November 2, 2012, Friday, 306

User:Georgep

From The Peopling of New York City

Contents

George Papadopoulos

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Research Project Proposal

I am working on the Slave Conspiracy. My group members are Anna-Maja Rappard, JB Estil, Miriam H., and Abraham Rudy


The history of New York City has so many interesting aspects; however, its early acceptance of slavery is rarely mentioned and not well known. By investigating the lives of New York slave owners during the 18th century a wealth of information can be found on the dark history of slavery in New York. It will be interesting to see the kind of information that is still available about ordinary men that lived more than two hundred years ago.

I chose to investigate the New York slave owners of the 18th century because these men where some of the first immigrants that arrived to this area. The slaves they owned where immigrants as well that were forcefully brought over to do manual labor. The stories of the slaves that first came to New York are not well documented therefore by probing into the lives of their owners certain details could be revealed. Certain slave owners might just have one slave to help around the house, which could possibly mean they share a close relationship. Others could have a large amount of slaves that are needed to maintain a farm for example.

The ten slave owners that I have chosen, from the ones listed in the Lepore book, are: Joseph Murray, Adolph Philipse, Samuel Bayard, Captain Robert Livingston Jr., John Chambers, Abraham Van Horne, John Cruger, Augustus Jay, Colonel John Moore, and Gerardus Comfort. I chose them trying to get a mixture of English, French and Dutch; Court Party and Country Party; and slave traders with non-slave traders. With this diverse selection of slave owners I hope to get a good description of how immigrants shaped the way of life in 18th century New York City.


My Experience Finding the Elusive Immigrants

I started my project by choosing to search for the members of the slave conspiracy of 1741. I chose this topic because it seemed interesting to me how this side of New York history is rarely mentioned; therefore, I saw this project as a chance to search the lives of New York citizens that were rarely mentioned in history. The book New York Burning by Jill Lepore was a great place to start my search for the immigrants I was trying to find. I was able to find a lot of information about them even from this first step. On one immigrant, Abraham van Horne, I was even able to find the year of his death. I also found that some of my other immigrants were active slave traders in the Caribbean and others were even founders of popular towns in New York. I did not expect to find an immigrant such as Adolph Philipse who came from a very wealthy family, was a key member in the Assembly of New York City, and was even the founder of Putnam County, in upstate New York.

The next step of my project was with the great help of my teacher giving us her username and password for ancestry.com; even though it took a very long time and highly detailed searching to separate the immigrants I had from various other people throughout history with the same name. For my searching I went through about 500 searches per immigrant to finally separate my immigrants from others. The process which I took to separate them was to look specifically for people that lived around the time of the slave conspiracy. I limited my search from the years 1650 up to 1800 this way I would know that anyone I found with the name of my immigrants was most likely the person I was looking for. Even then I found various people with the same name but eventually I was able to narrow it down to one person by looking at their date of birth and death. After finding my immigrant's years of birth and death I was able to use ancestry.com even further by finding the relatives of my immigrants. I was able to find many of their parents and spouses and this was a great insight to their lives.

For the next part of my research I went to the Brooklyn College Library with hope that I would be able to find any information about my immigrants even though they all lived in Manhattan. After asking a librarian for help i was led to a biography database that the library had and i searched for all of my immigrant's names. Nothing appeared to show up except finally i struck some luck with Adolph Philipse. I didn't take the information for granted and immediately compared his date of birth and death to the ones I had previously obtained using ancestry.com. It turned out to be the same person and the information was great. It was a whole biography of his life and it even talked about how his father's life affected his career choice and important roles in the New York Assembly.

The place where most of my research was done was in the New York Public Library. It was a great experience because I had never been there before and the grandeur of the building takes over you. I started searching for my immigrants first in many books that the librarian suggested to be good for genealogical information around my time period. I was able to find a lot of information on some of my more famous immigrants such as Adolph Philipse. Most of my other immigrants were still hard to find but I was finding a few pieces of information here and there that were slowly piecing together the puzzle of their lives. Then the next tool that I used at the library were the great databases which i found to contain a wealth of information. I looked through historical newspapers and other great databases and was able to find an enormous amount of information and I emailed it all to myself right away.

This is were i first ran in to trouble. I went home after spending the whole day at the New York Public Library and i immediately went to check my email and see if all the information from the databases was sent to me. To my surprise only three articles were sent to my email and I was furious that all that work was gone. I returned to the New York Public Library and found all the information I had previously and even some information that i had skipped over and emailed it to myself again. I was able to use a phone to check my email right away and made sure that each message was being sent to my mail box. Then I was very pleased to have found so many interesting articles from the eighteenth century uncovered the lives of my immigrants.

