62 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • FEBRUARY 2021
REAR VIEW
BLACK HISTORY MONTH
LI’S FORGOTTEN SLAVES
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
Long Island is known for its charming
villages, historic structures, picturesque
harbors, and popular festivals.
But buried in the past, behind the
intriguing small towns and hamlets,
is an insidious truth that reveals the
vicious cruelty and violence inflicted
on certain residents.
That history reveals what happened in
the best homes and the most well-respected
families. It lasted, tolerated by
nearly all, for more than 200 years.
Human beings were bought and sold,
treated as property to be owned. They
were enslaved and forced to live and
labor under horrific conditions — legally
— because the slave owners had
white skin and the slaves were Black.
Most people assume that slavery was
prevalent in the American South, with
its sprawling plantations, but not in the
North. But in 1703, 42 percent of New
York City households had slaves. By
1827, in Suffolk County, Long Island,
one out of five residents was Black, and
most of them were slaves.
From Oyster Bay to Glen Cove to Shelter
Island to Southold to Setauket and
beyond, Long Island — which included
Suffolk and Queens counties before
Nassau County was established — had
“the largest slave population of the
North for most of the colonial era,” according
to Christopher Claude Verga,
author of Civil Rights on Long Island.
LONG ISLAND’S SERVANTS
While most of the work slaves were
forced to do was in agriculture, “slaves
occupied every rung of skilled and
unskilled labor,’’ wrote author Grania
Bolton Marcus. The women labored
mostly as domestic servants, while
the men “cut stone, made barrels,
blacksmithed, manned fishing boats
and whaling ships,” she wrote.
Between 1755 and 1812, slavery was
common in homes such as Raynham
Hall, the residence of the Townsends,
one of Oyster Bay’s founding families.
The home is famous because Robert
Townsend — George Washington’s spy
— lived there. The family enjoyed the
free labor of slaves who served their
masters not only as domestic and field
workers on the family’s 350-acre farm
and on five merchant vessels; the slaves
were forced to serve an enemy occupation
of British officers in the house
during the Revolutionary War.
“The effect of ‘whitewashing’ the history
of slavery in the North is more topical
than ever, in light of the Black Lives
Matter movement,” said Claire Bellerjeau,
director of education at Raynham
Hall Museum (the Townsends’ former
residence).
TECHNOLOGY SHINES A LIGHT
Forced to abide by strict rules, Black
and Native American slaves were
forbidden from running away, gathering
in groups larger than three when
not working for their owners, or showing
what was called “stubborn pride.” If
they disobeyed, their owners punished
them — with government approval.
In the early 1700s, in the hamlet of
Oyster Bay and across Long Island,
residents would gather in the middle of
town and watch as slaves said to be disobedient
were restrained on a post and
whipped — the most common punishment
— often with 40 lashes. According
to Town of Oyster Bay records, the
public “negro whipper” was appointed
by the town, and received as much as
three shillings per slave.
Proof of this inhumane treatment was
found by Bellerjeau. After the museum
purchased the Townsend Family Bible
in 2005, which belonged to the servants
and listed details about the 16 “coloured
people” owned by the family of Samuel
Townsend in 1771, she searched previously
unstudied museum archives
from the late 1790s to the 1810s and
found evidence of slavery in the North.
“To find two 19th century records of
the actual act of a blacksmith describing
doing such things to an enslaved
person is groundbreaking,” Bellerjeau
told the Press. “It directly refutes the
long-standing misconception that
somehow Northern slavery was less
cruel than slavery in the South.”
High-resolution scans illuminated the
entries in blacksmith Daniel McCoun’s
ledger of how slaves were controlled
with iron collars and other restraints.
One entry in the handwritten document
described the act of “putting a
band & a bolt on a Black” runaway slave
for Thomas Youngs of Oyster Bay.
Another account revealed that in 1755,
the blacksmith was paid 8 pounds by
the Town of Oyster Bay to repair the
irons (the manacles that restrained a
slave on the whipping post); another
entry included a charge for “12 nails
and putting on,” said Bellerjeau. This
practice, which Bellerjeau described
as “even more gruesome,” detailed a
type of torture dating back to medieval
times: “breaking on the wheel.” The enslaved
person was strapped to a wagon
wheel, then beaten or even killed.
A CHANGE OF HEART
After the Revolutionary War ended,
Robert Townsend became a founding
member of the abolitionist New York
Manumission (the act of freeing slaves
by their owner) Society. The process
of freeing slaves in New York State
started gradually in 1799; by 1827, all
slaves had been freed statewide.
“The effect of ‘whitewashing’ the history of slavery
in the North is more topical than ever, in light of the
Black Lives Matter movement,”said Claire Bellerjeau.
Oyster Bay blacksmith ledger entry,
courtesy of Raynham Hall Museum
First Slave Auction 1655 Howard Pyle (Wikimedia Commons)
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