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Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 18:10:02 +0000

Land speculation led to Brooklyn’s rapid urban transformation in the early nineteenth century. Following the Anti-Abolition Riot in Manhattan (1834), white abolitionists moved to the emerging city. While they focused on building a national campaign, black Brooklynites sustained the city’s anti-slavery movement by continuing to build strong communities.

By 1834, Brooklyn evolved from Manhattan’s agricultural neighbor to a flourishing urban center with a city charter. Land speculation fueled this change. Plots of farmland previously owned by slaveholders were systemically parceled and sold off to investors. Brooklyn was a city on the rise.

A new set of political activists fled to the emerging city. The abolitionists were a radical minority who had established the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833 with headquarters in Manhattan. It was the first movement in American history in which men and women, black and white, came together with mutual purpose – to end slavery immediately and demand political and legal equality for all Americans. In July 1834, anti-abolition riots flared across Manhattan. In response, a number of white abolitionists relocated to Brooklyn, where they joined a thriving anti-slavery movement led by black Brooklynites for over two decades.

The Panic of 1837 led to a decade-long economic depression that ended Brooklyn’s rapid growth. Reduced property prices enticed black New Yorkers to buy land. In doing so they confronted an 1821 amendment to New York State’s constitution which introduced a $250 property requirement for black men to vote while removing all qualifications for white men. Owning property became a political tool that allowed black men to be counted as full citizens with voting rights. The result was the mobilized community of Williamsburg and the vibrant village of Weeksville – where independence, safety, and economic prosperity thrived.

Anti-Colonization Debate

Hooker’s new pocket plan of the village of Brooklyn. 1827. B A-1827.Fl. Brooklyn Historical Society.

The map shown here represents the village of Brooklyn contained within the town of the same name in 1827 – the same year that slavery ended in New York State. By this time, Brooklyn transformed from Dutch farmland to a bustling town while Kings County’s other five towns remained largely rural.

The town contained ropewalks, taverns, stores, one-story homes, and unpaved streets. Its residents settled around the Fulton ferry landing. These Brooklynites were Irish immigrants, transplants from new England, descendants of the early Dutch and English settlers, and free African Americans. Though racial prejudice and discrimination were widespread, this diverse community of early Brooklynites lived in close quarters, inhabiting the same streets and public spaces. They lived in neighborhoods that are known today as Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Vinegar Hill.

[70 Willow Street]. Eugene L. Armbruster. 1922. Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks. V1974.32.99. Brooklyn Historical Society.

In 1831, Adrian Van Sinderen, president of the Brooklyn Savings Bank, was also president of the Brooklyn Colonization Society, a local branch of the American Colonization Society (ACS). The organization sought to relocate free black communities to Liberia, and Van Sinderen raised a significant amount of money for that purpose. They did not believe American society could or should be culturally diverse. Ironically, James W. C. Pennington, one of the earliest opponents of colonization schemes, worked as Van Sinderen’s coachman. The lives of pro- and anti-slavery activists were intimately intertwined.

[Certificate of membership]. 1849. Colonization Society of the State of New-York membership certificate to A. Hamilton Bishop. 1985.029. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Prominent white men founded the American Colonization Society in 1816. The society received support from James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Brooklyn Savings Bank President Adrian Van Sinderen.

Their aim was to send free people of color, born in the United States, to a colony on the west coast of Africa. Many white members argued that racism and slavery were so deeply embedded in American society, relocation was more humane. In fact, the removal of the country’s free black community only strengthened slaveholding interests and avoided the question of equality regardless of race in a democratic society.

[Notice of anti-colonization protest in Brooklyn]. The Long Island Star. June 3, 1831. Brooklyn Historical Society.

From 1817, free black communities across the North protested the white-led colonization movement. Anti-colonization meetings were held in Philadelphia, Manhattan, Baltimore, and Brooklyn.

On June 3, 1831, a group of Brooklyn’s anti-slavery activists met at the African Hall on Nassau Street to discuss colonization. The meeting was led by Henry C. Thompson (future Weeksville founder), George Hogarth (pastor of the AME Church and educator at the African School), and Pennington (a recent arrival in Brooklyn). Insisting on their right to remain on U.S. soil, they argued:

The colored citizens of this village have, with friendly feelings, taken into consideration the objects of the American Colonization Society, together with all of its auxiliary movements, preparatory for our removal to the coast of Africa; and we view them as wholly gratuitous, not called for by us, and not essential to the real welfare of our race.
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We shall be active in our endeavors to convince the members of the Colonization Society, and the public generally, that were are brethren, that we are countrymen and fellow-citizens; and demanded an equal share of protection from our Federal Government with any other class of citizens in the community.

These black led protests inspired a new generation of white activists. Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, and Gerrit Smith were initially sympathetic to colonization. But their views changed after witnessing colleagues speak out against colonization. This radicalization informed, in part, their decision to identify as abolitionists calling for an immediate end to slavery and the denunciation of colonization schemes.

A Tribute for the Negro. Wilson Armistead. 1848. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP Armistead-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

In 1828, a freedom seeker from Maryland arrived in Brooklyn. Born enslaved, James Pembroke changed his name to James William Charles Pennington. As a free man, he worked as a coachman in Brooklyn and enrolled in a Sabbath school in Newtown, Queens. His education emancipated his mind and inspired a lifetime commitment to racial justice.
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Pennington joined a group of like-minded activists including Brooklynites Henry C. Thompson and George Hogarth. In 1831, he attended the first black national convention in Philadelphia as the Long Island delegate. The black conventions were part of a grassroots movement devoted to finding practical solutions to political inequality. Ordinary men from all over the North, traveled long distances to discuss issues affecting their communities. The national conventions met a total of twelve times between 1831 and 1864.

Abolitionism in
Black and White

“The Liberator Commenced January 1st 1831.” Cotton banner by unknown maker, [1840s]. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 7 | Lesson 8

In the 1830s, the abolitionists, a group of humanitarian reformers, burst onto the political scene in the United States.

On December 4, 1833, sixty-two reformers met in Philadelphia to form the American Anti-Slavery Society, establishing their headquarters in Manhattan. Abolitionism resulted from two political impulses – black activism and white evangelical perfection. As a result, the movement attracted men and women, black and white, from different social classes. It was the first time in U.S. history that activists crossed racial and gender lines to work together with mutual purpose.
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Abolitionists differed from previous anti-slavery activists in their rejection of gradual emancipation schemes. Instead they called for the immediate end to slavery. They denounced compensation to slaveholders, condemned colonization schemes, criticized institutional ties (both secular and religious) to slavery, and agitated for political and legal equality for African Americans.

The American Anti-Slavery Society’s brand of abolitionism, or immediatism, became closely associated with Bostonian, William Lloyd Garrison. George Hogarth, pastor of the AME Church and an educator at the first public African school in Brooklyn, was an early supporter of the interracial movement and a Garrisonian. He distributed the Liberator, Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper throughout Brooklyn. It featured letters, poems, news, and notices intended to build a national anti-slavery network.

[Abolition disclaimer]. The Long Island Star. July 14, 1834. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 9

Six months after forming the American Anti-Slavery Society, the abolitionist battle against racism and slavery was firmly entrenched in the city of New York.

But the city’s deep economic ties to the South made the situation volatile. In July 1834, the tension erupted. Mobs attacked black and white abolitionist homes and places of worship. They also targeted scores of ordinary black New Yorkers. In the immediate aftermath of these riots, white abolitionists sought to clarify they were radical activists but not anarchists. Two white abolitionists who founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, Arthur Tappan and John Rankin, signed and posted handbills across New York and placed notices in a variety of newspapers including the Long Island Star.
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Brooklyn residents were appalled by the violence. Describing the riots as “disgraceful to the character of the city,” the Long Island Star simultaneously indicted Manhattan and praised the emerging city of Brooklyn. By no means a bastion of tolerance and equality, Brooklyn did offer new opportunities for activists wishing to mold the city’s character.

Manhattan’s Anti-Abolition Riot became a turning point in abolitionism in Brooklyn. White abolitionists such as Lewis Tappan, Samuel Cox and Joshua Leavitt eventually left Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn, where they built upon a vibrant anti-slavery movement long established by black Brooklynites.

Samuel H. Cox. Portrait collection. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Samuel H. Cox was an abolitionist and pastor in Manhattan.

When Samuel Cornish, the founder of Freedom’s Journal, the first anti-slavery newspaper in the United States, sat in a pew at his church, Cox’s white parishioners reacted in horror.
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The New York Press used the incident to foster anti-abolitionist sentiment. During the Anti-Abolition Riots in Manhattan (1834), mobs vandalized and destroyed Cox’s home and church. He moved to Brooklyn and became the pastor of First Presbyterian Church. Perhaps the riots created deep psychological trauma as Cox did not remain an outspoken abolitionist once he relocated to Brooklyn.

The Fruits of Amalgamation. E. W. Clay.1839. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 9

Critics often demonized abolitionists in the press, by arguing that they promoted miscegenation, or interracial relationships, a sexual perversity in their eyes. In doing so they belittled the abolition movement which represented the first time that Americans crossed race and gender lines to work with mutual political purpose.

Prints such as E. W. Clay’s “Fruits of Amalgamation” reflected the contemporary prevalent racism and hostility towards the abolitionists’ interracial cooperation.

Print Propaganda

The Anti-Slavery Record. Ranson G. Williams. 1835. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP Anti-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 9

In May 1835, less than a year after the anti-abolition riots, the American Anti-Slavery Society reported that it had published over 1 million pieces of printed material. The sophisticated print propaganda campaign furthered their anti-slavery agenda. It took advantage of newer print technologies that allowed for materials to be cheaply mass-produced. Anti-slavery propaganda included illustrated periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides.

The abolitionists bombarded the federal postal service with anti-slavery materials. Lewis Tappan led the postal campaign despite threats of violence. Thousands of anti-slavery publications were sent to post offices in the North and South intended to persuade readers that slavery was a sin through moral suasion. But the avalanche of materials incited violence in Charleston, South Carolina. On July 29, 1835, a mob descended on the post office, and burned both the bags and mock effigies of Lewis Tappan and William Lloyd Garrison.

Slave Market of America. 1836. M1975.838.1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 9

Anti-slavery print materials conveyed slavery’s horrors including sexual abuse and physical suffering. “Slave Market of America” emphasized American hypocrisy by showing slavery in the capital city of a nation founded on the premise of liberty.

The visual language of anti-slavery prints was intended to persuade the most cynical of audiences. Consequently, it erased black agency, casting African Americans as victims. These images removed achievements of black people – free and enslaved – from the visual record, leaving behind a complicated historical legacy.

[Cover of Annual Report of the Brooklyn Anti-Slavery Society] printed by W.S. Dorr, 1840. Negative #85469d. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

In 1839, white abolitionists founded the Brooklyn Anti-Slavery Society, an auxiliary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The organization promised to organize prayer meetings and public lectures so that Brooklynites could “sympathize with human woe.” Abolitionists were able to spread their message quickly through such local groups, including female auxiliaries, established throughout the North.
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The Brooklyn Anti-Slavery Society was one of the last local auxiliaries to be established. No African Americans served on its executive committee despite several Brooklyn’s many prominent black anti-slavery activists. It is difficult to say why, as little evidence on the organization exists.

The Society’s founders were John Rankin, Edward Corning, and William E. Whiting, all white men from the merchant class, and ardent abolitionists. They were also residents of Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood particularly welcoming to wealthy people who worked in the financial epicenter of lower Manhattan.

Practical Abolitionism

The Anti-Slavery Record. Ranson G. Williams. 1835. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP Anti-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

New York’s cultural, economic and political ties to the South ran deep, and it became a fertile hunting ground for slavecatchers in the post emancipation decades. The city’s judges often favored the slavecatcher. The problem was so percasive that abolitionist David Ruggles promised to publish a “Slaveholders Directory with names; residences of all members of the bar, police officers, city marshalls, constables, and other persons who lend themselves in the nefarious business of kindnapping and the names of slaveholders residing in the city of Brooklyn.”

