people until in 1840 when there were four people enumerated as slaves. In 1790, there were 7,795 enslaver households with an average number of 2.7 people in bondage in those households. That’s the average, but some founding fathers such as Robert Livingston and John Jay held more people in bondage.

Town of Gravesend, Slave and School Records, 1799-1819, volume 3017. Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

In an article titled “Gateway to Freedom” historian Eric Foner estimates that two-thirds of the 3,100 Black residents of Manhattan were enslaved. “Twenty percent of the city’s households, including merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and sea captains, owned at least one slave. In the immediate rural hinterland, including today’s Brooklyn, the proportion of slaves to the overall population stood at four in ten—the same as Virginia.”

Town of Flatbush, Board of Health: Manumitted and Abandoned Slaves, 1805-1814. Kings County Old Town Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Foner defined Brooklyn as it is today—the entirety of Kings County. But in the late 1800s, Brooklyn was one of many towns in the county which also included Flatbush, Flatlands, and Gravesend among others, all of which had their own governments and thus, their own government records. The records from those towns in the Municipal Archives are collectively called “The Old Town Records.” Consisting largely of property assessments, meeting minutes and oyster bed permits, there are a handful of records that document enslaved people. All of these records have been digitized from microfilm and can be found on the DORIS website.

Town of Flatlands Slaves: Birth Register, Manumissions; Records of Personal Mortgages, 1799-1838, volume 4054. Kings County Old Town Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The Flatlands registry is organized in alphabetical order and each page has entries for the names of owners of slaves, the name, sex of the child and the time when born and a column for Abandoning service received. After the A-Z index there are entries attesting to the birth of children as required by law. Entries date from 1800 to 1821.

The Flatlands records include the Record of Personal Mortgages, Slaves Register, and Records of Personal Mortgages which lists children born to enslaved women. These records were created to comply with various laws passed by New York State between 1785 and 1817. Legislative bodies rarely act quickly and in the case of manumission the State Legislature took baby steps to eliminate slavery unlike counterparts in the other Northern States.

The New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting Such as Them as Have Been or May be Liberated was formed in 1785 in New York City and consisted of Quakers and prominent men such as John Jay, Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton’s proposal that members must manumit their slaves was rejected by the full group. Nevertheless, the organization lobbied members of the Legislature to pass laws abolishing slavery, only to settle for the gradual emancipation.  According to Foner, resistance to abolition “was strongest among slaveholding Dutch farmers in Brooklyn and elsewhere.”

Town of Flatlands Slaves: Birth Register, Manumissions; Records of Personal Mortgages, 1799-1838, volume 4054, page 16. Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

The first of the manumission laws was enacted in 1799 when the white, male body passed the “Gradual Emancipation Law” that required any child born to enslaved women after July 4, 1799 to be freed. But, not so fast. Those children were required to continue serving the “owner” of his or her mother until reaching age 25 for women and 28 for men. A tricky provision of the law allowed the enslaver to make the child a charge to the local government by filing a manumission notice within one year of the child’s birth. The government would then pay up to $3.50 per month for someone to care for the child, frequently the same enslaver until age 21. The timeframe for payment and the amount of the payment were later reduced and then eliminated in 1804.

Town of Flatbush ledger, Births and Manumissions of Slaves, 1799-1814, volume 107.  Kings County Old Town Records Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Eighteen years later, in 1817, the Legislature enacted the second of the gradual manumission laws, decreeing that enslaved people born before 1799 would be freed on July 4,1827 and that children born to enslaved mothers between 1817 and 1827 would be free after reaching age 21. The tricky math meant a child born in 1827 conceivably could have been enslaved until 1848, although the census records show that was not a common-place occurrence. By 1830 there were 75 remaining enslaved people in New York State and by 1840, there were four. But the State and the City’s economies were linked to the southern states with large populations of enslaved people. Foner wrote, “The economy of Brooklyn, which by mid-century had grown to become the nation’s third largest city, was also closely tied to slavery. Warehouses along its waterfront were filled with the products of slave labor—cotton, tobacco, and especially from Louisiana and Cuba. In the 1850s sugar refining was Brooklyn’s largest industry.”

