As part of the site's commemoration of Juneteenth, Staatsburgh's historic interpreter, Zachary Veith, is sharing his ongoing research into the people enslaved by Morgan Lewis.
Mary. Stephen. Caesar.
Belinda. Pompey. Plato. Peter Williams.
"Anyone who calls themselves an explorer is an invader to someone else - someone is always paying for the gilding" - Alice Proctor [1]
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| Morgan Lewis, enslaver. |
"Ruth's great-grandfather, Morgan Lewis, built Staatsburgh in 1795. He is remembered as the third Governor of New York, a general during the Revolutionary War, and an aide to George Washington. When the original house burnt in 1832, it was rebuilt."
Within the confines of an hour-long tour of the mansion at Staatsburgh, there is not much opportunity to discuss Morgan Lewis, who - despite his foundational and ancestral role - is mostly mentioned as tour groups encounter his portraits in two rooms of the house.
Like other members of his adopted Livingston family tree, Lewis enslaved human beings. And as is typical of our collective American history, far less is known or documented of the individual Africans, or people of African decent, who labored and built so much of this country, than is known of their enslaver.
At one point in his life, Morgan Lewis enslaved nine people. Who were they? What were their lives like at Staatsburgh? What contributions did they make? These questions, and others will be explored over the course of this research project. .
Through this research, the names of several people enslaved by Lewis have been discovered. Others have been an open secret for years. Saying their names - Mary. Stephen. Caesar. Belinda. Pompey. Plato. Peter Williams - and understanding their stories is important to giving them a presence as individuals and telling a more accurate and complete story of Staatsburgh.
Peter William and the Manumission Society
The earliest name found is Peter "Peet" Williams. Sometime between 1787 and 1794, Morgan Lewis sold Williams to John Jay - the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.[3] After traveling to England with his enslaver, little is known of Williams.
At the time, Lewis and Jay were members of the New York Manumission Society. Founded in 1785 as "The New-York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as Have Been, or May be Liberated," the society promoted the gradual (not immediate) abolition of slavery in New York state. Members - exclusively wealthy, white men such as Alexander Hamilton and Chancellor Livingston - enslaved people for decades, and continued to do so long after they began the Society.[4]
Plato and Gradual Abolition
In the 1790s, Morgan Lewis' name appears on a run-away
slave advertisement:
"The above negro lived some time with the honorable Morgan Lewis, Esq. of Rhinebeck" [5]
Such postings were common in the Hudson Valley - an area that benefitted from enslaved labor
well into the 19th Century. Notices of "run-aways" give us
descriptions of these men and women not found in other sources. Plato, the
subject of this notice, is 5' 6", roughly 31 years old, "of a black
complexion, well set, and of an unpleasant couterance [sic]" This is the
most complete description found of any person enslaved by Lewis.
Plato was wearing
"a long corduroy coat, with green collar and cuffs, buckskin breeches, a
striped waistcoat" when last seen by those he was escaping. (A unique outfit, to say the least.) This
description implies he was a domestic servant; catering to the needs of Morgan
Lewis' guests rather than toiling in agricultural fields. Domestic service was a common placement for enslaved people in New York, as we'll see later on at Staatsburgh.
New York's 1799 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery -
the first of its kind in the state - freed no-one. It stated
any child born to an enslaved woman after July 4, 1799 was
free - but, that child would have to serve their mother's enslaver for 28 years
(if a male) or 25 years (if a female). Those born/enslaved before that
date were to be kept in bondage.[6]
Keeping people born after July 4, 1799 enslaved during their most productive years favored the enslaver's financial interests over the humanity of the enslaved.