The Anti-Slavery almanac, for 1839. S.W. Benedict. 1839. PAMP American-5. Brooklyn Historical Society.

The kidnapping of free black people was prevalent in New York and Brooklyn. Anti-slavery materials, intended to convince readers of slavery’s moral bankruptcy, proved insufficient. In response, abolitionists formed the New York Vigilance.

Twenty-six year old David Ruggles, born free in Connecticut, emerged as its most visible activist. He combined the print propaganda tactics of the American Anti-Slavery Society with a new form of activism. Historian Graham Hodges labeled it a “practical abolitionism.” Ruggles physically intervened in many cases and this came to typify the style of his anti-slavery activity.

Amistad Collection. Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

David Ruggles, born free in Connecticut, led the New York Vigilance Committee, pioneering a practical abolitionism. He often risked his life to physically intervene in the abduction of free black people in Brooklyn and New York.

Kidnapping in Brooklyn
Margaret Baker and her children were living at the Brooklyn Almshouse in Flatbush, when they were kidnapped the family and sold into slavery. Ruggles approached Land Van Nostrandt, the overseer of the Almshouse, at his home and demanded the family’s return. The historical record does not reveal whether or now he was successful.
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Daniel K. Dodge and his wife were slaveholders from South Carolina. They spent their summer vacations in Brooklyn, at their second home on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Henry Street. They kept three enslaved people – Jesse, Jim, and Charity – there. Although slavery was illegal in New York, Southerners were allowed to keep enslaved people in the state for up to nine months, after which they were legally free under the state’s personal liberty law.

Ruggles charged the Dodges with couple with the enslaved people captive for years. He burst into their home and an argument ensued. Ruggles eventually succeeded in legally emancipating Jesse, Jim and Charity. But white abolitionists criticized his aggressive style of activism. Despite their mutual purpose, black and white abolitionists did not always agree. In 1839, Ruggles was forced to resign from his position with the New York Vigilance Committee.

Amistad

Simeon S. Jocelyn. 81.374. Massachusetts Historical Society.

In 1839, the Amistad, a Spanish schooner from Cuba containing 59 enslaved Africans was found shipwrecked off the coast of Long Island. Joseph Cinque, a Sierra Leonean, and others had overthrown the crew and demanded to be taken back to Africa. Instead the Spanish crew commandeered the schooner towards the American coast and asked for government protection. The African survivors were taken to New London, CT, imprisoned and charged with piracy and murder.

Brooklyn abolitionists Simeon Jocelyn, a Williamsburg resident, and Lewis Tappan, a Brooklyn Heights resident, worked closely with the African prisoners, and after a high-profile court case, they were freed.

Later, Jocelyn and others, formed the American Missionary Association, an organization dedicated to abolitionism through evangelicalism. During Reconstruction, they concentrated on educational activities.

Land, Voting,
Citizenship: Weeksville

Sylvanus Smith. ca. 1870. M1989.4.1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 3: Lesson 11

Established by 1838, Weeksville was one of New York’s earliest and most successful black communities intended as a political base.

Sylvanus Smith was a free black man living in the village of Brooklyn. He was one of the earliest land investors in Weeksville, a free black community that thrived during the antebellum decades.
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From Suburb to City
The town of Brooklyn was transformed by land speculation during the early nineteenth century. In 1804, Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont, a pioneering developer purchased a sixty-acre farm in Brooklyn Heights. When his friend, Robert Fulton, developed the steam ferry that reduced commuting times between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the first U.S. suburb was born. By 1817, Pierrepont owned most of Brooklyn Heights and began to parcel it off to individual land investors. In 1834, Brooklyn had outgrown its suburban status and was an independent city.

But the Panic of 1837 brought Brooklyn’s rapid urbanization to an end. Property prices plunged and stayed low as a ten year economic depression followed.

Founding of Weeksville
Just one year following the Panic, free black Brooklynites including Smith intentionally founded the village of Weeksville. In 1821, the New York State Constitution eliminated all property qualification for white men and introduced a $250 property requirement for black men. Weeksville was established, in part, as an answer to this discrimination. Brooklyn’s free black community created a landowning community that would support them as full citizens with voting rights.

Chancery Sale of Real Estate Belonging to the Heirs of Samuel Garrittsen, decd., situated in the 9th Ward of the city of Brooklyn. George Hayward. 1839. B P-[1839].Fl. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 3: Lesson 11

African Americans began to acquire land in the city’s ninth ward, the most distant and secluded of Brooklyn’s wards from the bustling downtown area as early as 1832.

Three years later, Henry C. Thompson purchased 32 lots in the area indirectly from John Lefferts’ estate. In 1838, James Weeks, an African American longshoreman, purchased two lots. He was the only original land investor to reside in the area and for whom Weeksville was named.

[Hunterfly Road Houses]. Eugene L. Armbruster. 1922. Eugene L. Armbruster photograph and scrapbook collection. V1987.11.2. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 3: Lesson 11

The Hunterfly Road Houses are the last remnant structures of the once thriving community of Weeksville. It was the second largest free black community in antebellum America.

Historian Judith Wellman’s research shows that it boasted high levels of homeownership and it was the only free black community with an urban rather than rural economic base. By 1855, it had 521 residents.

[Colored School No. 2 (Public School No. 68)]. 1892. V1974.36.17. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 3: Lesson 11 | Lesson 12

Junius Morel was a long serving educator at Colored School #2, or the African School in Weeksville. He was also a prominent activist and a national correspondent for a variety of anti-slavery newspapers.

It is no coincidence that the majority of educators in Brooklyn’s African Schools were anti-slavery activists. Education was a powerful weapon to fight racism and inequality. Henry C. Thompson, Sylavnus Smith, and George Hogarth were all instrumental in establishing the African School in what is now Downtown Brooklyn and used the resources at the AME Church to do so. Willis and William Hodges and their neighbors founded the African School in Williamsburg.
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Brooklyn had a total of three African schools during the antebellum period, located in modern day downtown Brooklyn, Weeksville and Williamsburg. When the Brooklyn Board of Education took over their management, they were renamed Colored School No 1, 2, and 3 respectively. However, the schools often suffered from overcrowding and a lack of public funding.

Land, Voting,
Citizenship: Williamsburg

Portrait of Willis A. Hodges. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

“[It is] my opinion that the people of color have to leave the crowded cities and town of New York, Brooklyn, Syracuse, Albany, Troy, Utica and the rest and move into country and small growing villages like Williamsburg, and grow up with a small town. I believe in that way they would overcome much of the prejudice against them, for, as a rule, there is a fraternal feeling between the people of small towns or places (even in the South) that is unknown in the large cities.”
Willis Hodges, A Free Man of Color.

In 1839, at the height of Williamsburg’s land speculation, William Hodges, a free man from Norfolk, VA, bought his first plot of land there. He erected his home at the corner of 4th Street (modern day Bedford) and South 8th Street, a highly desirable location, and a short walk to the Peck Slip Ferry with views of the city. His brother Willis moved nearby to South 7th Street where he lived with his wife Sarah Ann Corprew, whose parents lived in Weeksville.
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Willis Hodges noted that in the late 1830s there was only one abolition society in Williamsburg, and he and William were its only members of color. In the ten years that followed, the brothers and their neighbors cemented Williamsburg’s reputation as a site of anti-slavery activism. They collectively shaped its public spaces to reflect their ideals. The result was the creation of the public West India Emancipation Day celebrations, an African school, and a mobilized black community.

A map of the village of Williamsburgh, Kings County, N.Y. Isaac Vieth. 1845. B A-[1845].Fl. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Until 1855, Williamsburg was separate from the city of Brooklyn. It was part of the town of Bushwick, one of Kings County’s original six towns and remained distinctly rural until its incorporation as a village in 1827. During Williamsburg’s early growth, the village council opened and improved streets, dug wells, and established a district school.

[View of Williamsburgh]. 1834. Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks. V1974.1.1260. Brooklyn Historical Society.

In 1829, Williamsburg had a post office, 148 homes, 10 stores and taverns, 5 ropewalks, 1 distillery, 1 slaughterhouse, 2 butchers, a Dutch Reformed Church, and a Methodist Episcopal Church.

Just six years later, its population had tripled to 3,000. There were 72 village streets, approximately 300 houses, a newspaper called the Williamsburg Gazette. In 1836, two ferries connected the growing town of Williamsburg to New York. In 1852, it received a city charter and was complete separate from the town of Bushwick in which it had originally started.

48 valuable lots in the village of Williamsburgh, Kings County. 1845. B P-[1845].Fl. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Williamsburg’s growth was made possible by developers who recognized its commercial advantages. The land stood 45 feet above water which prevented it from flooding, it looked out at a waterfront that stretched 1.5 miles along the East River, and it was in close proximity to the financial hub of Manhattan. The influx of merchants, industrialists, and laborers, mostly from Germany, transformed Williamsburg from a village (1827) to a town (1840) to a city (1852) that was eventually annexed to Brooklyn in 1855. Home to the second largest black community in Kings County, Williamsburg was a bastion of anti-slavery activity.

[Public School 191]. Eugene L. Armbruster. 1929. Eugene L. Armbruster photograph and scrapbook collection. V1991.106.125. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 3: Lesson 12

In 1841, Williamsburg activists opened an African School after the village school refused admission to approximately 40 students of color aged 5 to 16.

Willis Hodges, William Hodges, Samuel Ricks, Lewis H. Nelson, Thomas Wilson, and Henry Davis raised funds and formed the school committee. William Hodges was elected to act as both teacher and principal. When the Brooklyn Board of Education took over the management of all public schools, the African School in Williamsburg was renamed Colored School #3. Abolitionist Maria Stewart and Weeksville founder Sylavnus Smith’s daughter Sarah J. Tompkins Garnet were among its many educators.

Petition of Voters of Williamsburgh against Gag Rule, December 14, 1841. Records of the U.S. House of Representatives. HR27A-H1-6. Courtesy of the National Archives.

In 1841, Williamsburg’s black and white voters used new and old tactics to fight slavery. They showed support for the newly formed Liberty Party which reflected their anti-slavery stance. But they also used the decade old strategy used by abolitionists of petitioning Congress.

Beginning in the early 1830s, abolitionists advocated for the end of slavery by petitioning state legislatures and the House of Representatives. It is estimated that the American Anti-Slavery Society sent more than 600,000 anti-slavery petitions containing over 2 million signatures in total. Congress responded to the onslaught of these petitions by passing a series of resolutions between 1836 and 1844 that tabled them, known as the gag rule.

This petition asks Congress to remove the gag rule placed on anti-slavery petitions. Signatures came from James Warner, his son James H. Warner, Taylor C. Warner, Samuel Shapter, William Hodges, and Willis Hodges. These men knew each other through their Liberty Party activities.

Liberty Party Notice. SY1841 no. 19. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

In 1840, abolitionists divided into two ideological camps: the Garrisonians and Tappanites. The split occurred because Lewis Tappan felt that William Lloyd Garrison was becoming too radical. In particular, he insisted that women be allowed to serve alongside men on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society (until then women had worked in separate anti-slavery societies).

The split continued to give rise to new strands of anti-slavery activism. In particular, black activists recognized the need for a two-pronged approach – a demand for the end to slavery and a redress of basic civil rights for all people of color.
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During the 1840s many of Brooklyn’s black homeowners, educators, and organizers led the protest at the ballot box. They fought for the removal of the $250 property requirement for African American voters. And they supported the newly formed Liberty Party. The political party was intended to act as a valid alternative to the two party system – Whigs and Democrats – that had dominated U.S. politics. The party brought anti-slavery ideologies into American electoral politics so that the issue could no longer be simply sidelined, tabled, or gagged in the form of petitions by state and federal governments.

