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Another example of a schoolgirl’s needlework sampler similar to the Quaker model

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Place made New York, United States, North America

Overall: 16 1/8 x 17 1/4 in. ( 41 x 43.8 cm )

Gift of Stephen Taber Willets

Schoolgirl needlework helped indoctrinate girls into the cult of domesticity, and sampler verses selected by teachers often reinforced feminine roles. The verse selected for Ruth Titus's embroidery, "Woman," instructed Ruth Titus that her future role as a wife was "to give domestic life its sweetest charm."

Ruth Titus (Mrs. Isaac E. Haviland, b. 1801) came from a Quaker family, and the motifs surrounding her verse, such as the potted flowers, fruit baskets, and acorns, are associated with Quaker samplers. This sampler is similar to examples made at New York City Female Association Schools betwen 1815 and 1826.

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Place made New York, United States, North America Overall: 16 1/8 x 17 1/4 in. ( 41 x 43.8 cm ) Gift of Stephen Taber Willets Schoolgirl needlework helped indoctrinate girls into the cult of domesticity, and sampler verses selected by teachers often reinforced feminine roles.

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Communities like Sandy Ground, which was founded in the early 19th century by freed black people from New York, is the oldest community established by free slaves in North America

This is another example of how big maritime, fishing or sea life was throughout New York, & schools prepared students for these jobs

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On the South Shore of Staten Island lies a little known but historically significant
community called Sandy Ground.

Founded in the early 19th century by freed black men from New York, Sandy Ground is the oldest community established by free slaves in North America. The freed slaves that first settled here formed a farming community, which grew as free black oyster fishermen from Maryland and Delaware settled the region as well. Sandy Ground also served as an important stop on the Underground Railroad.

Descendents of the original settlers still live on Sandy Ground, and the Sandy Ground
Historical Society runs a museum and library that examines the life and history of the
freed Blacks who settled in the area prior to the Civil War. The Sandy Ground Historical
Society maintains the largest documentary collection of African-American culture and
history on Staten Island and the museum also serves as an educational research facility
chartered by the state Department of Education.

The Society's Museum and library are dedicated to researching, preserving and informing visitors about this historically important Staten Island Community. Letters, photographs, film, art, rare books, quilts and other archaeological artifacts are among the collection. The Museum also possesses a rare surviving can of Tettersalve, a beauty product manufactured by Harlem businesswoman Madame C. J. Walker, and a letter from W.E.B. DuBois.

The museum also sponsors arts-and-crafts sessions, a musical heritage series, a lecture
series presented in Island schools and churches, and a traveling lecture series to
institutions around the country The African-American quilt-making tradition is also
continued through quilting workshops.

Address: 1538 Woodrow Road

Phone number: 718-317-5796

Hours of Operation: Spring-summer hours Tuesday-Sunday from 1 - 4 p.m., winter hours Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday from 1 - 4 p.m.

Photo by Vinnie Amesse

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On the South Shore of Staten Island lies a little known but historically significant community called Sandy Ground. Founded in the early 19th century by freed black men from New York, Sandy Ground is the oldest community established by free slaves in North America.

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1. American Samplers. (n.d.). National Museum of American History: Behring Center. Retrieved May 9, 2021 from https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/american-samplers

2. A Women’s Work is Never Done: Domestic Work. (2004). American Antiquarian Society Online Exhibitions. https://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Womanswork/domestic.htm

3. Foy, C. (2016). Blacks on the New York Waterfront During the American Revolution. Redhook Waterstories. https://redhookwaterstories.org/exhibits/show/blacks-on-the-waterfront/blacks-waterfront-american-rev

4. New-York Historical Society. (2021, February 10). Curator Confidential: “Truth” Revealed — Rosena Disery’s African Free School Sampler [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0hzRBeYNGV8

5. Portside NewYork: Connecting New Yorkers to the Benefits of our Harbor. A Living Lab for Better Urban Waterways. (n.d.). Retrieved May 9, 2021 from https://portsidenewyork.org/afam-maritime

6. The Graduate Center, CUNY. (2001). Blacks-Encyclopedia of New York City. Virtual NY New York City. https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/EncyNYC/Blacks_for_draft_riots.html

7. The History of the School: Curriculum. (n.d.). Examination Days: The New York African Free School Collection. Retrieved May 9, 2021 from  https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/history/curriculum.html

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Here, we find a beautiful example of a needlework sampler from a young girl by the name of Rosena Disery who stitched this as a student at NYAFS in 1820.

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Place made New York, N.Y., United States

Overall: 12 x 13 in. (30.5 x 33 cm) Framed: 14 × 15 in. (35.6 × 38.1 cm)

Purchased through the generosity of the Monsky family, the Coby Foundation, Barbara Knowles Debs and Richard A. Debs, Patricia D. Klingenstein, Nancy Newcomb and John Hargraves, Charles Phillips, Pam B. Schafler, Sue Ann Weinberg, and the Goins Family Fund

This sampler was stitched by Rosena Disery (1805-1877) in 1820 when she was a student at the New York African Free School. Although both girls and boys attended the African Free School from its founding in 1787, needlework instruction was not added to the curriculum until 1791. The sewing program was modeled closely on the curriculum at the Quaker-run Female Association Schools. Rosena's sampler was produced under the tutelage of Miss Mary Lincrum, who had been educated at a Female Association School.

The verse stitched by Rosena was excerpted from the poem "Self-Love and Truth Incompatible," originally penned by the French mystic Madame Guyon (1648-1717) and published by William Cowper (1731-1800) in 1779. Surrounding the poem are Quaker-style motifs, such as baskets of fruit, flower urns, and vines.

Student needlework was regularly exhibited at the African Free School's public examination days as proof of the students' accomplishments. A schoolgirl's sampler was akin to her diploma, and would later be proudly displayed in her home. In addition to improving manual dexterity, the stitching of samplers provided moral instruction and encouraged literacy.

Rosena Disery prospered after graduating from the African Free School. She married Peter Van Dyke (1796-1869), a successful cook and caterer who owned a house at 133 Wooster Street. Van Dyke was a prominent figure in New York City's black community and a member of the vestry at St. Philip's Church. The couple became tremendously wealthy and left their son an inheritance of $120,000 in 1877. The family's prominence is also manifest in the soaring obelisk in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery that marks the grave of Peter and Rosena Van Dyke.

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Sampler made at the New York African Free School

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Place made New York, N.Y., United States Overall: 12 x 13 in. (30.5 x 33 cm) Framed: 14 × 15 in. (35.6 × 38.1 cm) Purchased through the generosity of the Monsky family, the Coby Foundation, Barbara Knowles Debs and Richard A. Debs, Patricia D. Klingenstein, Nancy Newcomb and John Hargraves, Charles Phillips, Pam B.

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Groups like the African Dorcas Society (est. 1828) were made up of women who sewed clothing for young Black students so that they could attend the African Free Schools.

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New York City has played a pivotal role in the history of black Americans. The city during the nineteenth century was a center of abolitionism, the site of influential black churches, benevolent organizations, and schools, and a focus of sometimes violent conflict between blacks and European immigrants. After the turn of the century Harlem became internationally known as a center of black nationalism and other forms of political activism, and of the literary and artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. In later years the city's black community increased its political power and eventually accounted for more than a quarter of the total population.

1. From the Colonial Period to 1900

The African presence in what is now New York City dates to the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam in 1626, when the West India Company imported enslaved Africans to build public works, and to work in the prosperous fur trade. Those enslaved by the company were given the right to be baptized, to marry, and to own property, and were allowed to work for themselves when their services were not required by the company or other slaveowners. They could also obtain legal recourse and could testify against and sue whites. Because of these privileges slavery in New Netherland was less severe than in other colonies of the western hemisphere.