Belinda, Mary, Stephen, and Staatsburgh House
In 1795, the original 'Staatsburgh House' was built. Few descriptions exist of the building, yet we know it was rectangular, two stories tall, and built of brick. Also on the property were "a stone barn, stabling for many horses, a coach-house with many vehicles, a cow-shed, a carpenter-shop, a cider-mill.”[7]
This was the environment enslaved people like Mary, Belinda, and Stephen knew. Outside of major urban areas like New York City, enslaved people in the northeastern states were isolated on small farms and country estates along the Hudson River. The large populations of enslaved people that one associates with southern plantations were markedly different from how the institution developed in the rural Hudson Valley.[8]
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| The original Staatsburgh House. Courtesy of the FDR Library. |
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| A white-washed image of "Slave Quarters in the Cellar of the Old Knickerbocker Mansion" presenting a positive view of enslavement to white audiences. Courtesy of the Knickerbocker Family. |
The names we now know of those enslaved at Staatsburgh come from one unexpected source - a biography written by Ruth Mills' aunt. Julia Delafield, granddaughter to Morgan Lewis and sister of Ruth's father, wrote The Biographies of Francis Lewis and Morgan Lewis (Vol. I and Vol. II). Delafield is obviously proud of the careers of her grandfather and great-grandfather, and her portraits of these men are overwhelmingly laudatory and uncritical.
Examining these sources involves reading beyond Delafield's rose-colored lenses. Within those volumes are racist
attitudes towards the enslaved people being described, and blatant whitewashing
of their stories. This was not an uncommon attitude in the Gilded Age.**
Mary and Belinda are
mentioned in Julia Delafield's biography of Morgan Lewis:
"Belinda and Mary were colored women – liberated slaves. Belinda was a little older than my mother, and once nearly drowned her and a litter of kittens by overturning a basket, in which they were all cuddling up together, in a well in the cellar. She was pensioned by my mother until her death."[9]
It is not clear when Mary and Belinda were "liberated" as Delafield describes. Both women are casually mentioned by Lewis in a letter to his wife discussing preparations to open their New York City house. This context shows they were probably domestic servants, similar to Plato.
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| An enslaved person performing domestic duties for his enslaver. "The Old Sideboard" (1876). Courtesy of the Knickerbocker Family. |
Enslaved people working as domestics in a house performed the same duties as any free servant - cooking,
cleaning, waiting on the family and their guests. The two images above, published in an 1876 article from Harper's Magazine, present white-washed, idealized glimpses into the lives of enslaved
people in New York mansions. As with the Delafield biographies, these images present a positive image of enslavement to white audiences that downplays the hardships faced by generations of Black people. The article accompanying these images notes "The negroes themselves enjoyed their leisure hours
immensely" with tales of music and merriment from the enslaved people,
adding "they were certainly a happy race, for they were treated with the
utmost kindness, their wants well provided for, and carefully nursed in
sickness."[10] As with the images, this description is far from the truth regarding the conditions on an enslaver's estate.
The stark reality of Hudson Valley slavery is depicted in Sojourner Truth's The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. Truth was born around 1797 in Ulster County, New York – just over a decade after Belinda. At the estate of her second enslaver, Charles Hardenbergh, Truth and around 11 other enslaved people slept on damp floor boards in a cramped “dismal chamber” below his massive house with little light through the cellar windows. Under her third enslaver, John Nealy, Truth was a domestic servant and details horrible whippings and inhumane conditions under his roof. While Belinda’s legacy is just now being explored, the accounts of her contemporary Sojourner Truth piece together an understanding of the wider lives of enslaved domestic women.
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| Sojourner Truth: abolitionist, suffragist, and contemporary to those enslaved at Staatsburgh (c. 1870) |
Belinda's son, Stephen,
was enslaved by Lewis too. Delafield states:
"Stephen was a manumitted slave, the son of Belinda. He was the General’s body-servant during the war."[11]
Stephen and Lewis seemingly had a close relationship; with Lewis caring for Stephen when he fell ill, and even naming him in his will. However, these stories were selected by Delafield to present her family as positive role-models, and should be taken "with a grain of salt." Stephen is not named in Lewis' 1844 will. Stephen apparently died before Lewis, and was thus written out of the will, and almost out of our history too.