On December 29, 1841, Kings County activists met in Williamsburg to show their support for the Liberty Party. The meeting was led by James Warner, a hatmaker, who had first met William Hodges at an American Anti-Slavery Society gathering. For William Hodges, and countless men like him, the support for party politics was a reaffirmation of the full privileges of citizenship with voting rights. The Liberty Party dissolved by 1848 having failed to get a foothold in national politics.

Gerrit Smith. 1865. Civil War carte-de-visite album. SCRAP.2009.19. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Gerrit Smith was a wealthy white landowner and abolitionist. He established a utopian community called Timbuctoo on 120,000 acres of his own land in the Adirondacks. Between 1846 and 1853, Smith donated 40-60 acre lots to 3,000 African American men, creating a community of black voters in New York State. Timbuctoo was a response to New York’s failure to amend the voting requirements for black men in 1846 and the continued protest for black citizenship.

Free Black Farmers at North Elba, New York. Photographer Unknown. Courtesy of the Adirondack Museum.

Gerrit Smith’s Timbuctoo valued independence, self-sufficiency, and community. Residents were expected to live off the land while being able to escape some of the racism they encountered on a daily basis. Many Kings County residents participated in the democratic experiment including Willis Hodges. But life in Timbuctoo was difficult. They were unprepared as farmers, lacked basic supplies, and faced a dearth of fertile soil. By the mid-1850s, Timbuctoo was no longer operational.

A Gradual Emancipation (1783 – 1827)

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 18:06:08 +0000

The American Revolution birthed a paradox. As patriots championed their own freedom from the British they continued to enslave people of African descent. Brooklyn was the slaveholding capital of
New York State.

But anti-slavery sentiment grew in the early republic. Many enslaved people of African descent and white Quakers used the rhetoric of the Revolutionary War to demand civil rights and broaden the ideology of freedom. As a result, manumissions, anti-slavery societies and free black communities expanded across the North. The constitutions of Vermont (1777) and Massachusetts (1783) forbade slavery, and Pennsylvania (1780) Rhode Island (1784), and Connecticut (1784) all passed gradual emancipation laws.

This was not the case in Brooklyn or Kings County, NY, a slaveholding capital. Following the American Revolution, slavery actually strengthened in Kings County, unlike neighboring Manhattan, Philadelphia, and Boston. Enslaved labor was essential to the county’s growing agricultural economy and prosperity.

Finally, in 1799, New York State enacted a Gradual Emancipation Act. It was the second to last Northern state to begin the dismantling of slavery. The law stated that all children born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1799 would be free at the age of 28 if male, and 25 if female. Slavery had no end date for those born prior to 1799. In 1817, a further act stipulated that slavery would come to an absolute end on July 4, 1827.

Gradual emancipation lasted 28 years and there was no guarantee of equality at its end. But as long as slavery existed so did the desire to be free and enslaved people found ways to resist their oppression. They were assisted by a small, but significant, free black community who resided in the town of Brooklyn. These pioneers represented the first wave of anti-slavery activists.

Slaveholding Capital

Life, History and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher, 1811. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 2

John Jea lived and worked in Flatbush, Kings County during the colonial period and in the early days of the American republic. He was just one of the thousands of enslaved people who fueled the prosperity of Kings County’s agricultural economy.

Jea was born in southern Nigeria in 1773. He was kidnapped at the age of 2½ and sold into slavery. Jea worked on a large farm in Flatbush. His slaveholders, Albert and Anetje Terhune treated him “in a manner almost too shocking to relate.”* The Terhunes forced their enslaved laborers to work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, with a paucity of food and inadequate clothing. They beat, whipped, and even killed those who complained or could not work.
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Despite the physical and psychological torture endured under slavery, Jea seized the opportunity to convert to Christianity and learned to read and write. In 1789, at the age of sixteen, he was manumitted. It is difficult to say exactly why Jea was freed, but occasionally Christian slaveholders faced the moral dilemma of enslaving their fellow Christians. With a new physical and spiritual freedom, Jea traveled as a preacher across the United States, West Indies, and Europe and shared the Gospel and his life story with audiences. He detailed his experiences in the Life, History, and Unparalleled Suffering of John Jea, the African Preacher (1811). His autobiography offers a rare glimpse into the brutality of slavery in Brooklyn from the perspective of an enslaved person.

* Jea states that his slaveholders were Oliver and Anjelika Treibuen in his autobiography. But historian Graham Hodges found no evidence of this couple living in Flatbush at that time. It is possible that Jea created these names to protect himself and others. According to Hodges his actual enslavers were likely to be Albert and Anetje Terhune.

James Ryder Van Brunt. Van Brunt Homestead. ca. 1848. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 1 | Lesson 2 | Lesson 3

As the reality of slavery of Brooklyn faded, the memories of the past – when they surfaced at all – tended to focus on the “mildness” of slavery in the North and the beauty of its agricultural backdrop.

Created in 1848, this image idealizes Cornelius Van Brunt’s former home in the late eighteenth century as a tranquil scene. The person of color works in a beautiful rural landscape. In 1796, a writer under the pseudonym “Amynto” stated that “in no part of the world do slaves live so comfortable as here [in New York].” But John Jea’s autobiography documenting his experience as an enslaved person showed that slavery was just as oppressive and dehumanizing in the North as it was in the South. Working on Kings County’s farms was often grueling and shortened the life expectancy of the enslaved.

Agricultural Brooklyn
By the late eighteenth century, Dutch and English colonizers had firmly established an agrarian economy in Kings County.
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They relied on unfree labor to work the land’s rich and fertile soil and produce an abundance of crops. The slaveholder and enslaved often lived under the same roof or in close quarters. From 1790 to 1810, foreign trade through Manhattan’s port rapidly increased and the city solidified its reputation as a center of finance and business. Investors, bankers, brokers and lawyers flocked there, establishing the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York.

During this period, Kings County remained distinctly agricultural, supplying fruit and vegetables to the county and neighboring New York.

Population Schedules of the First Census of the United States, 1790. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 1

Brooklyn was the slaveholding capital of New York State.

In 1790, the first official federal census revealed that the population of Kings County had doubled in less than a century. 4,495 residents, mostly of Dutch, English, and African descent, lived and worked on the county’s large farms.

Not all were free. In 1738, 25% of Kings County’s residents were held in slavery. In 1790, this number had risen to 30%. On average, 60% of white families were slaveholders; in outer areas, such as the town of Flatbush, this number was as high as 74%. Kings County was a slaveholding capital in New York State.

Slaveholding families that became wealthy during this period included the Lefferts, Lott, Bergen, Vanderveer and Vanderbeek families. Their names are still visible in Brooklyn’s landscape: the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood and Lott Street in Flatbush; Bergen Street, which runs East-West from Cobble Hill to East New York; Vanderveer Street in Bushwick; and, Remsen Street (named after a descendant of Ram Jansen Vanderbeek) in Brooklyn Heights. In fact, 82 streets named after Brooklyn’s slaveholding families still exist in the borough today.

Gradual Emancipation

New York State Archives, New York (State). Dept. of State. Bureau of Miscellaneous Records. Enrolled acts of the State Legislature, 1778-2005. Series 13036-78, Laws of 1799, Chapter 62.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 2

It took twenty-eight years for New York State, and therefore Kings County, to end slavery.

Slavery had no end date for people born prior to this date, until 1817, when a further law stipulated that slavery would come to an absolute end on July 4, 1827. As long as slavery existed so did the desire to be free. During gradual emancipation (1799-1827), anti-slavery activities in Kings County fell into three broad categories:
– the efforts of black people, both enslaved and indentured, to secure their own emancipation through running away, manumission and self-purchase,
– the legal mediation carried by an anti-slavery organization called the New-York Manumission Society,
– a grassroots campaign for equality initiated by Brooklyn’s free black community.

Their work was frequently met with hostility from Brooklyn’s landowners and farmers whose wealth was built on slavery.

[Slave bill of sale]. 1825. John Ditmars and Jacob Duryee slave bill of sale. 1977.583. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 4

Gradual emancipation laws favored slaveholders not the enslaved.

Sine, a young African American girl living in Brooklyn in 1825 was not legally enslaved. But her indenture to Jacob Duryee of Flatbush required that she work uncompensated from the age of eight to ten. Her service should have ended on July 4, 1827, when slavery was abolished in New York State. However, it is difficult to say whether Sine was ever emancipated. Outer areas such as Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, and New Utrecht remained deeply agricultural until the late nineteenth century. Farmers in these areas continued to rely on the labor of African Americans who were held illegally in bondage and indentured servitude beyond 1827.

[Runaway advertisement for David Smith]. Long Island Star. January 10, 1822. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 4

Gradual emancipation in New York State (1799-1827) was a tumultuous period for people of color.

They demanded to live their lives with dignity and agitated for their own freedom. Running away, manumission and self-purchase were just three ways in which enslaved people secured their own emancipation.

In 1822, eleven-year old David Smith ran away from his enslaver in Brooklyn. Running away was a politically charged act of courage and revealed the ways in which enslaved people resisted their own bondage.

His slaveholder advertised David as a runaway in the local newspaper, the Long Island Star. “Runaway Ads” had been a prominent part of newspapers from the colonial period onwards in Kings County reflecting the economic worth of slavery in the region.

It is difficult to say whether David successfully built a new life as a free person or if he was captured and forced to serve his indenture.

Records of the New-York Manumission Society. MS1465. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 5

By the terms of New York’s gradual emancipation act (1799) an enslaved person of color born before July 4, 1799 was condemned to a life in bondage. His or her contemporaries born after this date would be free at the age of 25 if female or 28 if male.

In 1817, New York State created a new law that would abolish slavery completely in 1827. During this uncertain period, there were three options for pursuing freedom: running away, manumission or self-purchase.
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In 1809, 24-year-old Harry worked with the New-York Manumission Society (N-YMS) to advocate for his freedom. Harry had been promised money, manumission, and an apprenticeship at the age of 21 upon the death of his owner Maria Magdalene Ruble. However, he remained enslaved after she died. Harry enlisted the help of William Livingston, the Surrogate for Kings County, who wrote to the N-YMS.

Founded in 1785 by Manhattan’s white elite, the N-YMS was committed to gradually ending slavery. During gradual emancipation they focused on three primary concerns in Kings County: the enslavement of free African Americans; slave sales between New York and New Jersey; and, the violation of manumissions such as Harry’s. But many N-YMS members were slaveholders. The contradiction of being a slaveholding anti-slavery activist was not lost on the organization’s members. Rather, they felt that their reform work addressed their own sin of slaveholding and would eventually result in the economic collapse of slavery. Still, they remained unsure of the ability of African Americans to be their equals.

It is difficult to say whether Harry ever found his freedom.

Nicolino Calyo. The Hot Corn Seller. Ca. 1840-1844. Print Archives. The Museum of the City of New York.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 3

Margaret was a street crier who sold hot corn near the ferry on Fulton street during gradual emancipation (1799-1827)

Her enslaver was Robert Debevoise, a wealthy landowner in what is now Brooklyn Heights. Gabriel Furman, an early nineteenth century historian, lawyer and Brooklynite, reminisced that during his childhood “an old colored woman, familiarly known as Debevoise black peg, or rather, Margaret or Peggy, made her appearance, crying ‘Hot Corn, Nice Hot Corn, piping hot.’”

Margaret left no record of her own experiences, but Furman’s recollection confirms that countless oppressed women of color formed the social fabric of Brooklyn.

[John Baxter house]. Harriet Stryker-Rodda. ca. 1945. Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection. V1973.5.2373. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 2

Irish born John Baxter was a lifelong resident of Flatlands. Over three decades, beginning in 1790, he made copious notes in his journals. His entries reveal life during gradual emancipation had upon ordinary Brooklynites. Following are excerpts from his detailed journals:

June 30, 1790
A. Wyckoff purchased Harry, a black, Bett his wife, and Peg her child from Widow Lott for 180. I am afraid no great bargain.

August 12, 1807
Abraham Wyckoff’s negro ran off.

May 17, 1815
This morning my negro was to come home. I am afraid he had run away and we cannot account for it.
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May 18, 1815
My negro Will ran away.