The English conquest of New Netherland in 1664 resulted in harsher and more restrictive bondage. Most free Africans were disfranchised, any public assembly of more than three Africans or Indians was deemed illegal, curfews were set for blacks and Indians, and free Africans were penalized for harboring fugitive slaves.

Lured by the promise of freedom, enslaved Africans fought on both sides of the conflict in the American Revolution. In 1781 the state assembly passed a law freeing all Africans who served in the state's military forces. But the political and civil rights of all black New Yorkers were severely limited: they could not vote or hold public office, interracial marriage was prohibited, and a statute passed in 1785 precluded them from testifying against whites in any court in the state. In the same year the New York Manumission Society was formed. Its members argued that slavery was incompatible with the democratic rhetoric that fueled the American Revolution. Abolitionists persuaded the state legislature in 1799 to enact the Gradual Emancipation Act, which stipulated that every male slave born after 4 July 1799 was to be freed at the age of twenty-eight, every female at twenty-four.

In 1796 a group of free Africans in New York City began to hold meetings that eventually led to the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the first black congregation in the city (eventually known as "Mother Zion," it later occupied a church built at Church and Leonard streets in 1801). The first black Baptist church in the city, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, was formed in 1808 on Worth Street and directed by Thomas Paul. In the same year the African Association for Mutual Relief, the first insurance company that catered to blacks, was opened on Baxter Street by several black civic and political leaders, including James Varick (first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church), the restaurateur Thomas Downing, Peter Williams Jr., John Teasman, and Henry Sipkins. African-American members of the White Sands Street Methodist Church in Brooklyn left in 1812 to form the High Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church, and the first congregation of black Episcopalians, led by Williams, built St. Philip's Protestant Episcopal Church on Centre Street in 1818. Out of the early African-American churches grew literary and musical societies, church schools, and benevolent organizations such as the New York African Society for Mutual Relief (formed in 1808).

In 1821 the state legislature ruled that African-Americans could vote only if they owned property worth at least $250, while at the same time it eliminated the property qualification for white male voters. Not surprisingly there were only sixteen qualified African-American voters in 1825 and sixty-eight in 1835. Most employed African-Americans in the nineteenth century did unskilled work: men often were laborers and women domestic servants. In 1825 more than one fifth of the African-American residents of Manhattan lived in the slums of the sixth ward, which spread from the Five Points north and west to the Hudson River.

A group of free blacks set up separate schools for black children, which were open only sporadically and were always underfinanced. The New York Manumission Society, an organization composed of well-to-do white abolitionists, founded the African Free School in 1797. The nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal, was launched in 1827 by the abolitionist minister Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm, one of the first blacks in the United States to receive a college degree. Its goal was to improve the political and economic standing of free blacks and agitate for the end of slavery. The newspaper later changed its name to Rights for All before ceasing publication in 1829. Other black newspapers in New York City in the nineteenth century were the Colored American (1837), the Ram's Horn, the Anglo-African (1859), and Frederick Douglass's North Star (1847). Williams helped to form the African Dorcas Society (1828), a women's sewing group that made clothing for young black students so that they could attend the African Free Schools. Many middle-class blacks opened restaurants, the most successful of which were Thomas Van Renesselaer's Eating House on Wall Street, Katy Ferguson's Pastry Shop on Thompson Street, Downing's Oyster House on Broad Street, and Cato's in lower Manhattan. The all-male African Clarkson Association, formed in 1829, was both a literary society and a benevolent organization. Its members paid monthly dues of twenty-five cents and could receive financial help when they or their families fell ill.

There were more than one dozen black literary and book-lending societies in Manhattan and Brooklyn by the mid nineteenth century. The Philomethean Society (1830) owned more than six hundred volumes by 1837, and the Phoenix Society (1833) sponsored lectures on history and science that regularly attracted more than three hundred listeners; its members included Williams, Cornish, the abolitionist and book merchant David Ruggles, and the poet Charles B. Ray. Literary groups for women included the Female Literary Society (1834) and the Ladies Literary Society (1836). The Garrison Literary Association (1834), a group for children and young adults, was open to any person of good moral character between the ages of four and twenty willing to pay annual dues of 12 1/2cents. In 1845 a group of white abolitionists and politicians in New York City formed the African Education and Civilization Society (more commonly known as the African Civilization Society), which prepared black students to teach in Africa. The Society for Promoting Education among Colored Children, formed in 1847 by the poet and educator Charles Reasoner at 49 Frankfort Street, played an important role in the effort to educate black children.

In the 1840s a great number of white European immigrants moved to New York City, leading to a great deterioration in the employment opportunities available to free blacks. Their political status remained weak as well: in 1846 a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would have granted blacks the same voting rights as whites was rejected by the local electorate. The fight for suffrage and against American colonization led to the formation of the Negro Convention movement in the 1830s. In 1834 a black minister delivering an abolitionist sermon to a predominantly black audience at the Chatham Street Chapel was assaulted, triggering two days of anti-abolitionist agitation in which white mobs attacked blacks and abolitionist white churches as well as the Bowery Theater. Two black churches were extensively damaged before the militia ended the violence on the night of 11 July by arresting about 150 ringleaders of the mob. By 1850 most of the city's blacks were living in or near Greenwich Village, and by 1860 others had settled on the West Side between 10th and 30th streets, the infamous Tenderloin. After accounting for 5 percent of the city's population in 1840, blacks in 1860 accounted for less than 2 percent.

A rash of anti-black incidents beset New York City during the Civil War. In the summer of 1862 a mob of Irishmen attempted to burn down a tobacco factory in Brooklyn where two dozen black women and children were working. The draft riots of 13-17 July 1863 began as a protest against a clause in the draft law exempting from service those who paid a $300 fee, but soon assumed racial dimensions as a mob of poor Irish citizens assaulted blacks, hanging many and mutilating others, and destroyed black institutions and homes. This was the bloodiest riot in the history of the United States, and at least 105 persons died. In 1869 a proposal to eliminate the property qualification for black voters was rejected by the electorate in New York State. Blacks in the city did not obtain the vote on an equal basis with whites until three fourths of the states ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in March 1870.

The Afro-American League (1889) and the Afro-American Council (1898), both formed by the militant black editor of the New York Age T. Thomas Fortune, were short-lived and failed to better the condition of the city's blacks. Black Democrats had no power in Tammany Hall, which tried to appease them in 1898 by creating an all-black group called the United Colored Democracy. Although there were 60,666 blacks in New York City by 1900, they still accounted for less than 2 percent of the total population, as immigrants from southern and eastern Europe flooded the city. Competition among blacks and immigrants for jobs and housing resulted in mutual distrust and hostility. A riot erupted in the Tenderloin on the night of 15 August 1900 after a white policemen was killed by a black man. Blacks were pulled from streetcars and beaten by the mob, and many fought back by hurling bricks and bottles. The police made little effort to intervene, and some joined the rioters in their racial attacks. In response to what they saw as a police coverup of the incident 3500 blacks met at Carnegie Hall on 12 September 1900 to form the Citizens' Protective League.

James Weldon Johnson: Black Manhattan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930)

Seth M. Scheiner: Negro Mecca: A History of the Negro in New York City, 1865-1920 (New York: New York University Press, 1965)

Gilbert Osofsky: Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, 1890-1930 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966)

Harold X. Connolly: A Ghetto Grows in Brooklyn (New York: New York University Press, 1977)

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New York City has played a pivotal role in the history of black Americans. The city during the nineteenth century was a center of abolitionism, the site of influential black churches, benevolent organizations, and schools, and a focus of sometimes violent conflict between blacks and European immigrants.