The Colonial Old Town Ledgers Digitization Project

The New York City Municipal Archives recently applied for funding to digitize colonial-era ledgers selected from the “Old Town” records collection. These unique administrative and legal records, dating from 1645 through the early 1800s, document the Dutch and English colonial settlements in New York City, western Long Island, and the lower Hudson Valley. The project is part of a larger Archives plan to describe and provide online access to all records in the Municipal Archives from the Dutch and English colonial era through early statehood.

The Archives has already successfully completed digitization and provided on-line access to the Dutch records of New Amsterdam and the proposed project will expand this effort to include the earliest records of communities throughout the metropolitan New York City region.

“The Court Book and nothing else to be found therein, 1751.” Newtown, Book 1, Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

The ledgers chosen for digitization are the earliest records in the Old Town records collection. These records were created by European colonists in communities throughout the New York City region. Commissioned by the Dutch East India Company, Henry Hudson led the expedition to what is now New York City in 1609. In 1614, the area between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers was designated the colony of New Netherlands. Ten years later the States General of the Netherlands created the Dutch West India Company awarding them a monopoly on trade over a vast domain from West Africa to Newfoundland.

The first colonists in New Netherlands arrived in 1624 at Fort Orange (near Albany). In 1626 other settlers came to Manhattan Island and named their community New Amsterdam. As more colonists arrived they established new settlements resulting in an archipelago of Dutch communities throughout what is now Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond (Staten Island), and Westchester.

Dutch conflict with England over boundaries and trade led Charles II of England to grant the colony to his brother James, Duke of York, in March 1664. New Amsterdam surrendered to the English on September 8, 1664, and was renamed New York. Though in 1673, the Dutch briefly reclaimed the colony, the Treaty of Westminster returned it to English control in 1674.

Bushwick Deeds from 1660 and 1661 issued by Petrus Stuyvesant. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

The provenance of the Old Town records collection dates from consolidation of the modern City of New York on January 1, 1898. Previously, the towns, villages and cities within the counties of Kings, Queens (parts of which are now in Nassau County), Richmond and Westchester (parts of which are now in Bronx County) maintained their own local governments that each created records—legislative, judicial, property, voter, health, school, etc. These local governments were dissolved during the latter part of the nineteenth century, at first by annexation to the old City of New York (Manhattan), or the City of Brooklyn, and finally through the unified City consisting of the five Boroughs in 1898.

The Comptroller of the newly consolidated city recognized the importance of the records of the formerly independent villages and towns and ordered transfer of the Queens, Richmond and Bronx/Westchester ledgers to the central office in Manhattan. In August 1942, fearing that New York City would be a prime target for enemy invasion, the Comptroller packed the ledger collection into crates and shipped them to New Hampton, N.Y. for the duration of the war. The Archives received the records from the Comptroller in several accessions from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The bulk of the Kings County town and village records were acquired by the Kings County Clerk via annexation during the latter part of the 19th century. Beginning in the 1940s, James A. Kelly, then Deputy County Clerk of Kings County arranged that the “historical” records of the county be turned over to St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, “on permanent loan.” They were housed in the James A. Kelly Institute for Historical Studies at the College. While in the custody of the Institute the ledgers were microfilmed. In 1988, due to financial considerations, the College closed the Institute and the records were transferred to the Municipal Archives.

Of particular note are the records of the Gravesend settlement in Kings County. Granted to Lady Deborah Moody in 1645, it became the only English town in the Dutch-dominated western area of Long Island. Based on the frequency in which her name appears in the Gravesend Town records, it is clear that Lady Moody, a religious dissenter who fled England and later Massachusetts, took an active and intense interest all aspects of her community.