June 10, 1815
Bought a negro Jack from J. Mead.

June 12, 1815
Negro jack who is free at 21 years or 28 according to law.

Early Free Black Community

Francis Guy. Winter Scene in Brooklyn, ca. 1819-1820. Oil on canvas, 58 3/8 x 74 9/16 in Brooklyn Museum, transferred from the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences to the Brooklyn Museum, 97.13.

Brooklyn itself is a beautiful object […] several of the streets are straight, and spacious. The houses are generally good; many of them are new; many handsome; very many painted white, and therefore cheerful and brilliant. The town contains three churches; a Dutch, and Episcopal, and a Methodist. The inhabitants are, extensively, descendants from the original Dutch settlers: the rest are a casual collection from all quarters.
Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, 1822.

The Village of Brooklyn in 1816. Jeremiah Lott. 1816. B P-1816 (1816–?).Fl. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

In 1816, the village of Brooklyn was incorporated within the town of the same name. Brooklyn had transformed from farmland to a bustling town centered around the ferry landing at the northwestern tip of Kings County.

Irish immigrants, transplants from New England, descendants of early English and Dutch settlers, and free African Americans lived side by side in its crooked streets.

Brooklyn’s free black community mostly lived among those of European descent in the neighborhoods we know now as DUMBO and Vinegar Hill, with the largest concentration in a triangle between Fulton, Main and Front Streets. Brothers Peter and Benjamin Croger, together with their growing families, were among the many residents.

Grassroots activists, the Crogers pioneered Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement. Through assistance, education and faith they created an independent and strong community foundation, on which free black Brooklynites built lives of self-determination and dignity, despite significant oppression.

[Cover of Constitution of the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society] adopted March 16, 1810, published in 1820 by E. Worthington. Negative #85470d. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

A small, but significant, free black community lived in the areas now known as DUMBO and Vinegar Hill. They pioneered Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement through grassroots efforts.

In 1810, Brooklynites Peter Croger, Benjamin Croger, and Joseph Smith established the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society. The mutual aid society’s name referred to noted Quaker anti-slavery activist John Woolman and reflected the organization’s anti-slavery commitment. The Society offered care and financial assistance especially to the widows and children of deceased members.
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The Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society frequently worked with Manhattan’s New York African Society for Mutual Relief founded in 1808. Members of both organizations marched together in parades and celebratory processions in Manhattan and Brooklyn. These joint appearances represented a show of political solidarity, the creation of an anti-slavery network that crossed the East River, and the sharing of information and resources.

[Advertisement for African School]. The Long Island Star. January 18, 1815. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

The creation of a private African school symbolized literacy as a form of liberation.

In 1815, Peter Croger established a private African school at his home on James Street. The school offered day and evening classes in the “common branches of education.” Croger’s school was vital to the education of black Brooklynites after the district school refused to teach children of color.

Croger’s work symbolized literacy as a form of liberation. Through literacy, they sought to empower people of color to emancipate their minds from the mental oppression of racism. They also challenged the racist perception that people of African descent were not capable or prepared to be equal citizens in the United States.

Detail from The Village of Brooklyn in 1816. Jeremiah Lott. 1816. B P-1816 (1816–?).Fl. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Peter Croger’s private African school founded in 1815 was located on James Street.

Today the street no longer exists. It was demolished when construction on the Brooklyn Bridge began in 1870.

[Bridge Street African Methodist Church]. Eugene L. Armbruster. 1923. Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks. V1974.1.1342. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

Bridge Street AWME Church, Brooklyn’s oldest black church now located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was founded by grassroots anti-slavery activists as a political base during gradual emancipation.

In 1816, Reverend Richard Allen founded the independent African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Two years later, inspired by anti-racism developments in Philadelphia’s black community, Peter Croger, his brother Benjamin Croger, Israel Jemison, Cesar Springfield, and John E. Jackson founded the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on High Street in Brooklyn.

Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 18:11:38 +0000

1850 marked the beginning of the crisis decade. Territorial gains made from the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) reignited arguments over whether slavery should be allowed to expand in the United States.

The Fugitive Slave Law was part of Congress’ attempt to balance the nation’s free and slave state interests. Instead, the line between free and slave blurred entirely and thousands of free black people in Brooklyn and beyond were at the whim of an unjust law.

The city itself continued to rapidly expand, this time along its extensive waterfront. Sugar, tobacco and cotton – all valuable commodities produced by unfree labor – lined the city’s warehouses. By 1855, Brooklyn was central to the business of slavery.

As sectional tension intensified, Brooklynites were divided on the issue of slavery. Residents were tested as a series of crises on slavery unfolded: the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the Dred Scott Decision (1857), and the Harpers Ferry Raid (1859). By the end of the decade, violent conflict seemed inevitable.

Fugitive Slave Law

K Stands for Kidnapper from the Gospel of Slavery. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

By the 1840s, as Brooklyn expanded, many white Brooklynites pushed for greater police protection.

Yet, for the most part, the creation of a city police force represented a threat to black Brooklynites who were unprotected by local, state and federal laws. In 1842, Edward Saxton was accused of being a fugitive from Mobile, AL. His captor, J.C. Gantz presented a Brooklyn Court with an affidavit claiming that Saxton had forged his freedom papers. Officer Barkaloo and Gantz then arrested Saxton at Mansion House, a hotel located on Hicks between Pierrepont and Clark. Saxton was taken from New York to a Baltimore jail.
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Under New York’s Personal Liberty Law, Saxton’s arrest without a trial was illegal. Moreover, no police court had the authority to issue a warrant for the arrest of suspected fugitive. Sadly Saxton, presumably under duress, pleaded guilty and was re-enslaved under Alabama law. The abolitionist newspaper the Liberator reported that Brooklyn police were notorious for making illegal arrests and sending free African Americans into slavery.

The Fugitive slave bill its history and unconstitutionality. William Harned. 1850. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP AFAS-3. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 15: Lesson 15

On September 26, 1850, Williamsburg resident James Hamlet, was arrested near his workplace in Manhattan. The arrest was based entirely on his alleged enslaver’s accusation that Hamlet was a fugitive. Under the Fugitive Slave Law, Hamlet was not permitted to testify on his own behalf and he was not entitled to a trial by jury. He was imprisoned and taken to Baltimore.
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Hamlet’s arrest outraged abolitionists who quickly fundraised the $800 needed for his release. On October 2, black New Yorkers packed Zion Church in Manahattan – two thirds of attendees were women. Weeksville resident Junius C. Morel and Brooklyn resident Robert H. Cousins were among the speakers and organizers that day. This pamphlet was also part of that fundraising effort, which was ultimately successfully. Approximately 5,000 New Yorkers gathered at Broadway and City Park in Manhattan to celebrate his return. He was reunited with his wife Harriet and three young children, and a final celebration took place at the AME Church in Brooklyn.

The pamphlet also raised awareness about the Fugitive Slave Law, which contained a number of draconian provisions: it allowed special federal commissioners to cross state lines and arrest anyone of being a fugitive. Judges received financial incentives for ruling in favor of slaveholders. And people assisting fugitives could be fined or imprisoned. The pamphlet, issued by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society led by Lewis Tappan, sold 13,000 copies within three weeks of its first printing.

Plymouth Church 1850. 1850. Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection. V1973.6.115. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Church Debates on the Fugitive Slave Law

“The Bible is Heavier than the Statute Book.”

At Plymouth Church, on Orange between Henry and Hicks, the high profile abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher spoke out against the Fugitive Slave Law. The law allowed federal authorities to cross state lines and kidnap any person of color suspected of being a fugitive.

For white abolitionists kidnapping under the Fugitive Slave Law would always remain in the abstract – a violation that could not be committed against them. But it did not deter pastors with anti-slavery convictions denouncing the law at the pulpit. Brooklyn, the “City of Churches”, so called because of the disproportionate number of churches to people, entered a war of words.

Richard S. Storrs. ca. 1865. Portrait collection. M1975.190.1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Church Debates on the Fugitive Slave Law

“Is this law right? Is it equitable and just? Does it agree with the law which GOD has given me, when he tells me to love me neighbor as myself?”

At Church of the Pilgrims, Richard S. Storrs asked his congregation to reflect on which law held more weight – religious or secular.

Henry C. Bowen, Lewis Tappan’s son-in-law, founded the church on the corner of Henry and Remsen. Bowen left Church of the Pilgrims to organize Plymouth Church which became a center of abolitionism under Beecher’s leadership.

The Law Abiding Conscience, and the Higher Law Conscience. Samuel T. Spear. 1850. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP SpearST-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Church Debates on the Fugitive Slave Law

“God’s law is certainly higher than man’s.”

Samuel T. Spear’s South Presbyterian Church, on Clinton and Amity, included parishioners such as the prominent white abolitionist John Rankin. He was as an executive officer in the American Anti-Slavery Society, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and president of the Brooklyn Anti-Slavery Society.

Reverend Ichabod S. Spencer, D. D., 1849, M1974.218.1; Henry Peters Gray; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Church Debates on the Fugitive Slave Law

“If Law cannot be executed, it is time to write the epitaph of your country!”

Ichabod Spencer preached an entirely different kind of message at Second Presbyterian Church, located at Clinton and Fulton. According to Spencer it was not slavery that was on trial. Rather, the future of the Union and its preservation was at stake.

The underground rail road. William Still. 1872. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP StillW-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

In response to the Fugitive Slave Law, New Yorkers and Brooklynites formed three vigilance committees. William J Wilson, Junius Morel, and T. Joiner White and others formed a group called the Committee of Thirteen. They offered financial assistance to freedom seekers, protection from slavecatchers and protested colonization. Information is scarce on the other organizations – a Committee of Nine in Brooklyn and Committee of Five in Williamsburg.

In 1851, all three committees worked together on the high profile Christiana Patriots Case. When fugitives in Christiana, Pennsylvania killed the slave catcher that had come to arrest them, they were charged with treason, riot and murder. Vigilance committees in New York and Brooklyn raised funds for the defendants.

Walt Whitman. ca. 1860. Thomas N. Schroth and Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Brooklyn Eagle collection. V1989.26.51. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Territorial gains made during the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) reopened debates on the expansion of slavery. A new political party – the Free Soil Party – believed that the westward expansion of slavery should be halted. However, they did not wish to see the deeply rooted institution of slavery dismantled and they did not support the abolitionists, whom they deemed fanatics. Walt Whitman, one of Brooklyn’s most famous residents, was an ardent Free Soiler.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle Building. V1973.5.838. Brooklyn Historical Society.

From March 1846 to January 1848, Walt Whitman served as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the city’s Democratic newspaper. Under his leadership, the newspaper printed highly derogatory passages about both abolitionists and African Americans. One editorial described the abolitionists as “foolish and red-hot fanatics”, with “angry voices.”

Whitman did not condemn the institution of slavery in the south nor did he support political and legal equality for African Americans. But he did oppose the expansion of slavery in the West. When he expressed support for the Wilmot  Proviso, intended to bar slavery from territories acquired during the Mexican-American War, he was fired.

Queen Sugar

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP), General Collection, Hannah Townsend, The Anti-Slavery Alphabet.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 13

As historian Craig Steven Wilder has noted, if “King Cotton” ruled Manhattan’s economy, then “Queen Sugar” reigned supreme in Brooklyn.

The sugar industry, so crucial to Brooklyn’s growth, exploited land and labor from the southern slave plantations of Louisiana to the cane fields of Cuba.

Atlantic Docks and Basin. ca. 1870. Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection. V1973.5.856. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 13

Brooklyn – the “walled city.”

By 1840, Manhattan’s waterfront warehouses had become overcrowded and expensive. Developer Daniel Richards turned his sights to Brooklyn. The result was the Atlantic Docks which transformed Red Hook’s marshland into an industrial wall around Brooklyn. Its success catalyzed further development.