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1700s: samplers with alphabets & numerals were worked by young women to learn the basic needlework skills needed to operate the family household.

Late 1700s to early 1800s: schools taught more elaborate pieces with decorative motifs, & things like verses, flowers, houses, religious, pastoral, and/or mourning scenes were being stitched.

Families of the young women displayed their embroideries as showpieces of their work, talent, and status.

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The earliest known American sampler was made by Loara Standish of the Plymouth Colony about 1645. By the 1700s, samplers depicting alphabets and numerals were worked by young women to learn the basic needlework skills needed to operate the family household. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, schools or academies for well-to-do young women flourished, and more elaborate pieces with decorative motifs such as verses, flowers, houses, religious, pastoral, and/or mourning scenes were being stitched. The parents of these young women proudly displayed their embroideries as showpieces of their work, talent, and status.

In recent years, samplers have become important in museum collections as representations of early American female education. Many are signed, and some are inscribed with locations and the names of teachers and schools. The emergence of large numbers of these samplers has resulted in much research in diaries, account books, letters, newspaper ads, local histories, and published commentary that is helping to illuminate the lives of women in early America.

Many early samplers do not have the letters "J" and "U" in their alphabets because they were not part of the early Latin alphabet and so the letter "I" was used for "J" and the "V" for "U." The letter "s" is often replaced with the printers "s" which looks like the modern f.

There are 137 American samplers in the Textile Collection. The first was donated in 1886, the Margaret Dinsmoor sampler. In the 1890s the Copp Collection was received and it contained two samplers-one by Esther Copp and the other by her great niece Phebe Esther Copp. (The Copp Collection is an extensive collection of 18th-and 19th- century household textiles, costume items, furniture, and other pieces belonging to the Copps, a prosperous but frugal Connecticut family.) The earliest dated sampler in the collection was made in 1735 by Lydia Dickman of Boston, Massachusetts.

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The earliest known American sampler was made by Loara Standish of the Plymouth Colony about 1645. By the 1700s, samplers depicting alphabets and numerals were worked by young women to learn the basic needlework skills needed to operate the family household.

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Let’s think about how gendered curriculum plays an active role in subjects taught at schools even years later.

- For example, did you ever take a home-economics, fashion/ sewing, early childhood or construction class in middle or high school? Who made up most of the class (girls or boys) & who participated more?
- What kind of jobs or ways of earning a living were shown throughout this experience? For who were the jobs specific to?

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Sewing, weaving, knitting, & spinning = an important part of domestic life for all women regardless of age.

Women made clothing for themselves & other family members.

Sewing & spinning were often the primary responsibility of the daughters or other girls in the house.

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Domestic Work

Domestic work was an extremely time-consuming occupation, but unlike many jobs outside the home, domestic jobs were done out of necessity rather than by choice. Whether married or single, women did the majority of the daily housework. Often, hired help or slaves would contribute, but usually it was the responsibility of the women and the children of the house to complete the necessary tasks. This is the frontispeice image of a kitchen scene from Esther Howland's The American Economical Housekeeper,1845.

Some typical household chores for women who lived on farms or in small towns were candle dipping, soap making, wood chopping, butter-churning, and gardening, as well as everyday activities such as cleaning, weaving, and cooking. The image to the right is of a woman churning butter, from an 1809 children's book called A Peep into the Sports of Youth, and the Occupations and Amusements of Age.

"The Washing Day," an 1835 engraved sheet music cover, illustrates the need for many pairs of hands to complete the all-important household chores of washing, drying, and ironing clothes.

The family usually produced most of the food for home consumption, but they would also visit the local shop for other supplies as needed. Women who were a little more affluent or lived in a city sometimes took a more hands-off approach to running a household by supervising others in daily tasks. This John Bufford lithograph, "Feeding the Pigs," from the mid-nineteenth century, shows one aspect of women's work on a farm.

Merchants selling goods commonly bought by women used images and words in their advertisements that would attract their customers. The art of advertising through print did not get its start until the late eighteenth century, but it became vital to the country's commercial and industrial growth. This late nineteenth-century trade card for Borax Soap is a good example of this type of advertising.

This 1851 Boston trade card for North American Electric Washing Fluid promises to change the way women wash clothes.

Sewing, weaving, knitting, and spinning were an important part of domestic life for women of all ages, because they made clothing for themselves and other family members. If they could not buy domestic or imported cloth from a local shopkeeper, they could buy or make yarn for spinning cloth. Sewing and spinning were often the primary responsibility of the daughters or other girls in the house. This 1856 lithograph of an old woman making thread is by L. H. Bradford.

This site and all contents © 2004 American Antiquarian Society

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AAS Online Exhibition: A Woman's Work is Never Done

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Domestic Work Domestic work was an extremely time-consuming occupation, but unlike many jobs outside the home, domestic jobs were done out of necessity rather than by choice. Whether married or single, women did the majority of the daily housework.

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In Nearby Brooklyn (additional info on jobs in maritime)...

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In Nearby Brooklyn (additional info on jobs in maritime)...

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Brooklyn’s agricultural products were often the result of slave labor

1790- over 30% of the county’s several thousand residents were slaves, most of whom worked on farms.

Brooklyn’s location facing the East River & New York Bay also meant that many of its residents, Black and White, were connected to and worked in New York’s maritime sector.

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FULL ARTICLE: Blacks on the Waterfront

"Blacks on the New York Waterfront During the American Revolution" Commissioned by PortSide NewYork Synopsis The American Revolution created opportunities for some enslaved Blacks to obtain freedom. Self-interested economic and military reasons prompted the British to declare free, all enslaved blacks in America who joined them in New York harbor as Royal Navy seamen, British privateersmen or as laborers in the British Army - thus providing blacks with financial independence. But, in a foreshadowing of 20th century racial conflicts on New York's waterfront, black maritime workers found themselves largely shut out of dockyard work due to white artisans' resistance. At the same time black mariners serving on captured British ships often found themselves sold into slavery. When the war ended, the best option for most of the British-freed blacks was to flee away from the United States but for the vast majority of enslaved blacks a door to freedom was firmly shut.

During the eighteenth century life in Brooklyn was largely centered around agricultural activities. The jumble of wharves, piers, ropewalks and dockyards that lined the Brooklyn waterfront during the Age of Sail and into the twentieth century, such as Sand Brothers' rope-walk at the foot of Old Ferry Road and Red Hook's Atlantic Basin, were not yet part of the county's landscape. Brooklyn's agricultural products were often the result of slave labor; by 1790 over 30% of the county's several thousand residents were slaves, most of whom worked on farms. Despite the agricultural nature of the county's economy prior to the American Revolution, Brooklyn's location facing the East River and New York Bay meant that many of its residents, black and white, were connected to and worked in New York's maritime sector.

To get Brooklyn's farm products to Manhattan markets ferries and roads were required. Beginning in 1642 ferries shuttled people and goods from Brooklyn Heights across to New York. In the eighteenth century these ferries operated under licenses issued by the Brooklyn corporation, typically for five-year terms. The ferries had broad boards, flat bottoms, and lacking keels, were navigated by oars. The ferrymen manning them were typically slaves. They included James Ramsey's two slaves who drowned operating a ferry and a "Negro Fellow belonging to Mr. Samuel Waldron." In relying upon enslaved ferrymen, Waldron and Ramsey were like other ferry operators throughout the British North American colonies. Black ferrymen could be found on the Arno and Stono Rivers in South Carolina, Virginia's James, Potomac and Rappahanock rivers, the Delaware and Schuykill Rivers of Pennsylvania, the Connecticut River, the Charles River in Massachusetts, as well as on Narragansett and Oyster Bays. Waldron's "Negro fellow" was but one of scores of black ferrymen who made it possible to connect distant settlements at a time when roads were limited and fairly primitive.