Patent for the town of Gravesend, given to Lady Deborah Moody and her followers, 1645. Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

The Old Town records consist of hand-written manuscripts bound in a variety of styles (single-section pamphlets, spring-back account-book, and case-bound ledgers, among others). They include town and village governing board and legislative body proceedings and minutes, criminal and civil court docket books, deeds and property conveyances, records of estate administration, and coroners' records.

The earliest records are written in mid-17the century Dutch which differs from modern Dutch. The records from the English colonial period are written in a combination of old Dutch and English. The materials also include non-contemporary (19th Century) manuscript translations and/or transliterations of the Dutch records.

Several unique characteristics of the New Netherlands/New York colony make its records important for understanding the origins of the American democratic system. From its earliest years, the colony was notable for its diversity. Unlike New England and Pennsylvania where religion played the dominant role, the New Netherland colony was founded as a commercial enterprise. The official religious denomination of the colony was the Calvinism of the Reformed Church, but the Dutch West India Company urged tolerance toward non-Calvinists to encourage trade and immigration. Among the religious groups in New Netherlands (and more or less tolerated) were Lutherans, Quakers, Anabaptists, Catholics and Jews. The colony actively recruited immigrants from Germany, England, Scandinavia, and France, and was the home of the largest number of enslaved Africans north of Maryland.

“Register of the children born of slaves after the 2nd day of July 1799, within the town of Flatlands in Kings County in the State of New York…” Old Town Records, NYC Municipal Archives.

One recent example of the type of research that will be facilitated by the digitization work is the New York Slavery Records Index project underway at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York). Impetus from the project came from the realization that the college’s namesake, John Jay, and his family, were prominent slave-holders. The index project will result in a searchable compilation of records that identify individual enslaved persons and the slaveholders, beginning as early as 1619, and ending during the Civil War. The John Jay researchers have started examining the Municipal Archives collection of manumissions and legal records.

The Municipal Archives has already described and digitized the New Amsterdam records, including the original manuscripts and their English translations documenting proceedings, resolutions, minutes, accounts, petitions, and correspondence of the colonial government. When the Old Town records phase is completed, historians will be able to explore how colonial New York legal institutions and practices served as a foundation for the judicial system and guaranteed freedoms of the new Republic and answer important questions about a formative time period in the nation’s history.

Future blog posts will describe project progress and highlight unique “finds” in this rare collection.

Jury Census Records Digitized

The Municipal Archives recently received a request for research assistance from Craig LaBan, Restaurant Critic and Drink Columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. His story concerned “Hercules,” George Washington’s enslaved master chef. Sold as a teenager to Washington, Hercules became renowned for his culinary skills. He escaped from Mount Vernon in 1797 and was never captured. Following-up on a lead, LaBan asked if we could confirm the death of one Hercules Posey in New York City in 1812. The archivists searched the 1812 death records, and reported to LaBan that they had indeed found Hercules Posey, age 64, a “black,” born in Virginia and residing at Orange Street. He died of consumption on May 15, 1812 and was buried at the Second African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan. The information matched known facts about Posey including the name of the slaveowner preceding George Washington: John Posey. An 1812 City Directory provided a more precise address for Hercules Posey—33 Orange Street.

Cover of the 6th Ward Jury Census from 1819. NYC Municipal Archives.

Mr. LaBan then asked if the Archives had records that could help him learn the names of the other residents of 33 Orange Street and further information about the house and neighborhood. And that is when the recently digitized jury census series came to the rescue. Although the earliest jury census dates from 1816, four years after Hercules Posey died, the archivists suggested that the census records might contain information relevant to LaBan’s inquiry.