The prosperity of Brooklyn’s newly industrialized waterfront was tied to the economies of slavery. From Williamsburg to Red Hook, the city’s warehouses stored sugar, cotton, and tobacco – all valuable commodities produced by unfree labor.

Pierrepont Stores. ca. 1890. Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection. V1973.5.854. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 13

A generation of Brooklyn industrialists, including the Pierrepont and Havemeyer families profited from the nation’s sweet tooth.

William and Henry Pierrepont were the sons of Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont, Brooklyn’s first land developer. In 1857, the brothers opened the Pierrepont Stores (or warehouses) designed to house commodities until the taxes were paid at the Customs House in Manhattan.

The Pierreponts invited companies that traded with Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the South to store their goods at the warehouses. One of the major commodities stored at the Pierrepont warehouses was sugar.

Havemeyer and Elder Sugar Refinery. Atlantic Publishing and Engraving Company. ca. 1870. M1979.1.1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 13

A generation of Brooklyn industrialists, including the Pierrepont and Havemeyer families profited from the nation’s sweet tooth.

In 1807, William Havemeyer, a German immigrant, opened a sugar refining business in Manhattan. Sugar was still a luxury commodity enjoyed by the city’s elite. By 1857, changes in technology allowed sugar to be cheaply produced.

The Havemeyers relocated their business to Williamsburg, where they began to store and refine sugar on site and thereby retain more profit. By the late 19th century, Havemeyer joined with several other magnates to establish the Sugar Refineries Company in Brooklyn. It controlled 98% of the nation’s sugar production. By 1900, the Havemeyer Company was renamed Domino Sugar.

Smith’s Brooklyn Directory. William H. Smith. 1854-1855. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Sugar, spices, coffee, rum and sugar were all coveted consumer products in Brooklyn and beyond. They were prominently advertised in various publications including newspapers and city directories. But all of the notices contain a silence about the product’s source or origins. Many enslaved laborers lost their lives working in oppressive conditions to produce these highly coveted goods.

Harper’s new monthly magazine (AP2 .H3). Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 13

Unfree laborers produced sugar, tobacco and cotton – commodities that guaranteed Brooklyn’s wealth. Many people of African descent lost their lives working in the fields of South Carolina, Louisiana, Cuba and Puerto Rico.

In the case of sugar production, the work was relentless, exhausting, and dangerous. The season began in late December with the prolonged and backbreaking task of planting the sugar crop. By spring and early summer, workers removed weeds from the growing sugar canes. During the summer months, laborer built canals and ditches to ensure the fields had sufficient drainage. By early November, once the crop was in harvest, men, women and children worked non-stop. They cut sugar canes, stripped the leaves, and transported them to the mill for processing. The mill, where workers crystallized the sugar and packed it to destinations like Brooklyn, was oppressively hot. Once the year’s work was complete these laborers rested a few days before crop planting began again. That’s if the worker had not injured him/herself during the grueling work or died from exhaustion. The sugar trade was a death trap for many.

Black Businesses

Detail. Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Library of Congress.

William J. Wilson, a strong advocate for independence and self-determination in black communities, dedicated his life’s work to Brooklyn.

Wilson was the longest serving educator at the African School in Brooklyn, or Colored School #1, during the antebellum period. Under his tenure, the school expanded and opened a library. He criticized parents of color who sent their children to Brooklyn’s white schools, arguing that black Brooklynites must show solidarity.

But it was his work as a correspondent for the Frederick Douglass’ Paper that gained him national recognition. Under the pseudonym, “Ethiop”, he examined culture, race and politics in columns typified by irreverence, humor, and satire. Wilson urged black Brooklynites to take advantage of the city’s growth and develop independent businesses that reflected their education and capabilities. His wife Mary Wilson owned a small and successful clothing and crockery store, located on Atlantic Avenue.

Reynolds’ Williamsburgh City Directory and Business Advertiser, for 1852. Samuel & T.F. Reynolds. 1852. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 14

Lewis H. Nelson, a barber and political activist in Williamsburg, was part of a new generation of entrepreneurs, who built their own businesses, creating a context for their own capabilities. Nelson was born in Pennsylvania around 1810. By 1837, he had moved to Manhattan, where he ran a grocery and tea store stocked with “goods free from slave labor.” He moved to Williamsburg around 1841, when Willis Hodges, William Hodges and others began buying land and building a community. Nelson operated a “Hair Dressing & Shaving Saloon” at 45 4th Street which was also his place of residence.

Like many black barbers, Nelson also had a long career as an activist. He served in a benevolent association that supported the education of African Americans and was a founding member of the African School in Williamsburg. He also spoke out publicly against voter discrimination. Nelson died on September 28, 1868, leaving his personal estate to his wife Harriet.

[Diagram of Freeman Murrow’s patented double adjustable paint brush]. Brooklyn Brush Manufacturing Company articles of incorporation. 1978.191. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 14

Freeman Murrows, another Williamsburg resident, invented an innovative brush for whitewashing, painting and varnishing. Previously brushes had fixed handles so that the entire brush had to be thrown away once the bristles had worn out. The brush was also adjustable and could be angled to make the work easier.

Murrows faced challenges in promoting his invention. He was not permitted to showcase it at the American Institute Fair in 1853 (a precursor to the World Fair), so it was exhibited by a white man instead. The invention won the silver medal. Despite this success, Murrows was unable to secure financing for his business – the Brooklyn Brush Manufacturing Company. In 1855, Lewis Tappan urged his fellows abolitionists to invest in the business at an anti-slavery convention.
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Murrows sought to do more than manufacture brushes with his company. Its Articles of Incorporation stated that it was to “provide other means of support for our wives and daughters than perpetual servitude as scrubbers and washing servants to others, and to alleviate ourselves from our former and present low condition – as we are disenfranchised by this Government, – that we may enjoy our rights as free Citizens of the United States, and that by means of our productive labor … whereby we may cultivate, strengthen and employ our inventive genius, as authors and producers, equally with other men.”

Freedom Seekers

[Portrait of Thomas H. Jones]. General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Brooklyn was a “hot bed” of fugitive rescue and activity.

In 1849, Thomas H. Jones, his wife Mary Rynar Moore and their children found refuge in Brooklyn.

Jones was born enslaved on a plantation near Wilmington, North Carolina in 1809. He received financial assistance from a white friend and used the money to emancipate his wife and children. However, North Carolina failed to legalize Moore’s emancipation. To avoid being re-enslaved, she and her children escaped to Brooklyn in 1849. She stayed with Brooklynite Robert H. Cousins, an active member of Brooklyn’s AME Church and an outspoken advocate of voting rights. Jones eventually found the courage to run to freedom too and joined his wife in Brooklyn.
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Life as a free man proved difficult for Jones, he was frequently in need of work, and often worried that slavecatchers would find him. The couple soon learned that their eldest son who was unable to escape with them could be emancipated for a fee. So Jones penned his autobiography, The Experience of Thomas H. Jones, hoping to tap into a literary market eager to read about fugitives, especially following Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s fictional megahit Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Jones published seven editions of the book in total each time with a revision of the story.

Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn. 1854. Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection. V1973.5.2577. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Prominent freedom seekers turned abolitionists such as Henry Bibb spoke in Brooklyn as part of an international lecture circuit.

On May 27, 1847, Henry Bibb, a freedom seeker turned abolitionist, spoke at the Brooklyn Female Academy on Joralemon Street (now Packer Collegiate Institute). He returned to Brooklyn two years later and lectured at the Brooklyn AME Church where he raised $2.50 (about $73.60 in today’s money). Brooklyn was a “hotbed” of fugitive rescue, fundraising, and activity.

Portrait Henry Bibb. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Henry Bibb, originally a fugitive from Kentucky enjoyed a long successful career as a public speaker and prominent abolitionist.

He published the Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave (1849) designed to tell his own story and provide a source of income as a free man. But former fugitives such as Bibb were often contracted by various anti-slavery societies to tell their story directly to audiences. They challenged proslavery propaganda and revealed the mental, physical, and sexual violence perpetuated upon the black body. Brooklyn was one of Bibb’s many stops on the anti-slavery lecture circuit.

Portrait of Charles B. Ray. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Charles B. Ray was a Manhattan abolitionist who worked closely with colleagues in Brooklyn, particularly in the 1850s on fugitive rescue cases. He collaborated with Lewis Tappan to facilitate the dangerous journey of fourteen-year-old Ann Maria Weems from Maryland to Canada.

Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, African Americans were on high alert. Some free black people outraged by the assault on their civil liberties, emigrate to Canada, Haiti and Liberia. Others risked their lives to help enslaved people find freedom in Brooklyn and beyond. Activity on the Underground Railroad – neither underground nor a railroad, but an informal network of political activists increased significantly.

Ann Maria Weems dressed as Joe Wright. The underground rail road. William Still. 1872. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP StillW-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 16: Lesson 16

14-year-old Ann Maria Weems represented one of the few cases documenting the passage of a fugitive through Brooklyn.

Weems was the daughter of a free father and enslaved mother. Her parents worked closely with abolitionists to emancipate each member of their family. A Weems Ransom Fund, financed by Quaker abolitionists Henry and Anna Richardson, was established. The Richardsons lived in Britain, so they entrusted control of the fund to their friend Lewis Tappan, a Brooklyn Heights resident, and Charles B. Ray, an abolitionist living in Manhattan.
Read more...Close

In 1855, after two failed attempts, Ann Maria also succeeded in escaping. She traveled from Washington, DC to Philadelphia and onwards to Brooklyn disguised as a young boy named Joe Wright. She spent two days at Lewis Tappan’s home, where his wife Sarah used $63 from the Weems Ransom Fund to buy Ann Maria new clothes, so she could discard the boys clothing she had used to escape. On November 30, she traveled by train to Canada with Amos Freeman, pastor of Brooklyn’s Siloam Presbyterian Church. When they finally reached Dresden, Ontario, where her aunt lived, Freeman witnessed what he described as a “very affecting” reunion and concluded that Weems had found a “happy home”.

Portrait Lewis Tappan. The underground rail road. William Still. 1872. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP StillW-1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Brooklyn Heights resident, Lewis Tappan, housed Ann Maria Weems at his home before she departed for Canada. Tappan’s wife Sarah used $63 from the Weems Ransom Fund to buy Ann Maria new clothes as she still wore the boys clothing she had escaped in.

Tappan funded many abolitionist activities during the antebellum period and was a white ally in the fight for black civil rights. A businessman from Northampton, Massachusetts, he moved to New York to work with his brother Arthur Tappan. He was spurred to action by a deeply religious evangelical impulse brought about during the Second Great Awakening. He was originally pro- colonization but changed his mind after seeing waves of anti-colonization protests led by African Americans and became committed to abolitionism.
Read more...Close

Both Lewis and Arthur were executive officers of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AA-SS). They financed the anti-slavery newspaper the Emancipator, Oberlin College, and led a number of anti-slavery petition drives. Lewis was also the founder of Chatham Street Chapel in Manhattan, which had a mixed congregation. Both the church and his home were attacked during the anti-abolition riots in New York in 1834.

The Tappan brothers broke with William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent Boston abolitionist. Garrison believed women should be allowed to serve on the executive committee of the AA-SS. As a result, the Tappans left the AA-SS and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. With Williamsburg resident Simeon Jocelyn and Brooklynite James Pennington, Lewis assisted the Amistad captives during their sensational trial. Lewis prayed at Plymouth Church and Siloam Presbyterian Church, two of the city’s prominent anti-slavery churches.

Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher. ca. 1865. Civil War veterans portrait albums. V1981.6.7. Brooklyn Historical Society.

In 1847, Henry Ward Beecher left Indianapolis for Brooklyn. For the next four decades the charismatic pastor dominated the city’s politics. He transformed Plymouth Church into a bastion of abolitionist activity during the antebellum decades. The Fulton Ferry was supposedly renamed “Beecher’s Boats” because of the number of people who traveled from New York to Brooklyn on Sunday to hear him speak. During the crisis of Bleeding Kansas as popular sovereignty attempted to settle the problem of slavery’s westward expansion, it is alleged that Beecher sent cases of rifles, also known as, “Beecher’s Bibles.”
Read more...Close

Beecher’s reputation was built, in part, on the number of successful fundraisers he held to emancipate enslaved girls and young women. The press often presented these activities as Beecher’s patriarchal gift. But careful research shows that a number of these women were often actively involved in their own emancipation.