Long Island farmers transporting goods to Manhattan used the Old Ferry Road (Figure 1). It allowed farmers from Flatlands, Flatbush, and Queens to bring their goods by wagon to the Fulton Ferry landing. Farmers from Red Hook farms also brought their produce to the landing. There wagons, animals and passengers would be loaded onto ferries for the short but hazardous voyage across the East River. The Fulton Ferry landing not only served as a connector between farmers and markets, but also was a social hub for African American life. Enslaved peoples observed Pinkster, the Dutch version of Pentecost, at the ferry landing. During Pinkster observations blacks engaged in African songs and dances. In doing so, Brooklyn's slaves maintained cultural connections to their ancestral homelands.

The ferries between Brooklyn and Manhattan also connected blacks to New York's vibrant maritime economy. Anyone looking across the East River from the Brooklyn shoreline would have seen a literal forest of ship masts. In the decades prior to the American Revolution blacks, free and enslaved, were commonly employed on these ships and along the Manhattan waterfront as seamen, caulkers, ship carpenters, sail makers and stevedores. Nero Tindam, Cezar Carvey, Curasco Nicholls and twenty-one other Negroes employed "pumping" water out of the Juno in 1764 were hardly unusual among New York's waterfront workforce. When Shier ran away in 1768 his skill as a caulker was noted in his master's fugitive slave advertisement. The maritime skills of slaves were also frequently noted in slave sale ads, with enslaved workers described as "used to the sea" (Figure 2) or a "good Ship Caulker."

Enslaved individuals understood that the port's maritime economy provided opportunities for freedom. Ship owners, ship captains and maritime business operators when hiring workers were often more concerned with muscle and maritime skills than skin color or enslaved status. Almost one-quarter of New York City eighteenth century fugitive slave advertisements contained warnings to masters of vessels not to harbor or employ fugitive slaves. Efforts to restrict the steady stream of slave fugitives seeking freedom via New York's maritime industry were largely unsuccessful. Neither laws which made it illegal for ship captains to assist runaways or slave masters' warnings to ship masters that they would be prosecuted for carrying off or hiring fugitives stemmed the flow of runaways obtaining berths on ships sailing from New York. Simply stated, black workers were indispensable to the port's bustling maritime economy and their critical role provided some of them with opportunities for freedom and independent lives.

The outbreak of the American Revolution changed both the nature and scope of blacks' presence on the New York waterfront. Blacks could be found in each of New York's three key maritime sectors - the Royal Navy, privateers, and the Royal Dockyard- during the American Revolution.

The Revolution created four factors that significantly changed the nature of blacks' maritime experiences in New York: British offers of freedom to American slaves who fled to British forces; a steep increase in the need for maritime labor; a significant presence by the Royal Navy; and the enticement of economic independence from service on British privateers.
BRITISH OFFERS OF FREEDOM:
In what some historians have termed "brutal pragmatism," British forces took steps to offer freedom to American slaves. They did so to weaken the rebels economically; after all, the wealth of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other Patriot leaders was largely based upon enslaved labor. But British military commanders also offered liberty to enslaved individuals as a military tactic. Both sides to the conflict faced practical concerns about finding sufficient men to fight and the tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans were a not an insignificant source of fighting men.

In November 1775 Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation that "all indented servants, Negroes, or others, (pertaining to Rebels,) [would be] free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops." As a result of this proclamation hundreds of slaves in the Chesapeake fled their masters and sought to join British forces. British authorities organized some of them into the Ethiopian Regiment and others into the Black Pioneers.

Upon Dunmore and the British leaving Virginia and coming to New York they brought with them the Ethiopian Regiment and other formerly enslaved blacks. In the ensuing years of the war, whenever British forces, and particularly the Royal Navy, entered a region, blacks flocked to them. This resulted in a not inconsiderable number of former slaves being shuttled from southern colonies to New York. By way of example, consider HMS Brune. In February 1777 this naval ship brought to New York not less than fifty runaway slaves. For Nathan, Moll, Charles, Jenny, George, Gefrey and the other formerly enslaved African Americans on the Brune the naval ship was a taxicab to freedom. These and other blacks swarming to British lines joined an estimated 30,000 refugees jammed into the city, all seeking employment.

The pool of enslaved people eligible for freedom under Dunmore's Proclamation was expanded when on June 30, 1779 Sir Henry Clinton issued the Phillipsburgh Proclamation. Clinton's proclamation forbad anyone from selling or claiming any right in a slave the property of an American rebel who took refuge with the British army. Moreover, Clinton promised "to every Negroe Who shall desert the Rebel Standard, full Security to follow within these Lines, any Occupation which he shall think proper." Although the actual number of American slaves who fled to British and found freedom is disputed, and as is detailed below, not "any Occupation" was open to ex-slaves arriving in New York, there can be no doubt that the Proclamation resulted in considerable migration of black mariners and black maritime workers to New York from southern colonies.

Although British promises of freedom drew more blacks to fight for the King, from the very beginning of British occupation of New York blacks were involved on both sides of the conflict. Thus, at the end of the Battle of Brooklyn, with George Washington's forces in flight, it was Sutphin and another black slave who helped ferry to New Jersey Continental soldiers, who prior to their retreat had occupied lines from Jamaica Road in the northeast to Red Hook on the southwest.
NAVAL SEAMEN:
In the years before the American Revolution the Royal Navy generally stationed a single frigate at New York. These frigates typically had a single deck of gunports, carried between twenty to twenty-four guns and had crews of between 100 and 160 men. Thus, although blacks, such as John Incobs, served on naval ships prior to the outbreak of the American Revolution, the numbers of black naval seamen in New York were limited due to the small presence of the Royal Navy. By August of 1776 when Admiral Richard Howe had three hundred warships and almost four hundred transports in New York harbor, the scale of naval operations in the port changed geometrically.

Blacks who came to New York seeking freedom pursuant to the Dunmore and Phillipsburgh Proclamations needed work. A considerable number found employment with the Royal Navy. As the unidentified Brooklyn owner of the slave Frank noted in July 1777 when his bondsmen fled by stealing a canoe, the black was believed to have "gone to the [British] fleet at Staten Island." When Frank did so, he joined scores of other blacks serving on Royal Navy ships in the harbor. To give but three examples, when HMS Rose anchored at Sandy Hook at the end of June 1776 John Baptista, Bristol Rogers, Cato Jeff, Alfred Hazzard, Peter Robarts, Quashie Ferguson, Boston Pearly, and Prince Johonson, all black seamen, were among the ship's 116 men crew. While in New York other blacks, such as Richard Prince, a 24 year-old, and Bristol Rogers, a 26 year-old Guinea-born Able Bodied seamen, entered the ship. The naval ship St. Albans similarly had a number of blacks serve on it; in August 1777 alone Sanchio Ceazar, Peter Quamino and Emanuel Joseph Ordinary entered aboard. Blacks could even be found serving on Royal Navy galleys in New York waters. Cato, who entered onto HMS Crane galley as a refugee in May 1779, decided to remain on the vessel. For the next two years he helped row her as the galley patrolled as far north as City Island, south to Raritan Bay, east to Huntington and around New York harbor.