The jury census collection consists of 21 bound volumes containing tally sheets of returns for the City and County of New York, organized by ward. There are tallies for 1816, 1819, and 1821. The tallies were taken to determine if residents were eligible for jury duty and include varying degrees of descriptive detail. For example, for 1816 and 1819 the returns are given in a double-page tabular format with column headings for the following categories: names of inhabitants, number of houses, name of street, occupation, freeholds of $150, age, reason for exemption from jury, total number of jurors, the number of male and female white inhabitants, aliens, colored inhabitants not slaves, slaves, freeholders of £100 and upwards, freeholds of £20 and under £100, tenants renting $5 per annum, total number of inhabitants, plus a column for remarks. For the 1821 census, the returns, in similar format, include data in these categories: name of the head of each family, number and street of residence, number of male inhabitants of the same family age 21 or upwards in four classifications according to value of freeholds and debts, military service and tax exemption or commutation. Other data includes: number of acres of improved land occupied by each person, as well as tallies of cattle, horses, sheep, and yards of various types of cloth manufactured by each family, and a count of mills, factories, distilleries, asheries (a place where potash is made), and machinery. Each tally is identified with this description: “RETURN, made pursuant to the Act, entitled, ‘An Act to provide for taking a Census, and for other purposes,’ passed March 16, 1821, from the City and County of New-York.”

Using a ward atlas, the archivists determined that 33 Orange Street had been located in the Sixth Ward of the City. [Orange Street was re-named Baxter Street in 1854]. Unfortunately, one of the few ledgers missing from the collection is the Sixth Ward tally for 1816. However, the 1819 ledger survived. With an index by street name on the first page, the archivists quickly located the entry for 33 Orange Street.

Spread from the 6th Ward Census showing residents on Orange Street in 1819. New York County Jury Census, NYC Municipal Archives.

According to the 1819 jury census, Jacob Hudson, a laborer, lived at 33 Orange Street along with six other male and five female “coloured inhabitants, not slaves.” Varying numbers of “coloured inhabitants not slaves” also occupied nos. 35, 37, 39, 41, and 43 Orange Street. Their occupations included tobacconist, laborer, waiter and coachman. “Coloured” persons lived on the other side of Orange Street, at nos. 40, 42 and 44 with occupations of sailor, mason, sawyer, laborer, waiter and boot cleaner. Given the specific mention of “boarding house” at no. 40, the implication is that 33 had not been a boarding establishment, but with 11 inhabitants, it was either one very large family or multiple families lived in the house.

Several aspects of the census records make them a valuable research resource. At the very least, they provide a fascinating glimpse of life in New York City in the early 19th century. Of particular demographic interest is the inclusion of women with identification by name, residence, age, and occupation or social status, during a time when women were ineligible to serve as jurors. Other reasons that could exempt a person from jury service included age (over 60), clergy member, alien (i.e. not a citizen), and speaking only the Dutch language.

Another feature of New York City life that quickly becomes apparent in reviewing the census records is the wide variety of occupations. On just one page, in a series of houses along Water Street in the First Ward tally of 1816, the occupation list includes: mariner, teacher, printer, musical instrument maker, boat man, watch maker, auctioneer, grocer, brush maker, merchant, saddler, attorney, shoemaker, book store, tobacconist, and copper smith. Scanning ahead a few more pages reveals a baker, hairdresser, sail maker cartman, auctioneer, and wood sawyer.

The census records also show that slavery was still a fact of life in New York City during the early years of the new republic. Although legislation passed in 1799 called for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the State, it was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished. The census of the first ward in 1816 is illustrative: several of the households along lower Broadway, then as now, the center of finance in the City, included one or two enslaved people. Among them was John Delafield, a broker, residing at 10 Broadway, had one male slave in his household.

The 1st Ward Census of 1816 shows downtown households with slaves. New York County Jury Census, NYC Municipal Archives.

Journalist LaBan appreciated the assistance provided by the archivists. Thanks to the amazing resources in the Archives, we can say that in the early 19th century, the Orange Street neighborhood was the home to a number African-Americans—quite possibly including George Washington’s master chef “Hercules.”

Researchers are welcome to explore the newly digitized census here: New York County Jury Census