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| "George Washington and William Lee" (Trumbull, 1780). Courtesy of The MET. |
The story of another enslaved person may provide further insight into this type of relationship: William Lee, manservant to George Washington. Lee is noted as Washington's valet at times, performing duties such as preparing his clothes and tying his hair. During the Revolutionary War, Lee served alongside the general during several important campaigns. Washington provided for Lee in his will, granting him immediate independence (the only one of the 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon to be freed).[12]
Caesar, Pompey, and the end of enslavement
When this current research project began, a rumor circulated that enslaved men were present at Lewis' 1844
funeral. The source was tracked down to a 1939 DCHS Yearbook article about the early
years of Hyde Park. An eyewitness to the funeral remembered
"the General's body was born by his colored servants in full livery; two were Caesar and Pompey; the names of the others she could not recall"[13]
Following the 1799 "Gradual Abolition" act, and a later 1817 edition, the number of enslaved people (slowly) decreased. The Dutchess County Historical Society has compiled statistics showing the decrease in enslaved populations. It took two decades, but by 1820 the number of free black citizens outnumbered the population of enslaved people in the town of Clinton (the predecessor to the current town of Hyde Park).
The 1820s was the last decade that an enslaved person is recorded as living at Staatsburgh. We know this from the federal Census, which until 1850 only recorded the (overwhelmingly white, male) head of households. Enslaved people, as well as women, children, and everyone else in the household, are just numbers on the page.
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| Household of Morgan Lewis, 1820 Census. 3 enslaved men (red) and 3 free people of color (blue). |
It is unclear if Caesar and Pompey were ever enslaved by Morgan Lewis, as we do not have the names recorded. It was not unheard of for newly-freed people to remain at the home of their former enslaver. With newly-granted independence, yet without money or resources to resettle and start anew, freed men and women had few options but to return to the enslaver's house - the only place they may have spent their lives. According to Delafield, Belinda was employed by Margaret Livingston - Lewis' daughter and heir - for the remainder of her life. (Following Washington's death, William Lee, as a free person of color, also stayed at Mount Vernon the remainder of his life.)[14]
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| Morgan Lewis' tomb at St. James' Cemetery, Hyde Park NY. Courtesy of Anthony P. Musso/For The Poughkeepsie Journal. |
Moving Forward
There was a constant Black presence in Staatsburgh through to the 1850s. Fanny is the last-known person of African descent to have worked at Staatsburgh, serving under Morgan Lewis'
only daughter Margaret.
The second half of this ongoing research project is exploring the disappearance of Black people from Staatsburgh, after Fanny. Enslaved people and free people of color are replaced by white European immigrants; Black enslaved-valets became White English-valets, Black domestics became White maids. How wide-spread was this shift? What, if any, stories of African descendants survive in the village? How was race discussed/viewed by New Yorkers at the turn of the century?
Stay tuned to
Staatsburgh for continuing updates on this research and discussions to follow!
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Thank you to Lavada Nahon, Interpreter of African American History for NYSOPRHP, for her guidance and comments to strengthen the stories being told at Staatsburgh, and in New York State.** Delafield and racial stereotypes are a whole section in my later research on Staatsburgh as a "whites-only" space during the Gilded Age.
[1]
Alice Proctor, The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in our Museums & Why We Need to Talk About It (London: Cassell, 2020): 14.
[2] New York Historical Society, "History of Slavery in New York," Slavery in New York (Accessed February 18, 2021).
[4]
[5] Susan Stessin-Cohn and Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini, In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley, 1735-1831 (Delmar: Black Dome, 2016): 107.
[6] Susan Stessin-Cohn and Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini, In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley, 1735-1831 (Delmar: Black Dome, 2016): 330.
[7] Helen W. Reynolds, Dutchess County Doorways, 1730-1830 (New York: W.F. Payson, 1931): 140-141.
[8] Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996): 6-7.
[9] Julia Delafield,
[10] Egbert L. Viele, "The Knickerbockers of New York Two Centuries Ago," Harper's New Monthly Magazine (December 1876): 40.
[11]
[12] Mary V. Thompson, "William Lee & Oney Judge: A Look at George Washington & Slavery," Journal of the American Revolution (June 19, 2014); Jessie MacLeod, "William (Billy) Lee," George Washington's Mount Vernon (Accessed January 23, 2021).
[13] Henry Hackett, "The Hyde Park Patent," Dutchess County Historical Society Year Book 24 (1939): 87.
[14]
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