After arranging and organizing all the information from the New York Public Library I still felt like i could find more information on a few of my immigrants therefore I searched the internet for New York Times articles that might have anything to do with my immigrants. I didn't believe i would find much but to my surprise an article about an antique uncovered a vast amount of information about one of my immigrants, Obadiah Hunt. The article was about a few antiques that had recently been sold and a silver tankard that was sold belonged to Obadiah Hunt. The article described where Obadiah Hunt lived, where his tavern was located, who made the tankard for him, and so much more information that I was just waiting to run into.

Finally I was able to use all the information that I found on the internet, in the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn College Library, various databases, ancestry.com and many other places into a little story for each one of my immigrants; which follows below and on their respective sites. Some immigrants left a large trail of information, such as Adolph Philipse, therefore their story is longer than the ones that did not leave a large trail, such as Alexander Allair.

Walking Tour to the African Burial Ground National Monument



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My Elusive Immigrants

The first thing I did, to start my research, was to use the index that Lepore listed. I looked at the index to see where each one of my immigrants was mentioned in the book. After rereading the passages where my immigrants were mentioned I looked at the reference notes Lepore lists at the end of the book that corresponded with my immigrants. I was able to use some of Lepore's references when looking for my own information. The next step I took was looking at Ancestry.com where I was able to find a good amount of information on my immigrants, more on some than others. I also used one of the Brooklyn College Library's databases to find a lot of information about one of my immigrants.

Adolph Philipse

Wealth – 275£; Dutch; Merchant; Dock Ward; Accused Slaves – Cuffee (burned), Venture ( accused but not arrested); Slave Trader

Abraham Van Horne

Wealth – 180£; Dutch; Country Party; Merchant; East Ward; Accused Slaves – Bridgewater (transported), London (accused but not found); Slave Trader

Obadiah Hunt

Wealth – 80£; English; Tavernkeeper; South Ward; Accused Slave – Warwick (transported); Slave Trader.

Alexander Allair

Wealth – 30£; French; Country Party, Cooper; Dock Ward; Accused Slave – Anonymous (accused but not arrested); Not a Slave Trader

William Gilbert

Wealth – 30£; English; Baker; Dock Ward; Accused Slave – Pompey (transported); Not a slave trader

Adolph Philipse

The Philipse Manor is the Mansion where Adolph Philipse lived

Adolph Philipse was born in 1665 and died in 1750 [1]. He was the son of Frederick Philipse and Margaret Hardenbrook Philipse [2]. He was born in New York but is of dutch descent; his father originally had the name Vrydrych Flypse and changed it when he arrived to New York. Adolph was named after his mother's father, Adolph Hardenbrook, which came from Holland and settled in Bergen County New York [3]. The Philipse Family was one of the wealthiest in all of New York. Frederick originally gained an enormous amount of wealth as a merchant and an active slave trader. Adolph followed his father and also became a merchant and slave trader, although he was not as involved in the slave trade as his father[4]. In addition to being a merchant, Adolph was also a well known politician in New York. Adolph once ran against Cornelius van Horne (the brother of another one of my elusive immigrants, Abraham van Horne) in the Assembly elections. Cornelius van Horne lost to Adolph, 399 votes to 413 votes respectively, but because of great controversy, involving manipulating the votes, an investigation was called for. Eventually Adolph Philipse was declared the victor of the election[5]. In the Assembly Adolph served as city representative and then as Speaker from 1725- 1736 and again from 1739- 1745[6]. Adolph also was a Third Supreme Court Justice in 1712 and held various other political positions in Westchester County[7]. Adolph's father died in 1702 leaving an immense amount of property to his sons. Adolph was the second son and therefore his brother Frederick gained most of the inheritance. Adolph's brother; however, had already died so his inheritance went to his young son, also named Frederick. Since Adolph's nephew was to young to control the vast amount of land, which stretched form northern Manhattan to Westchester County, Adolph acquired complete control of the property. Adolph continued to expand his family's large property by gaining the entire region known as Putnam County[8]. Philipstown in Putnam County is named after Adolph[9]. Philipse never married in his life and mostly tried to better his name by continuously playing a big part in New York City government and expanding his large amount of land[10]. In the 1737 May elections for the Assembly of New York Adolph was presented a challenge that challenged his reputation as a good citizen. Sheriff William Cosby Jr. was widely suspected of rigging the election and forcing everyone to vote for Philipse, from the crippled, the bind, sick, prisoners and the poor[11]. This was a hard blow but Adolph agreed to a recount of the election after many petitioned t review the election. Eventually a committee came to a conclusion that Adolph did deserve to win the election and he remined in the New York Assembly for many more years [12]. I can imagine that Adolph's life was a very fulfilling one because he was able to do so many great things throughout his lifetime. The money that his father had earned gave him the abilities to enjoy his life yet he even expanded on that and earned far more than his father could dream of. He owned 23 slaves of his own and did a little slave trading as well with various trips to the Caribbean throughout his life[13]. Some of Adolph's early encounters as a merchant were very dangerous as he was trying to make as much money as he could with his father. In 1700 they were both accused by the East India Company of violating the company's monopolistic hold on Indian Ocean commerce and of interacting with known pirates, since they did much business with Amsterdam. When one of the family's vessels was seized for violating the English Acts of Trade and Navigation, Adolph was despatched to London to protect the family's interests.[14]. He primary businesses were shipping, wholesaling, and retailing goods to and from Europe and the Caribbean. Unlike his father he did little slave trading, but in other respects his methods greatly resembled his father's and those of other New York merchants [15]. Contemporaries described Philipse as a worldly, convivial, and sophisticated man. Dr. Alexander Hamilton (1712-1756) reported that he met Philipse at the Hungarian Club, whose members were "all bumper men." It was later recorded that he was "said to have been a man of 'superior talents, well educated, sedate, highly respected and popular,' though somewhat penurious"[16]. The obituary that I was able to find, which is the first image underneath, explains what a great person Adolph Philipse was. He was great for New York and he also tried to better himself as much as possible throughout his life.