[Henry Ward Beecher hate mail]. ca 1860. Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims and Henry Ward Beecher collection. ARC.212: Box 41. Brooklyn Historical Society.

The general public hated the abolitionists for their radical views. Henry Ward Beecher’s high profile made him a target for much of their wrath. Over the years he received reams of hate mail and death threats.

[Ezra Greenleaf Weld, Fugitive Slave Law Convention, Cazenovia, NY] August 22, 1850. Daguerreotype. Courtesy of Madison County Historical Society.

In April 1848, some 80 people were arrested on a schooner on the Potomac attempting to flee slavery. Among them were Mary Edmonson, age 16, and her sister, Emily, age 13. The slavetrading company Bruin and Hill of Virginia, wrote to the girls’ parents, demanding $2250 ($64,100 today) for their emancipation. Their father Paul Edmonson, with the help of Washington D.C. abolitionists, approached James W. C. Pennington in New York who recommended Henry Ward Beecher fundraise the money. Using an auction format, Beecher asked the audience to imagine the enslaved girls as their own sisters and daughters. The crowd, appalled at the girls’ experience, donated the money for their emancipation.
Read more...Close

Once free the Edmonson sisters became visible anti-slavery activists in their own right. They attended the Cazenovia Anti-Slavery Convention (1850) with Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith and other prominent abolitionists. They attended Oberlin college where Mary died from tuberculosis six months later. Emily graduated and became an activist in Maryland.

Subscription book for purchasing slaves’ freedom. Beecher family papers, 1704-1964 (inclusive), 1795-1948 (bulk). Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University.

Pomona Brice was originally enslaved in North Carolina. By 1857, she was free and a resident of Brooklyn. Determined to reunite with her family she traveled across the North raising money. She worked with an attorney in Brooklyn and received money from Beecher, Bethel AME Church in Weeksville, and Bridge Street AME Church among others.

It is difficult to say whether her family was ever freed.

Fanny Virginia Casseopia Lawrence, a redeemed slave child, five years of age as she appeared when found in slavery. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Five-year-old Fanny Virginia Casseopia Lawrence was “fair as a lily”, with a “sweet face, large eyes, [and] light hair.” When Henry Ward Beecher announced to his congregation at Plymouth Church that she had been enslaved they reacted in horror. Rumors circulated that Beecher had found her at a soldier’s hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. In fact, Beecher met Fanny after a parishioner at Plymouth Church had adopted her.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Buying Pinky’s Freedom. ca 1860. ARC.212 Box 68 Folder 7. Brooklyn Historical Society.

On February 5, 1860, nine-year-old Sally Maria Diggs, nicknamed “Pinky,” was auctioned for $900 at Plymouth Church. She was “nearly white, having only one sixteenth of negro blood.” This was true of many of the women Beecher helped to emancipate, perhaps to appeal to his white audiences. Beecher raised money in auctions, displaying the women and girls to elicit sympathy from his congregation.

Pinky was renamed Rose Ward, after Rose Terry, a parishioner who placed her ring in the collection box for Diggs, and Beecher himself. As a free woman, Diggs attended Howard University and married James Hunt, a lawyer. In 1929, she returned to Plymouth Church for the 80th anniversary of Beecher’s first sermon.

The Gloucesters and John Brown

John Brown. ca. 1865. Civil War veterans portrait albums. V1981.5.89. Brooklyn Historical Society.

We consider you a model of true patriotism.”
(Female Brooklyn Residents to John Brown)
“The Lawless & Unchristian Acts of the late John Brown.”
(Congregation at Second Unitarian Church, Brooklyn)

On the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown led 21 men in an attempt to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia with the goal of starting a revolution to end slavery. Not a single enslaved person was liberated. By December 2, John Brown and all of his men were executed. While the raid only lasted for 36 hours, its repercussions were widespread.

[Letter, Elizabeth Gloucester to John Brown], August 1859, Ferdinand J. Dreer Papers, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP).

Though the archives might be silent on their contributions, women were at the center of the anti-slavery movement. One of Brooklyn’s most prominent activists was Elizabeth Gloucester.

In August, 1859, Elizabeth Gloucester wrote to John Brown, enclosing $10 in support of his planned raid at Harpers Ferry. The letter also mentions that Frederick Douglass had stayed with the Gloucesters in Brooklyn.

Born free in Viriginia around 1817, young Elizabeth moved to Philadelphia at the age of six. She later married James Gloucester, the son of John Gloucester, founder of black Presbyterianism. The couple moved to New York around 1840, and her husband became the minister of Siloam Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn.
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During the antebellum decades, the Gloucesters represented a militant brand of abolitionism. They both donated money to John Brown and were close friends with Frederick Douglass. In the 1860s, Elizabeth Gloucester engaged a wide range of charitable work with a number of other women, mostly erased from historical narratives. She led a fundraiser for the Colored Orphan Asylum at Montague Hall, Brooklyn and later a fundraiser for the Siloam Presbyterian Church at Grenada Hall on Myrtle where her husband had been pastor. After the Civil War, recognizing that emancipation had come without equality, she established the American Freedmen’s Friend Society. The organization accepted clothes, books, money and general goods donations to support newly emancipated people and veterans. She died one of the richest women in the United States in 1883.

James Gloucester to John Brown. John Brown Collection. Courtesy of Kansas State Historical Society.

During the antebellum decades, James and Elizabeth Gloucester represented a militant brand of abolitionism. The couple were close friends with Frederick Douglass and wrote to John Brown separately to donate money for his Harpers Ferry Raid.

James Gloucester was the son of John Gloucester, the founder of black Presbyterianism. After moving to Brooklyn he became the pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church where he continued his anti-slavery activities. The church is located in what is now the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

[Second Unitarian Church]. Edna Huntington. 1955. Edna Huntington papers and photographs. V1974.16.1346. Brooklyn Historical Society.

John Brown’s legacy proved too much for Second Unitarian parishioner G. Arthur Leavey. On January 2, 1860, Leavey wrote to church trustees from his new home in Gilmer, Texas. He intended to withdraw his membership from Second Unitarian church (located at the corner of Clinton and Congress) because he could not stand the sermons of its outspoken pastor, Samuel Longfellow, particularly when he “upheld and eulogize[d] the lawless and unchristian acts of the late John Brown.”

Timeline

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 18:12:59 +0000

↤ 1789

1863 ↦

1789

Life, History and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, the African Preacher, 1811. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 2

The horses usually rested about five hours a day, while we were at work; thus did the beasts enjoy greater privileges than we did. (John Jea, The Life, History, and Unparalleled Sufferings of John Jea, 1811)
John Jea lived and worked in Flatbush, Kings County during the colonial period and in the early days of the American republic. He was just one of the thousands of enslaved people who fueled the prosperity of Kings County’s agricultural economy.

1790

Population Schedules of the First Census of the United States, 1790. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Service.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 1

Brooklyn was the slaveholding capital of New York State.

1799

New York State Archives, New York (State). Dept. of State. Bureau of Miscellaneous Records. Enrolled acts of the State Legislature, 1778-2005. Series 13036-78, Laws of 1799, Chapter 62.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 2

It took twenty-eight years for New York State, and therefore Kings County, to end slavery.

In 1799, New York State made provisions for the gradual emancipation of enslaved people. It was the second to last northern state to do so. After July 4, 1799 children born of enslaved mothers would be free at the age of 28 if male, and 25 if female. Slavery had no end date for people born prior to this date, until 1817, when a further law stipulated that slavery would come to an absolute end on July 4, 1827.

As long as slavery existed so did the desire to be free. During gradual emancipation (1799-1827), anti-slavery activities in Kings County fell into three broad categories:
– the efforts of black people, both enslaved and indentured, to secure their own emancipation through running away, manumission and self-purchase,
– the legal mediation carried by an anti-slavery organization called the New-York Manumission Society,
– a grassroots campaign for equality initiated by Brooklyn’s free black community.

Their work was frequently met with hostility from Brooklyn’s landowners and farmers whose wealth was built on slavery.

1810

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

A small, but significant, free black community lived in the areas now known as DUMBO and Vinegar Hill. They pioneered Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement through grassroots efforts.

1815

[Advertisement for African School]. The Long Island Star. January 18, 1815. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

The creation of a private African school symbolized literacy as a form of liberation.

1818

[Bridge Street African Methodist Church]. Eugene L. Armbruster. 1923. Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks. V1974.1.1342. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

Bridge Street AWME Church, Brooklyn’s oldest black church now located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, was founded by grassroots anti-slavery activists as a political base during gradual emancipation.

1827

Long Island Niger, Brooklyn Boblashun! Hurore for Jackson, 1829. SY1829 no. 39.Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 1: Lesson 6

A week later, on July 12, 1827, black led benevolent societies took to the streets of the village of Brooklyn. They formed a “long and handsome procession,” accompanied by banners and several bands.

But emancipation brought tenuous liberties.

1833

“The Liberator Commenced January 1st 1831.” Cotton banner by unknown maker, [1840s]. Massachusetts Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 7 | Lesson 8

In the 1830s, the abolitionists, a group of humanitarian reformers, burst onto the political scene in the United States.

1834

[Abolition disclaimer]. The Long Island Star. July 14, 1834. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 2: Lesson 9

Six months after forming the American Anti-Slavery Society, the abolitionist battle against racism and slavery was firmly entrenched in the city of New York.

1838

Sylvanus Smith. ca. 1870. M1989.4.1. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 3: Lesson 11

But the Panic of 1837 brought Brooklyn’s rapid urbanization to an end. Property prices plunged and stayed low as a ten year economic depression followed.

1840

Atlantic Docks and Basin. ca. 1870. Brooklyn photograph and illustration collection. V1973.5.856. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 4: Lesson 13

Brooklyn – the “walled city.”

1850

The Fugitive slave bill its history and unconstitutionality. William Harned. 1850. Slavery pamphlet collection. PAMP AFAS-3. Brooklyn Historical Society.

Teacher’s Manual
Section 15: Lesson 15

1859

John Brown. ca. 1865. Civil War veterans portrait albums. V1981.5.89. Brooklyn Historical Society.

1862

Detail from Maps of the City of Brooklyn. William Perris. 1860-1861. Atlas Collection: Atlas (4). Brooklyn Historical Society.

Brooklyn’s Tobacco Factory Riots (1862) were an important and often overlooked precursor to the Manhattan’s Draft Riots (1863).

In August 1862, African American workers, mostly women and children, were assaulted by Irish mobs at the Tobacco Factory on Sedgwick Street in Brooklyn. Even the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, often responsible for some of the most derogatory passages about black Brooklynites during the 19th century, wrote:

We regret most profoundly that, a city, so justly celebrated for its law and order as Brooklyn, should have been so disgraced.

Fear that fugitives and newly emancipated people would move to Brooklyn and take scarce jobs exacerbated hostilities between Irish and African American workers. The Irish, impoverished and marginalized themselves, had emigrated to America to escape the horrors of Ireland’s devastating Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852. But they were greeted with discrimination and limited economic opportunities. Irish immigrants and African Americans competed for the same occupations as laborers, waiters, servants and washerwomen.

1863

Emancipation Proclamation, Leland-Boker Authorized Edition, 1864. M1986.257. Brooklyn Historical Society.

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect.

All persons held as slaves within any state […] in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

But the now iconic document did not provide freedom for all. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the approximately 500,000 enslaved people living in the Border States loyal to the Union – or those living in Union occupied confederacy states. Nevertheless, it was critical in making the destruction of slavery a stated goal of the Civil War.