Blacks also served the Royal Navy in positions other than seaman. For example, Cato, served as a bargeman at the British Provision Magazine in Fort Brooklyn near Pierrepont and Henry Streets in 1781. Other blacks served as pilots, a position of great responsibility, particularly in New York where tidal waters and numerous sand bars made bringing a man of war into the harbor a dangerous endeavor. They included Pompey, who served as a pilot of HMS Greyhound in 1783, and an unnamed black pilot who on August 23, 1783 safely brought HMS Experiment through the dangerous Hell Gate strait into New York harbor while being chased by three French war ships.

While some blacks voluntarily choose to furl sails or swap decks of Royal Navy ships in New York harbor, others came aboard naval ships in a more coercive fashion. The Royal Navy's need for mariners during the Revolution increased dramatically. Many naval seamen took the first opportunity they could to desert in North American ports. They did so not necessarily because of a desire to join the Patriot cause, but rather due to difficult working conditions, late pay and the lure of greater riches on privateers. As a result, Royal Navy captains often found their crews short of the necessary complement and thus willing to use any means to find the necessary manpower to sail. Naval captains frequently used the tried and true means of enlisting seamen into the Royal Navy - impressing them. Thus, in October, 1775, as were scores of other black tars, the black seamen William Cato and John Hercules, and black Ordinaries (seamen with less than three years experience) Jupiter Yound and Casar Tompkins found themselves impressed onto HMS Kingfisher at New York

When blacks, free or formerly enslaved, entered onto a Royal Navy ship in New York, they did not enter an entirely lily white world. Not infrequently they found themselves sharing a mess or a watch with other black seamen. By the Revolution, the Royal Navy had considerable numbers of blacks in its ranks. Men such as George Fennel, a twenty year-old Guinea-born able-bodied seaman and Michael Reading, a 36 year-old from Gabmia, on HMS Asia in 1777 while it was stationed in New York, could be found on many a naval vessel in American waters. Thus, in 1777, when the free Spanish black mariner Anthony Mingus choose to join the crew of HMS Brune after being captured at sea, his crew mates included John Wilson, an able bodied seaman from Africa, and black sailors John Henry, John Peter and Augustine.
PRIVATEERS:
With a two-thousand mile North American coastline to blockade, West Indies islands to protect, and combating American, French, Spanish and Dutch enemies across the globe, the Royal Navy's resources were stretched to its limit. Commissioning private ships to attack enemy ships helped Britain maintain its maritime superiority during the American Revolution. Requiring large crews that averaged eighty-eight men per ship so as to be able to board and seize enemy ships, privateers strained New York's maritime labor market. It is estimated that six thousand New Yorkers served on British privateers out of New York City. (See Figure 3) Many privateersmen's crew members were black fugitives as ''ship captains were hardly choosy about hiring black sailors." In hiring former slaves New York privateer ship captains greatly assisted slaves in transforming their lives.

For fugitive slaves and free blacks the monies they could earn on a privateer far exceeded the wages they received for work on land. Although they received only one-half to three-quarters of the prize monies that experienced seamen would, inexperienced landsmen, including fugitive slaves, were eager to serve on New York's privateers. It has been estimated that blacks comprised ten percent of a typical American privateer. However, on some, such as the Rhode Island privateer Success, the percentage was considerably higher; the Success ' 51 man crew included Thomas Piggen and nine other black seamen. On British privateers operating out of New York the percentage was even higher.

The Fair American, one of the more successful privateers sailing out of New York, had at least four African Americans among its crew: Cato Ramsey, Daniel Fisher, Luke Wilson and June, a "Negro Fellow" from South Carolina. These men clearly had New York ties as at least two, Fisher and Wilson, were said to have wives in the port.

Slaves owned by Loyalists also served on British privateers. When in 1780 William Smith, a Woodbridge Loyalist, sent his slave Andrew, out on a New York privateer, he sought to profit from Andrew's maritime endeavors. Just as slave masters in earlier wars of the eighteenth-century had enriched themselves from the prize monies slave privateers obtained for them, so too did Smith hope to do so. Unfortunately for Smith, Andrew's privateer was captured, causing Smith not only not to receive prize monies but to have lost his slave.

Privateer captains offered runaway slaves the promise of riches and a more egalitarian climate. And yet while slave owners such as William Smith were gambling with the potential loss of their bondsmen, fugitives were literally gambling their lives by privateering. Approximately one-half of the seamen on New York's privateers ending up wounded, captured, or dead. Those blacks who had the bad fortune to have served on ships captured by enemy privateers-of which there were hundreds on the 1,300 New York privateers captured by American ships -not infrequently found themselves sold into slavery. Thus, when the ship black seaman Patrick Dennis served on was captured he was brought to Philadelphia and sold as a slave. Unlike most captured black mariners sold into slavery, Dennis was able to escape and believed to have sought his freedom once again by going to sea.

ROYAL DOCKYARDS:
Although there was shipbuilding in New York prior to British occupation in 1776 it was not on a large scale, and very little of it took place along the Brooklyn waterfront. But soon after the Battle of Brooklyn the Admiralty ordered the creation of a dockyard on the East River which became the Royal Navy's principal North American repair facility. The royal dockyard, which was located in Manhattan just below Corlears Hook, would prove critical to the Royal Navy's operations against the American rebels.

The workforce in the dockyard was sizable; monthly it averaged 244 employees. And yet in a typical month there was only one black worker. During the Revolution only ten blacks, or 0.4% of the workforce, worked in the dockyard. Was this an under-representation of blacks in the workforce? And how to explain such limited employment of blacks at the dockyard? Several factors persuasively indicate that black maritime workers were significantly under-represented in the dockyard's labor force. First, prior to the Revolution blacks comprised 14.3% of the city's population and between 10% and 20% of New York's maritime workforce. Second, during the Revolution many employers, including the British military, relied upon black workers. Blacks such as Bob Powell, Cato Fowler, Cuffee Wandrick and Prince Lowrey served as laborers in the British Army, while Cuff, Dover Stedman, Jack and Quaks served as wagoneers and drivers for the British military. And third, maritime workers and mariners were one of the largest occupational groups among the hundreds of fugitive slaves who fled to New York during the Revolution. Thus, it is rather apparent that blacks were statistically under-represented in the dockyard's workforce and that there is no readily apparent business explanation for such low levels of black employment. The experience of the black naval seaman John Mosley appears to have been typical of blacks in New York. Although Mosley had worked for 'many years' in New York shipyards he never was employed in the naval dockyard.

The inequitable treatment of blacks in the dockyard was not limited to their underrepresentation in the yard's workforce. Black dockyard workers also did not receive regular work, were generally assigned only low skill jobs and were denied less strenuous work that enabled whites to work longer hours. Dublin Negro was the sole black worker employed in the dockyard for more than a year. Cicero, Benjamin and the handful of other black workers in the dockyard were only employed for several months. Thus, in contrast to white workers who were regularly employed for extended periods of time, blacks could not rely upon dockyard work to sustain themselves.

In the Chesapeake, from which large numbers of fugitives fled to New York, blacks had been regularly employed as sawyers. Despite the presence of this experienced black sawyer workforce in New York not a single black sawyer, such as the twenty-year-old Joseph, was ever employed in the dockyard. High demand in the royal dockyard for their skills resulted in sawyers working the longest hours and receiving the highest pay among all the dockyard's workers. Their wages of more than eleven pounds per month were double the wages of most local artisans. Blacks' exclusion from service as sawyers in the dockyard thus kept them from work that held a strong possibility of transforming their lives.

As a laborer Dublin Negro made slightly more than four pounds per month, a living wage but less than 40% of sawyers' pay. Moreover, neither Dublin nor any other black dockyard worker was assigned night watch work. Watchmen were paid two-thirds wages for work that did not entail the manual labor of daytime work. While blacks were never assigned night watches whites averaged more than five night watches every two months. As a result, whites not working extra workdays often received pay on level with Dublin's without the hard physical labor he performed. "At the end of the Revolution a number of such black sawyers migrated to Nova Scotia. (Figure 4)."