Click on the thumbnails above to see a clearer image of the articles relating to Adolph Philipse.

Abraham Van Horne

Abraham van Horne was born in 1675 and died in 1741[23]. He was the son of Abraham van Horne and Marie (Maria) Provoost[24]. He had a lot of siblings but most notably he was the brother of Captain Cornelius van Horne and Catherine van Horne[25]. Abraham and the two siblings mentioned all moved from New York to Huntington County, New Jersey[26]. This made it more difficult to find information about Abraham since his records have been split throughout New York and New Jersey. I thought this could make the search a bit more interesting however it made it much harder and i was only able to find a limited amount of information about him. I was not able to find out much about his personal life however there were many genealogical records of his parents, children and wife which gave me a good insight on his life. Abraham van Horne's wife has a few variations to her name, Annetje (or Anna, Anita, Anidta) Covenhoven, she was born in 1702 and they were possibly married in New Jersey the year 1719. Abraham and his wife had a lot of children, they were named: Mathew, Cornelius, Margareta, Elizabeth, Cathernie, Sophia, Nettie, Abraham and Antje[27]. This showed that Abraham was wealthy enough to support such a large family through a well paying job. I found out that Abraham van Horne was a member of the governor, George Clarke, council and was an active member of the political scene in New York[28]. This information however did not fully explain how Abraham was able to gain his wealth. I then saw that he was one of the most active slave traders in New York. He was a slaveowner and an active slave trader who mainly dealt with the Caribbean Slave trade, which was were many other traders earned their wealth during this period of time[29]. A quote of Abraham van Horne's, “All my Negro Slaves are to be sold to the highest Bidder among my Children, to prevent their falling into the Hand of Strangers”, shows me that he was not a very decisive man and was not able to distribute his property to his many children himself. He left himself out of the situation so as to not be mixed in with any conflict of separating his goods.




Click on the thumbnails above to see a clearer image of the articles relating to Abraham van Horne.