1863

[The Riots in New York. 1863. Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

From Monday, July 13 to Thursday, July 16, 1863, mobs of white people, mostly working class Irishmen, tore through Manhattan’s streets. What began as a mass protest against the draft turned into a full-blown riot. Mobs attacked public buildings, businesses, the mayor’s residence, police station, the Armory and the Colored Orphan Asylum. Some of the worst atrocities were committed against black New Yorkers.

New York’s Draft Riots remain the largest and bloodiest urban insurrection in U.S. history.

For Educators

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:24:19 +0000

Introduction and

Alignment to

Standards

Introduction and Alignment to Standards

This curriculum guide accompanies the In Pursuit of Freedom project. Through a variety of primary-source based activities, students can build a deeper understanding of the history of abolitionism and anti-slavery activism in Brooklyn. These documents are in PDF format and require Acrobat Reader.

In Pursuit of Freedom outlines the development of the abolition movement in Brooklyn, a city on the rise, from the end of the American Revolution to the early days of Reconstruction. Three of Brooklyn’s leading cultural and educational institutions—Brooklyn Historical Society, Weeksville Heritage Center, and Irondale Ensemble Project—have come together to re-examine this major chapter in U.S. history.

Brooklyn has a distinct story to tell. From 1783 to 1865, Brooklyn was transformed from one of six towns in Kings County and an agricultural slaveholding capital to the third largest city in the United States. It remained a separate city from Manhattan until New York City’s consolidation in 1898. Brooklyn’s rapid growth was the backdrop for the struggle led by the city’s anti-slavery activists and abolitionists, men and women, black and white, who wanted social justice and political equality. They did so at a time when racism, violence, and inequality towards African Americans were widespread in Brooklyn and beyond. Through courage and conscience, the residents of neighborhoods we know today as Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Weeksville, and Williamsburg insisted that slavery be brought to an immediate end and demanded legal and political equality for African Americans. Brooklyn’s abolitionists and anti-slavery activists were ordinary people who came from all walks of life—educators, homeowners, businessmen and women, church leaders, journalists, and writers. They created vital local, regional, and national networks of communication and solidarity that advanced their anti-slavery ideals. In that sense, they actively shaped the city’s and the nation’s history as well.

This teacher’s manual provides you with a variety of creative and engaging strategies to help students think about the history of abolitionism and anti-slavery activism in 19th century Brooklyn. It is designed as a flexible resource, adaptable for students in grades 4-12. Filled with primary sources, this manual traces the gradual unfolding of Brooklyn’s role in the anti-slavery movement through census records, contemporary anti-slavery and local newspapers, maps, illustrations, city directories, pamphlets, account books, letters, and print propaganda

Section I:

First Wave of

Anti-Slavery Activism

(1785-1834)

Section I: First Wave of Anti-Slavery Activism
(1785-1834)

Explores Kings County, a “slaveholding capital” in the aftermath of the American Revolution. New York State’s 1799 gradual emancipation law signaled the slow death of slavery. Against this backdrop, a small but significant free black community lived in the village of Brooklyn –located within the same named town of Brooklyn. Here they chartered a path of self-reliance and self-determination as emancipation approached in 1827.

Lesson 1: Brooklyn: A Slaveholding Capital
(Middle & High School)

Lesson 2: Gradual vs. Immediate Emancipation
(High School)

Lesson 3: Life as an Enslaved Person
(All Grades)

Lesson 4: Pursuing Freedom
(Elementary School)

Lesson 5: The New-York Manumission Society
(High School)

Lesson 6: Self-Reliance in Brooklyn's Free Black
Communities (Middle School)

Section II:

Abolitionism in
Black and White

(1831-1840)

Section II: Abolitionism in Black and White
(1831-1840)

Focuses on a group of abolitionists, both black and white, who came together across various northern cities including Brooklyn with mutual purpose: to advocate for the end of slavery in the United States. They emerged as a radical minority in the 1830s, and despite threats of violence, initiated a highly visible campaign.

Lesson 7: Abolitionism in Black and White
(Elementary School)

Lesson 8: Abolitionist Sisterhood
(High School)

Lesson 9: Abolitionist Propaganda
(Middle & High School)

Section III:

Land, Politics, and

Anti-Slavery Protest

(1834-1846)

Section III: Land, Politics, and Anti-Slavery
Protest (1834-1846)

Explores the integral connection between Brooklyn’s phenomenal urban growth during the 1830s and 1840s and the struggle for African-American political equality through voting rights and property ownership (land and citizenship).

Lesson 10: Democratizing the Vote: Black Landowners and Voters
(High School)

Lesson 11: Weeksville: Safety and Independence
(Middle & High School)

Lesson 12: Literacy and Liberation: Brooklyn's African School System
(Elementary & Middle School)

Section IV:

The Economics

of Freedom

(1840-1855)

Section IV: The Economics of Freedom
(1840-1855)

Explores Brooklyn’s centrality to the business of slavery as well as the ingenuity of entrepreneurial black Brooklynites who used the city’s capitalist economy to ensure their survival in an environment of racism and discrimination.

Lesson 13: Brooklyn's Sweet Profit
(Middle & High School)

Lesson 14: Black Entrepreneurs
(Elementary & Middle School)

Section V:

The Crisis Decade

(1850-1859)

Section V: The Crisis Decade
(1850-1859)

Examines how in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), African Americans–free and fugitives faced the increased threat of being kidnapped. As a result, abolitionists fought back, outraged by the threat the law posed to civil liberties.

Lesson 15: The James Hamlet Case
(Middle & High School)

Lesson 16: Reimagining the Underground Railroad
(Middle & High School)

Section VI:

“The Half Has

Never Been Told”

Brooklyn’s Civil War

(1861-1865)

Section VI: “The Half Has Never Been Told” Brooklyn’s Civil War (1861-1865)

Examines the country’s most tumultuous years as the debate over slavery exploded into a raging national crisis. The conflict, however, was not limited to the battlefields alone. Brooklyn’s Tobacco Factory Riots acted as a precursor to the racial violence that marked New York City’s Draft Riots. As the Civil War ended, Brooklyn’s abolitionists and anti-slavery activists rebuilt their communities and the nation.

Lesson 17: Brooklyn's Tobacco Factory Riot (High School)

Lesson 18: New York City's Draft Riots
(Middle School)

Lesson 19: Black Brooklynites in the Union Army
(Elementary School)

Lesson 20: Reconstruction
(Middle & High School)

Games

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:24:33 +0000

FOR
STUDENTS

Build map skills, develop a better
understanding of how everyday people
advanced anti-slavery ideals,
and create your own anti-slavery
propaganda.

It Happened in Brooklyn

IN PURSUIT OF FREEDOM

WRITE A POEM

*Best viewed in Google Chrome & Safari

IT HAPPENED in BROOKLYN

Click on the titles on the right for additional information.
Drag the circles to their proper locations on the map.

Havemeyer, Townsend & Co. Sugar Refinery

Havemeyer,Townsend & Co. Sugar Refinery opened on the Williamsburg Waterfront in 1856. Sugar was the largest luxury commodity to emerge from Brooklyn that relied on the labor of enslaved people.

Freeman Murrows

Freeman Murrows, an inventor, secured a patent for his “adjustable brush” for whitewashing and painting varnish in 1854. He is one of Brooklyn’s many African- American business owners that had to overcome many social, political, and economic obstacles to become a successful entrepreneur.

Turn Verein Hall

During the New York City Draft riots, African-Americans sought refuge at Turn Verein Hall, protected by German immigrants who were allied with antislavery Republicans.

James Hamlet

Williamsburg resident, James Hamlet, was kidnapped and accused of being a fugitive who ran away from his enslaver Mary Brown in Baltimore. Manhattan and Brooklyn abolitionists rallied together to raise the $800 needed for Hamlet’s release.

The Freedman’s Bureau

After the Civil War, Congress established the Freedman’s Bureau.The Brooklyn Branch, which opened in 1866, assists, educates, and aids free people living in Brooklyn.

Peter Croger

Peter Croger, one of the founders and trustees of the first African-American church in Brooklyn, established a private day school for African- American children and adults his home near James Street.

Anna Maria Weems

Anna Maria Weems, a fugitive from Maryland who was disguised a man during her escape, arrived at the home of Lewis Tappan on her way to Canada, a well- known abolitionist. Her escape was funded by an international anti- slavery network across Britain and the United States.

African Methodist Church

By the end of the 19th century, Brooklyn had a number of independent black churches, such as the African Methodist Church, located on High Street. These churches were central to the lives of ordinary people not only as a place of worship, but as a space for education initiatives, political protests, temperance meetings, and assisting fugitive slaves who arrived in Brooklyn.

Plymouth Church Hall

Plymouth Church’s first pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, gained a formidable reputation as an emancipator. By the late 1850’s Beecher’s fundraising events included mock “auctions,” during which his congregation purchased the freedom of real slaves.

Weeksville

Local activists and land investors established Weeksville, one of New York’s earliest and most successful free black communities. By owning land, many Weeksville residents become full citizens with voting rights. Weeksville residents established several African American institutions, including churches, schools, and newspapers.

Frederick Douglass

During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Montague Street. He spoke to a packed house about political and social rights for people of African descent.

James Pennington

Born enslaved in Maryland, James Pennington legally emancipated himself in 1851. He later moved to Brooklyn and became central to the anti-slavery movement, gaining an international reputation for his work with the American Missionary Society and his public speaking.

The Atlantic Dock Company

The Atlantic Dock Company, established in 1840 by local developer Daniel Richards, transformed Brooklyn’s waterfront into a thriving maritime hub. Many of the warehouse and shipping industries housed here had ties to slave economy.

Lorillard and Watson Tobacco Factories

On August 4, 1862 a riot ensued at the Lorillard and Watson Tobacco Factories. A mob of Irish immigrants, discontented about job competition from free blacks, attacked the Lorillard and Watson Tobacco Factories. The riots revealed the level of racial tension and resentment between these two exploited groups.

John Baxter

John Baxter was born in Ireland in 1765 and was a long term resident of Flatlands, Kings County where he worked as a farmer. His journals reveal how important slavery was to Brooklyn society during the 19th century.

In pursuit of Freedom

Drag each of the five
paths to freedom below to
its definition on the right.

The legal process of becoming free. The most common method was through a slave owners will upon his/her death. This route often failed because the will was contested by heirs or circumvented by lawyers and lawmakers.

The establishment of an informal, self-reliant anti-slavery network, some members of the black community purchased their own freedom, with the intention of emancipation.

Represented one of the everyday acts enslaved people engaged in to resist their bondage. A risky road to freedom, slaveholders regularly placed advertisements for the capture of “runaways” in local newspapers.

From the early 1800s on, African-Americans built strong communities with the intention of combating slavery and its legacy.

A group of political reformers, known as abolitionists and anti-slavery activists, worked together to agitate for the end of slavery. These men and women, both black and white, advocated for the immediate emancipation of all enslaved people.

You did it!

Create Your own Anti-Slavery Poem

Learn more about the Anti-Slavery Alphabet by clicking on the images below.
Select a letter on the right side and write your own!
*Poem will be saved as an image on a new window. Pop-ups must be enabled.

.easingslider-2098 .easingslider-preload { display: none; } .easingslider-2098 .easingslider-slide { display: none; } .easingslider-2098 .easingslider-slide-1 { display: block !important; }

Walking Tours

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:26:45 +0000

WALKING
TOURS

In Pursuit of Freedom explores the everyday heroes of Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement. The public history project is a partnership of Brooklyn Historical Society, Weeksville Heritage Center, and Irondale Ensemble Project.

Download the Walking Tour Guide

DUMBO

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

WEEKSVILLE

WILLIAMSBURG

DUMBO

Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement began in the neighborhoods we now call DUMBO and Vinegar Hill. At the end of the American Revolution, this was the town of Brooklyn. It was one of six agricultural towns in Kings County until it was incorporated as the city of Brooklyn in 1834.