What caused blacks' unequal access to jobs at the dockyard and inequitable treatment? In the absence of records in which white workers and naval officials indicated their intent in maintaining a largely white workforce in the dockyard absolute conclusions as to the reasons for the workforce's imbalance cannot be reached. However, circumstantial evidence does indicate that three factors appear to have caused the disparate treatment of black maritime workers: (1) white workers' desire to resist blacks encroaching on their trades; (2) municipal regulation limiting blacks' access to maritime work; and (3) the lack of external economic forces that might have compelled dockyard officials to hire blacks.

In the decades prior to the war, New York building-trade workers regularly took steps to bar outsiders from working in the city. In 1747 they petitioned Governor Clinton to take action against Jersey workers offering to work at lower wages. In 1763 New York ship carpenters refused to work on transports unless the mayor limited licenses for such work to city residents. In the dockyard whites' desire for monopolistic control over maritime work appears to have been effectuated by an informal referral system. Pay records list more than sixty separate groups of white family members in the dockyard. It therefore likely that similar to many twentieth-century construction unions, whose members' relatives received preferential access to well-paying jobs, whites in the dockyard referred their relatives for jobs and naval officials relied upon such referrals in hiring new workers. Thus, it appears white maritime artisans used their economic power to exclude outsiders, including blacks, from jobs at the dockyard during the Revolution.

Municipal regulations limiting blacks' access to artisanal work also shaped and reflected white laborers' ideology of racial superiority. Whites prior to the Revolution undertook to resist black encroachment into their trades. For example, as early as 1691, New York's Common Council decreed "no slave be suffered to work ... as a porter." In 1737 artificers complained of the "pernicious custom of breeding slaves to trades" resulted in white tradesmen being forced to leave the city. Coopers complained that merchants' slaves built barrels for sale to others. And in the aftermath of the 1741 Slave Conspiracy trials in which slave water carriers were deemed to have played central roles in the alleged conspiracy, legislation barring blacks from obtaining water at any well other than the closest neighborhood well was enacted. As a result, whites soon thereafter dominated the water transport trade.

As the sole naval dockyard in the region and New York lacking a shipyard in which a largely black artisan workforce was efficiently utilized, there was no external pressure on dockyard officials to hire blacks or to pay them equal wages. As a result, although many blacks had fled to New York, very few were employed in the King's Dockyard and those that did received smaller compensation than their white colleagues.
EVACUATION DAY:
In April 1782 peace negotiations to end the Revolution began in Paris. A last-minute amendment to Article 7 of the treaty, which was signed in September, 1783, prohibited "carrying away any Negroes and other property of the American inhabitants." On November 25, 1783 British forces evacuated New York City. In the nineteen months between start of negotiations and Evacuation Day the status of blacks in the city who had fled their American masters would be a contentious issue.

In the spring of 1783 former owners came to New York seeking their former bondsmen. Boston King and other black seamen feared their former masters "dragging them out of their beds." And these newly freed men had cause to be fearful. British officials found themselves prosecuting men such as Job Hatfield who attempted to steal blacks. Blacks eagerly sought certificates of protection issued by British officials that declared them to have "reported to the British lines in consequence of the proclamations of Sir William Howe and Sir Henry Clinton" and therefore free to leave the city.

Although Americans believed Article 7 meant all their former bondsmen were to be returned to them, Sir Carleton, the British commander in New York took a different view. Carleton informed George Washington that to compel blacks who had crossed British lines pursuant to Dunmore's and Phillipsburgh Proclamations would be a "dishonourable violation of the public faith" in that they had been freed prior to the Treaty of Paris.

With the departure of British troops from New York on November 25, 1783 the protection of British military forces for those seeking freedom ended. Blacks understood that whites would and could take steps to assert ownership claims over them without hostile government officials taking steps to protect black freedom. As a result, in the months leading up to Evacuation Day, enslaved peoples such as Henry Stanton's twelve-year old boy Jess, took the opportunity and ran away.

CONCLUSION:

The Revolution created opportunities for some enslaved African Americans to obtain freedom. Assisted by British pragmatic desires to economically and militarily weaken Americans, formerly enslaved blacks found economic independence in New York harbor as Royal Navy seamen, British privateersmen or as laborers in the British Army. But in a foreshadowing of 20 th century racial conflicts on New York's waterfront, black maritime workers found themselves largely shut out of dockyard work due to white artisans' resistance. At the same time black mariners serving on captured British ships often found themselves sold into slavery. Evacuation Day may have been a day for Americans to celebrate their newly created nation, but for blacks still enslaved in North America the Royal Navy ships leaving New York harbor meant their last best hope of finding freedom had vanished. And for the approximately three thousand blacks who left New York on British vessels at the end of the Revolution, freedom would require having to travel far away - Nova Scotia, England or Sierra Leone - to establish new independent lives. Thus, for blacks, the New York waterfront during the Revolution represented both freedom for hundreds of them, but for the vast majority of enslaved blacks a door to freedom that was firmly shut.

Further Reading:
The most complete survey of black maritime life during the Age of Sail is W. Jeffrey Bolster's Black Jacks: African American Seaman in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass, 1997). Philip D. Morgan's essays, "Maritime Slavery" Slavery & Abolition 31, no. 3 (Sept. 2010): 311-326 and "Black Experiences in Britain's Maritime World," in Empire, the Sea and Global History: Britain's Maritime World, c.1763-c.1840 (New York, 2007) provide well-balanced depictions of Anglo-American sailors' lives. Cassandra Pybus' Epic journeys of freedom: runaway slaves of the American Revolution and their global quest for liberty (Boston, 2006) and "Billy Blue: An African American Journey through Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century," Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5:2 (Fall 2007): 258-28 describe the global migration of black mariners from New York in the revolutionary era. Four of my articles - "Seeking Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1713-1783," Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4:1 (Spring 2006): 46-77; "Eighteenth-Century Prize Negroes: From Britain to America," Slavery and Abolition 31:3 (Sept. 2010): 379-393; "'Unkle Somerset's freedom: liberty in England for black sailors," Journal for Maritime Research 13:1 (Spring 2011): 21-36; and "The Royal Navy's Employment of Black Mariners and Maritime Workers, 1754-1783," International Maritime History Journal, 28, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 6-35 - describe how during the American Revolution maritime markets provided blacks with opportunities for independent lives while at the same time often limiting their freedom. (Many of my publications are available at http://works.bepress.com/charles_foy)

This essay is based, in part, upon "The Royal Navy's employment of black mariners and maritime Workers, 1754-1783," published in The International Journal of Maritime History, 28, no. 1 (Feb. 2016): 6-35 ( http://ijh.sagepub.com/), by Sage Publications Ltd., all rights reserved.

TAGS:

Dockyard workers, Mariners, Royal Navy, American Revolution, Racial Discrimination

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FULL ARTICLE: Blacks on the Waterfront : Blacks on the New York Waterfront During the American Revolution | Red Hook WaterStories

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Welcome to 400+ years of Red Hook! Inclusion is a theme in this e-museum that memorializes forgotten, overlooked and erased histories. It's a resource for locals, tourists, history buffs, urban-planners, educators, students, flaneurs. It tells NYC's maritime story in microcosm.

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Students started with reading, writing, & math.

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The History of the School

Curriculum

The school operated under the Lancasterian plan of education, which was designed by Joseph Lancaster in late-eighteenth-century England to provide a system for educating the lower classes.