Obadiah Hunt

Obadiah Hunt's Silver tankard

Obadiah hunt was born in 1676 and died on October 30, 1760[32]. He had three children who were named Obadiah, John and Zebadiah[33]. He was a well known tavern keeper and also a slave trader with the Caribbean[34]. Lepore mentions that his slave, Warwick, was accused inthe 1741 slave conspiracy and I was able to find the names of two other slaves that he owned: Toby and Wooster, which were both put up for sale and listed in Peter Zenger's New York Weekly Journal[35]. Obadiah was not the wealthiest man in New York but he was able to live a comfortable life through his slave trading and his work as a tavernkeeper. I found various articles dealing with Obadiah's travels to Barbados, Jamaica and various other places in the Caribbean which further emphasizes his slave trading; however the more important point of this is that the dates on these records show that they were much later in his life. I can see that Obadiah was more interested in his tavern as a younger man and he eventually sold it to earn some money. Then as an older man he got involved in the slave trade and continued to take part in that business until the last days of his life. This last statement I made is quite literal because I found an article showing that Obadiah left for Barbados during the year of his death, when he was about 85 years old[36]. Interestingly most of the information I found for Obadiah Hunt was because of a valuable antique that he once owned. The antique is a silver tankard that is priced at more than half a million dollars[37]By following this antique I was able to find its previous owners, which of course included Obadiah Hunt. Hunt arrived to New York sometime before 1695 and attended Trinity Church[38]. This showed me that he was a well established dependable man that led a good life to the standards of society at the time. I also found out that Hunt's tavern is located on 35 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan and he ran it for almost 20 years[39]. Hunt also lived in the apartment above his tavern this way he was near his workplace and did not have a hastle getting to work. This meant that Obadiah was also a very social person in order to have the ability to run the tavern for such a long time. He must have had great charisma in order to keep all of his clients coming back every time to enjoy their time at his tavern. I know that Obadiah also cared very much about his tavern and kept it in very good condition. He was even chosen to host various events involving people with important government positions such as the minutes of the Common Council of New York City on October 20, 1718 who said: "The tavern of Obadiah Hunt is chosen as the house of entertainment by the corporation of the city, on the anniversary of the king's coronation." The city chose to hold its festivities there again, a few weeks later on November 5. In September 1720, a gala dinner was held at Hunt's Tavern in honor of the visiting Royal Governor, William Burnet. He again hosted a Royal Governor, John Montgomerie, in April 1728[40]. When he was about 60 years old however he decided to sell the tavern and in 1735 he finally advertised its sale and I was able to find this article[41]. By selling the tavern he also sold his house and therefore moved to another location; I was not able to find this other location yet i do know he traveled very often after he sold his tavern. I see that Obadiah was a very active person that liked to keep himself busy; whether it was taking care of his family, tavern or his business across seas. The characteristics i found most interesting were that he was able to maintain a bustling business for 20 years and that even at his old age he was the one taking the trips to the Caribbean instead of sending a servant, which shows that he did not want anyone to do his work if he had the ability to do it himself.




Click on the thumbnails above to see a clearer image of the articles relating to Obadiah Hunt.


Alexander Allair

Alexander Allair was born in 1702 and died in 1782[49]. His parents were Alexander Allaire and Jeanne Dows[50]. His wife was named Mary van Uytendaele and they lived in Westchester County[51]. I was able to find an article in one of the historical newspapers that involved Alexander Allair and it described how two of his slaves had run away and he would pay a good amount of money to whoever found them. This tells me that the living conditions that Mr. Allair offered were most likely terrible for his slaves and they were seeking any way out[52].


Alexander Allair.png[53]


Alexander Allair was the most difficult of my immigrants to find information on. Looking in the New York Public Library I searched for as much information on Alexander Allair as I could but did not find much. It was frustrating that I was able to find a pretty good amount of information about the rest of my immigrants but Mr. Allair seemed to have left very little information behind.


William Gilbert

William Gilbert was born in February 1718 and died on September 19, 1797[54]. He was born in Manhattan and lived there most of his life[55]. His father was named Willem Gilbert and his mother was named Maria van Zandt; and his wife was named Aeltje Thomas Verdon, who was born in 1722[56]. The two were married on May 25, 1740[57]. On February 18, 1773 there is a deed where William, a baker in New York, sells his water lot to a merchant named Benjamin Underhill. This water lot was granted to William by the mayor and Corporation of New York City February 12, 1750. The water lot was accross the street from William Gilbert's house in the Montgomerie Ward and enclosed by Water Street. This gives a pretty good description of where William Gilbert lived, the lot he sold is now lot number 233 Water Street and number 218 Front Street. William Gilbert was a respected man in his neighborhood. He was elected to the second ward charter official as the collector and I found several articles to show this information[58]. A position to collect money requires that the citizens of his ward to have a great deal of trust in William. Therefore I can see that he was a very good many with good morals and was held in high esteem by the members of his community. Gilbert's obituary states that he died at the age of about 80 years old and he was a well respected citizen of New York[59]. There were many men that were named William Gilbert that I was able to find. The deed I found which stated this William Gilbert was a baker, corresponding to the information given by Lepore, allowed me to eliminate many possible William Gilbert's because the deed shows the transaction was made in 1773 and only this William Gilbert was alive at that time. Gilbert did not leave much of a paper trail however the few articles and scattered information that i could find about him revealed that he was a respected man and lived a long and healthy life.



Click on the thumbnails above to see a clearer image of the articles relating to William Gilbert.

References

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  3. Pelletreau, William S. Genealogical and Family History of New York Vol.1. Baltimore 1998
  4. American National Biography (2004) Published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies and Oxford University Press 2004 Oxford University Press
  5. Lepore, Jill. New York Burning. Page 139-140.Vintage Books, New York 2005
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  8. Pelletreau, William S. Genealogical and Family History of New York Vol.1. Baltimore 1998
  9. ancestry.com
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  12. Lepore, Jill. New York Burning. Page 139-140.Vintage Books, New York 2005
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  27. St. Joseph Island Historical Society Document 500140 Date to file Feb 99 Source Kathy Snitker
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