New-York Historical Society

Under this system, one teacher could arguably be in charge of hundreds of students-this was accomplished through the help of monitors. Monitors were advanced students who had shown particular promise, and were charged with both instructing younger students and maintaining discipline. To encourage good behavior and good grades, instructors provided students with a series of rewards. At times, tickets were distributed. These tickets could be saved and redeemed for a trinket or might simply accrue as a reward. At other times, students were given presents directly.

As one might imagine, the Lancasterian system invested people-often no older than 14-with incredible responsibility. The records indicate that the students lived up to the charge admirably. On one occasion in 1822, a visitor to the school observes a 13-year-old boy running the entire school in the headmaster's absence:

Visited the School in the afternoon & found it in excellent order, under the superintendence of Robert Gray, Monitor of order, a boy of 13 years of age, who conducted the various exercises of the School to our admiration & entire approbations-The Teacher, C. C. Andrews, being absent for the purpose of visiting all the Parents of particularly all those children who are not regular in their attendance at School, which no doubt must have a very beneficial effect.

One might consider the prolonged absence of a responsible adult a striking example of negligence. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine students being allowed to run a school without any supervising adults on the premises. On the other hand, one might argue that investing students with so much responsibility led them to develop keen leadership skills that would serve them well as they sought to find create and sustain a free black community in New York City.

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The school operated under the Lancasterian plan of education, which was designed by Joseph Lancaster in late-eighteenth-century England to provide a system for educating the lower classes. New-York Historical Society Under this system, one teacher could arguably be in charge of hundreds of students-this was accomplished through the help of monitors.

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“Between the Revolution & the Civil War, more African Americans were employed in the maritime trades than in any other industry.”

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From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place for black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but black seamen were generally not welcome. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism. It was established by William Powell, Sr., an African-American. Albro Lyons, Sr. worked with him for a time and then established a similar place nearby. A report in 1848, in The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal noted that home catered to the needs of the "2,200 colored seamen who sail out of New York" Quoting from the Carla Peterson piece below "On the Lower East Side, two colored sailors homes, one run by William Powell on Dover Street, the other by Albro Lyons on Vandewater Street, lay in close proximity. These were boarding houses for black sailors, but also centers of black activism; Powell's housed a labor union for black seamen while Lyons's was a stop on the Underground Railroad. To complicate matters, they were also family homes."

The Colored Sailors' Home was one of the many black establishments that were attacked by violent mobs during the Draft Riots of 1863.

The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal. American Seamen's Friend Society, 1846

CARLA PETERSON, Black Elites and the Draft Riots, New York Times blog, 2013

15 Underground Railroad stops in New York City www.mswnyc.com blog, 2018

Double ambrotype portrait of Albro Lyons, Sr. and Mary Joseph Lyons, Black Gotham Archive (accessed 2018)

"Albro Lyons, Sr." 1860. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. T he New York Public Library Digital Collections.

FOOD and African American Maritime Heritage.
The racial history of rice in the Americas... maritime activity moves people and food and changes what and how people cook; and slavery in the Americas had huge maritime elements (shipping captured people; shipping food stuffs as part of the trade; naval battles with alliances along race lines). White Europeans had no experience growing (or cooking rice); Africans did and were deliberately captured and enslaved to grow rice here. African American enslaved cooks were given European recipes and gave them an African twist. Free blacks continued this culinary tradition. A variety of rice reveals to historians, biologists, and geneticists stories of the African diaspora. One part of this story are the Merikins of Trinidad & Togago.
The "Merikins" of Trinidad & Tobago.
During the War of 1812 between the British and the US, the British offered freedom and home in the empire for black people in America who joined their side. Many became Marines and men from Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of Virginia, Maryland and Georgia formed six military companies. After the war they, their families (and their rice) relocated to Trinidad & Tobago, where their community known as Merikins lives on.

" The Merikins. America, Trinidad and Canada's forgotten history official documentary," Nu Generation Studios, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020)
45 min.

" Merikins Celebrate 200th Anniversary in Trinidad - April 28, 2016," Hollis Clifton, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 2hrs 8 min.

Who are the Merikens? - Travel Thru History - Quick History," Travelthruhistory, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 1 min.

THE MERIKINS: FREE BLACK SETTLERS 1815-1816, National Library of Trinidad and Tobago. (accessed 2/10/2020).

Jill Neimark, " A Lost Rice Variety - And The Story Of The Freed 'Merikins' Who Kept It Alive," The Salt, National Public Radio, May 10, 2017. (accessed 2/10/2020).

PBS, " Black Sailors and Soldiers in the War of 1812," The War of 1812. Text and video. (accessed 2/10/2020).

Northern States roll in the Slave Trade

Although the American Civil War lead to the abolishment of slavery in the United State, the North by no means was innocent when it came to slavery. The Atlantic Black Box Project is a working to bring attention and scholarship to New England merchant ships role in the slave trade. New York Ships are included too.

The Last Slave Ships: new York and the End of the Middle Passage is the title of John Harris's 2020 book detailing how long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed, slave traders made NYC a key hub in their operation in the 1850s and 60s and how the US Government before shutting it down in 1867 ignored or even abetted this human trafficking.
Link: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247336/last-slave-ships
Weeksville
The African American community of Weeksville in central Brooklyn was formed in the late 1830's. The occupation of Mr. Weeks, for whom Weeksville is named, may have been a longshoreman (what is known is that was the job of a Weeks who lived there). It was also the home of people who worked as sailors, one of the few jobs open to African-Americans at the time. For example, in the 1840s, Junius Morel moved to Weeksville to be a teacher and principal of Colored School No. 2. Morel was born in slavery, fleeing the Carolinas by ship around 1810, and then working several years as a sailor.

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African-American Maritime Heritage - PortSide NewYork

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From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place for black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but black seamen were generally not welcome. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism.

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20th century racial conflicts on New York’s waterfront = had Black maritime workers finding themselves largely shut out of dockyard work due to White artisans’ resistance.”

Most of the time, Black mariners who were working on captured British ships were sold back into slavery.

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From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place for black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but black seamen were generally not welcome. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism. It was established by William Powell, Sr., an African-American. Albro Lyons, Sr. worked with him for a time and then established a similar place nearby. A report in 1848, in The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal noted that home catered to the needs of the "2,200 colored seamen who sail out of New York" Quoting from the Carla Peterson piece below "On the Lower East Side, two colored sailors homes, one run by William Powell on Dover Street, the other by Albro Lyons on Vandewater Street, lay in close proximity. These were boarding houses for black sailors, but also centers of black activism; Powell's housed a labor union for black seamen while Lyons's was a stop on the Underground Railroad. To complicate matters, they were also family homes."

The Colored Sailors' Home was one of the many black establishments that were attacked by violent mobs during the Draft Riots of 1863.

The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal. American Seamen's Friend Society, 1846

CARLA PETERSON, Black Elites and the Draft Riots, New York Times blog, 2013

15 Underground Railroad stops in New York City www.mswnyc.com blog, 2018

Double ambrotype portrait of Albro Lyons, Sr. and Mary Joseph Lyons, Black Gotham Archive (accessed 2018)

"Albro Lyons, Sr." 1860. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. T he New York Public Library Digital Collections.

FOOD and African American Maritime Heritage.
The racial history of rice in the Americas... maritime activity moves people and food and changes what and how people cook; and slavery in the Americas had huge maritime elements (shipping captured people; shipping food stuffs as part of the trade; naval battles with alliances along race lines). White Europeans had no experience growing (or cooking rice); Africans did and were deliberately captured and enslaved to grow rice here. African American enslaved cooks were given European recipes and gave them an African twist. Free blacks continued this culinary tradition. A variety of rice reveals to historians, biologists, and geneticists stories of the African diaspora. One part of this story are the Merikins of Trinidad & Togago.
The "Merikins" of Trinidad & Tobago.
During the War of 1812 between the British and the US, the British offered freedom and home in the empire for black people in America who joined their side. Many became Marines and men from Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of Virginia, Maryland and Georgia formed six military companies. After the war they, their families (and their rice) relocated to Trinidad & Tobago, where their community known as Merikins lives on.

" The Merikins. America, Trinidad and Canada's forgotten history official documentary," Nu Generation Studios, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020)
45 min.

" Merikins Celebrate 200th Anniversary in Trinidad - April 28, 2016," Hollis Clifton, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 2hrs 8 min.

Who are the Merikens? - Travel Thru History - Quick History," Travelthruhistory, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 1 min.

THE MERIKINS: FREE BLACK SETTLERS 1815-1816, National Library of Trinidad and Tobago. (accessed 2/10/2020).

Jill Neimark, " A Lost Rice Variety - And The Story Of The Freed 'Merikins' Who Kept It Alive," The Salt, National Public Radio, May 10, 2017. (accessed 2/10/2020).

PBS, " Black Sailors and Soldiers in the War of 1812," The War of 1812. Text and video. (accessed 2/10/2020).

Northern States roll in the Slave Trade

Although the American Civil War lead to the abolishment of slavery in the United State, the North by no means was innocent when it came to slavery. The Atlantic Black Box Project is a working to bring attention and scholarship to New England merchant ships role in the slave trade. New York Ships are included too.

The Last Slave Ships: new York and the End of the Middle Passage is the title of John Harris's 2020 book detailing how long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed, slave traders made NYC a key hub in their operation in the 1850s and 60s and how the US Government before shutting it down in 1867 ignored or even abetted this human trafficking.
Link: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247336/last-slave-ships
Weeksville
The African American community of Weeksville in central Brooklyn was formed in the late 1830's. The occupation of Mr. Weeks, for whom Weeksville is named, may have been a longshoreman (what is known is that was the job of a Weeks who lived there). It was also the home of people who worked as sailors, one of the few jobs open to African-Americans at the time. For example, in the 1840s, Junius Morel moved to Weeksville to be a teacher and principal of Colored School No. 2. Morel was born in slavery, fleeing the Carolinas by ship around 1810, and then working several years as a sailor.

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African-American Maritime Heritage - PortSide NewYork

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place for black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but black seamen were generally not welcome. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism.

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Self-interested economic & military reasons —> the British to declare free, all enslaved Blacks in America who joined them in New York harbor as Royal Navy seamen, British privateersmen or as laborers in the British Army = providing a form of financial independence.

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From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place for black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but black seamen were generally not welcome. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism. It was established by William Powell, Sr., an African-American. Albro Lyons, Sr. worked with him for a time and then established a similar place nearby. A report in 1848, in The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal noted that home catered to the needs of the "2,200 colored seamen who sail out of New York" Quoting from the Carla Peterson piece below "On the Lower East Side, two colored sailors homes, one run by William Powell on Dover Street, the other by Albro Lyons on Vandewater Street, lay in close proximity. These were boarding houses for black sailors, but also centers of black activism; Powell's housed a labor union for black seamen while Lyons's was a stop on the Underground Railroad. To complicate matters, they were also family homes."

The Colored Sailors' Home was one of the many black establishments that were attacked by violent mobs during the Draft Riots of 1863.

The Sailor's Magazine, and Naval Journal. American Seamen's Friend Society, 1846

CARLA PETERSON, Black Elites and the Draft Riots, New York Times blog, 2013

15 Underground Railroad stops in New York City www.mswnyc.com blog, 2018

Double ambrotype portrait of Albro Lyons, Sr. and Mary Joseph Lyons, Black Gotham Archive (accessed 2018)

"Albro Lyons, Sr." 1860. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. T he New York Public Library Digital Collections.

FOOD and African American Maritime Heritage.
The racial history of rice in the Americas... maritime activity moves people and food and changes what and how people cook; and slavery in the Americas had huge maritime elements (shipping captured people; shipping food stuffs as part of the trade; naval battles with alliances along race lines). White Europeans had no experience growing (or cooking rice); Africans did and were deliberately captured and enslaved to grow rice here. African American enslaved cooks were given European recipes and gave them an African twist. Free blacks continued this culinary tradition. A variety of rice reveals to historians, biologists, and geneticists stories of the African diaspora. One part of this story are the Merikins of Trinidad & Togago.
The "Merikins" of Trinidad & Tobago.
During the War of 1812 between the British and the US, the British offered freedom and home in the empire for black people in America who joined their side. Many became Marines and men from Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of Virginia, Maryland and Georgia formed six military companies. After the war they, their families (and their rice) relocated to Trinidad & Tobago, where their community known as Merikins lives on.

" The Merikins. America, Trinidad and Canada's forgotten history official documentary," Nu Generation Studios, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020)
45 min.

" Merikins Celebrate 200th Anniversary in Trinidad - April 28, 2016," Hollis Clifton, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 2hrs 8 min.

Who are the Merikens? - Travel Thru History - Quick History," Travelthruhistory, YouTube video (accessed 2/10/2020). 1 min.

THE MERIKINS: FREE BLACK SETTLERS 1815-1816, National Library of Trinidad and Tobago. (accessed 2/10/2020).

Jill Neimark, " A Lost Rice Variety - And The Story Of The Freed 'Merikins' Who Kept It Alive," The Salt, National Public Radio, May 10, 2017. (accessed 2/10/2020).

PBS, " Black Sailors and Soldiers in the War of 1812," The War of 1812. Text and video. (accessed 2/10/2020).

Northern States roll in the Slave Trade

Although the American Civil War lead to the abolishment of slavery in the United State, the North by no means was innocent when it came to slavery. The Atlantic Black Box Project is a working to bring attention and scholarship to New England merchant ships role in the slave trade. New York Ships are included too.

The Last Slave Ships: new York and the End of the Middle Passage is the title of John Harris's 2020 book detailing how long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed, slave traders made NYC a key hub in their operation in the 1850s and 60s and how the US Government before shutting it down in 1867 ignored or even abetted this human trafficking.
Link: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300247336/last-slave-ships
Weeksville
The African American community of Weeksville in central Brooklyn was formed in the late 1830's. The occupation of Mr. Weeks, for whom Weeksville is named, may have been a longshoreman (what is known is that was the job of a Weeks who lived there). It was also the home of people who worked as sailors, one of the few jobs open to African-Americans at the time. For example, in the 1840s, Junius Morel moved to Weeksville to be a teacher and principal of Colored School No. 2. Morel was born in slavery, fleeing the Carolinas by ship around 1810, and then working several years as a sailor.

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African-American Maritime Heritage - PortSide NewYork

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From 1840, the Colored Sailors' Home, located near the water in lower Manhattan, offered a place for black sailors could stay between ships and jobs. There were similar places for other sailors, but black seamen were generally not welcome. The Colored Sailor's Home was also a center of activism.

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They were taught sewing instruction in addition to the standard curriculum.

Besides sewing, girls learned reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar and geography.

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They were instructed in cartography & navigation

Seafaring was one of the possibilities in which young Black men to could make a competent living.

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On the basis of discipline & obedience, school girl’s needlework samplers replicated how much of conformity a girl can follow a taught model.

“A well-formed stitch indicates a well-wrought mind and a proper femininity because it shows how closely a girl can conform to a given model” -William Howell (scholar)

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Curator Confidential: "Truth" Revealed—Rosena Disery's African Free School Sampler