↗ Open map in new window

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

In the early 19th century, this area was the village of Brooklyn, located within the town of the same name. It was the heart of the burgeoning city. Brooklyn’s anti-slavery pioneers — free African Americans — lived here from 1810 onwards. They built institutions to combat racism on behalf of all people of color, especially when the end of slavery in New York State in 1827 came without equality.

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BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

In the 19th century, Brooklyn urbanized rapidly. What began as the small village of Brooklyn, centered around the Fulton Ferry, transformed into a bustling city. Brooklyn Heights — the first commuter suburb in the United States — signaled this change. Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont, Brooklyn’s first modern land developer, sold farmland previously owned by slave holders to individual investors. Soon, Brooklyn contained paved streets, streetlights, schools, churches, homes of various styles, and a variety of businesses.

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WEEKSVILLE

The financial panic of 1837 halted Brooklyn’s rapid urban transformation. One year later, free black New Yorkers took advantage of low property prices to intentionally establish the community of Weeksville as a self-sufficient haven for African Americans. Located in Brooklyn’s ninth ward, Weeksville was the most distant and secluded anti-slavery base from the city’s downtown area, thus it offered safety, refuge, and freedom to its residents.

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WILLIAMSBURG

In recent years, Williamsburg has experienced rapid gentrification and a changing waterfront that mix remnants of its industrial past with modern luxury condos. But in 1838, Williamsburg was merely a village or small independent town within Bushwick (one of six towns in Kings County). It quickly transformed from a village to a town to a city before it was finally absorbed by Brooklyn in 1855. During this growth, it was home to a number of German immigrants and the second largest African American community in Kings County.

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DUMBO

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

WEEKSVILLE

WILLIAMSBURG

Abolitionist Biographies

Prithi — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 20:26:24 +0000

BEECHER, Henry Ward

Henry Ward Beecher

June 24, 1813, Lichfield, CT – March 8, 1887, Brooklyn, NY
Pastor, Newspaper Editor, Brooklyn Heights Resident.

Henry Ward Beecher was the son of Reverend Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A graduate of Amherst College and Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio, Beecher became the inaugural pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights. The church was founded in 1847 by a group of Brooklyn Heights residents who held anti-slavery views.

By the 1850s, Beecher had gained a national reputation for his commitment to abolitionism, theatrical preaching style, and ability to fundraise for anti-slavery causes. He assisted in the emancipation of a number of young women and his congregation raised money for the purchase of rifles, called “Beecher’s Bibles,” intended to arm anti-slavery protestors in Kansas. In the lead-up the Civil War, Beecher edited the anti-slavery newspaper the Independent. At the end of the War, he was invited to speak at the raising of the flag at Fort Sumter based on his national reputation. His later life was overshadowed by the Beecher-Tilton scandal in which he was accused of infidelity.

COUSINS, Robert H

Robert H. Cousins

Anti-Slavery Activist, homeowner, businessman, downtown Brooklyn resident.

Robert Cousins was born in Virginia around 1800 and moved to Brooklyn in 1840. There, he joined the AME Church and the Brooklyn African Tompkins Society, a mutual aid organization committed to the “improvement of the members in morals and literature, by forming a library and other appropriate means.”

By 1850, Cousins, his wife Sarah, and their children Emaly, Charles, and Joseph were living at 201 Jay Street. Cousins owned $1500 worth of property making him eligible to vote.
Cousins fundraised for various anti-slavery causes. When Williamsburg resident James Hamlet was kidnapped after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Cousins stood on platform with other black abolitionists to raise money for his release. He also gave money to Pomona Brice, a Brooklyn resident, so that she could emancipate her family. In 1853, he was a delegate at the Rochester anti-slavery convention along with Joseph Holly, Charles B. Ray, James Pennington, William J. Wilson, Junius Morel, Lewis H. Nelson, James McCune Smith, and Frederick Douglass. The following year, Cousins led a meeting at City Hall in Albany to protest voting discrimination.

In 1854, when Reverend James Morris Williams led his congregation from Brooklyn’s AME Church on High Street to a new location on Bridge Street, Cousins marched in the procession. Today, Bridge Street AWME Church is the oldest black church in Brooklyn and is located in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

COX, Samuel H

Samuel H(anson) Cox

August 25, 1793 – October 2, 1880
Presbyterian Pastor, Brooklyn resident.

Samuel Cox was born in Rahway, NJ and raised as a Quaker. He converted to the Presbyterianism at the age of twenty, studied theology in Newark and Philadelphia, and was ordained on July 1, 1817.

After his home and church were attacked during the anti-abolition riots in Manhattan in 1834, Cox left the city. In 1837, Cox became a key player in the split of the Presbyterian Church over slavery. Cox then moved to Brooklyn where he became pastor of First Presbyterian Church.

In 1854, Cox moved to Oswego, New York, and later retired and died in Bronxville.

CROGER, Peter

Peter Croger

?, New York – 1848, ?
Presbyterian Pastor, Brooklyn resident.

Peter Croger birthed Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement. He was born in New York and moved to Brooklyn sometime before 1810. With his brother Benjamin, he established the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society in 1810, a mutual aid society for African Americans. In 1815, he opened a school at his home on James Street to educate people of African descent during gradual emancipation. He was a church trustee and founder of Brooklyn’s AME Church. Peter Croger and his family later moved to Pearl Street, where his neighbors included his brother Benjamin Croger and Weeksville land investor Sylvanus Smith. Peter Croger died in 1848.

CROGER, Benjamin

Benjamin Croger

1789, New York – 1853, Brooklyn, NY
Temperance Advocate, Whitewasher, Laborer, Brooklyn Village resident.

Benjamin Croger was born in New York in 1789 and moved to Brooklyn sometime before 1810. He was a pioneer and birthed Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement. He and his brother Peter helped to found the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society, a mutual aid society and Brooklyn’s AME Church. They led Brooklyn’s first wave of anti-slavery activism during gradual emancipation. Benjamin Croger was also a temperance advocate and led the Brooklyn Temperance Association. Like many Brooklynites, the Crogers signed anti-slavery petitions to Congress.

FREEMAN, Amos N

Amos N(oe) Freeman

1809, Rahway, NJ – 1893, Brooklyn, NY
Pastor, Underground Railroad Agent, and president of the African Civilization Society, Downtown Brooklyn resident.

William J. Wilson described Amos N. Freeman as “efficient, clever and pious.” Freeman attended the Oneida Institute with New York abolitionist Alexander Crummell and began his career as pastor of Abyssinian Congregational Church in Portland, Maine.

In 1852, Freeman moved to Brooklyn, where he succeeded James N. Gloucester as pastor at Siloam Presbyterian Church. His tenure there lasted more than thirty years. established a flourishing Sabbath school at the church. In the 1860s, he led the African Civilization Society, in Weeksville, working to shift the organization’s focus from emigration to education. Amos Freeman was a friend and colleague to Lewis Tappan and James Pennington and delivered the eulogy at Tappan’s funeral.

Amos Freeman married Christiana Taylor Williams on December 24, 1839 in Newark, NJ. She was born on June 4, 1812 in Manhattan to Caribbean parents. Christiana worked closely with other women associated with Siloam Presbyterian – Elizabeth Gloucester and Mary Wilson –to raise funds for the church and the Colored Orphan Asylum. Christiana died on December 3, 1909.

GLOUCESTER, James N
&
Elizabeth

James N(ewton) Gloucester

Philadelphia – ?
Clergyman, Abolitionist, Downtown Brooklyn resident.

Elizabeth Gloucester

ca. 1817, Virginia – August 9, 1883, Brooklyn, NY
Businesswoman, Abolitionist, Downtown Brooklyn resident.

James Gloucester was the son of John Gloucester, the founder of the first Black Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. In 1847, James became the founding pastor of Siloam Presbyterian Church, in Brooklyn. He also served as principal of the African School in Carsville and supported Lewis Tappan’s American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

James married Elizabeth Gloucester in 1838 and moved to Brooklyn in the late 1840s. The couple were close friends and colleagues with Frederick Douglass and John Brown, and offered financial support for Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. After Elizabeth died in 1883, James became a physician and moved to Long Island.

Elizabeth Gloucester was born in Virginia and moved to Philadelphia at age 6. She married Presbyterian minister James Gloucester and the couple moved to Brooklyn. Elizabeth was heavily involved in fundraising for Siloam Presbyterian Church, and the Colored Orphan Asylum in New York. During the Civil War and in its aftermath, she led fundraising efforts for freedmen and Union soldiers through the Ladies National Union Fair and the American Freedmen’s Friend Society.

Elizabeth was an astute businesswoman and owned several rental properties in Brooklyn as well as a boarding house on Remsen Street. When she died, on August 8, 1883, many prominent figures in Brooklyn and Manhattan, both black and white, attended her funeral. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle stated that she was one of the richest women in the country, worth around $2.25 million in today’s money.

HARNED, William

William Harned

Publisher, Brooklyn resident.

William Harned spent his early years in Philadelphia’s Quaker community, where he was active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. Around 1840, he moved to New York to work for the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. By 1847, Harned was a Brooklyn resident. He lived on Smith Street, then at 130 Bridge Street, and finally, Duffield Street.

In 1850, Harned published a pamphlet protesting the Fugitive Slave Law and the unjust arrest of New Yorker James Hamlet. He also served as treasurer for the New York State Vigilance Committee and assistant treasurer for the American Missionary Association. He worked closely with abolitionists Lewis Tappan and James Pennington.

HODGES, William

William Hodges

1803? Princess Anne County, VA – ?
Pastor, entrepreneur, grocer, educator, land agent, Williamsburg resident.

William Hodges was born free in Virginia in a family of twelve children. He was the “pride of the family” and “mother’s son” according to his brother Willis, William was forced to leave Virginia after he was accused of forging free papers on behalf of others. He fled to Canada and later relocated to Manhattan, where his family had moved. In 1839, he bought several lots of land in the village of Williamsburg, and built a brick house on South 8th Street and Bedford.

William was an agent for the Colored American newspaper, founder and educator at Williamsburg’s African School, protested voting discrimination, and led the first recorded West India Emancipation Celebration in Williamsburg. After the Civil War, he returned to Virginia and became heavily involved in politics.

William was married to Mary Hodges, an Englishwoman listed in the census as white. When she died Brooklynite William E. Whiting, a well-known abolitionist in the American Anti-Slavery Society delivered her eulogy.

HODGES, Willis

Willis Hodges

Feb. 12 1815, Princess Anne County, VA – Feb. 24, 1890, VA
Entrepreneur, Grocer, Williamsburg residents.

Willis Hodges followed his brother William to New York and then Williamsburg. Dissatisfied with the occupations available to African American men in antebellum New York, the two brothers opened their own temperance grocery store at William’s home on South 8th Street. Willis then bought a lot on South 7th Street, where he built his own home.

He co-founded the newspaper the Ram’s Horn with Manhattanite Thomas Van Rensellaer. He was introduced to John Brown through the newspaper and a decade-long friendship ensued. Together, the Hodges brothers established an African school in Williamsburg (later Colored School #3) and were early supporters of Lincoln’s Republican Party. During Reconstruction, Willis was active in Virginia politics and educational initiatives.

JOCELYN, Simeon

Simeon Jocelyn

1799, New Haven, CT – 1879
Pastor, engraver, Williamsburg resident.

Simeon Jocelyn led an African American congregational church in New Haven, CT before moving to Brooklyn. By the mid-1840s, he settled in Williamsburg, where he served as pastor of First Congregational Church. He attended the first annual black convention in Philadelphia in 1831, along with his white abolitionist colleagues, Arthur Tappan and William Lloyd Garrison. In 1846, he founded the American Missionary Association (AMA), along with Lewis Tappan and James Pennington. The AMA was created in response to the sensational Amistad trial. When Africans attempted to resist their enslavement by attempting to overthrow the Spanish crew on board the schooner Amistad, they crashed into Long Island. With abolitionist support, the Africans eventually returned to Sierra Leone. In the 1850 census, Jocelyn was listed as an engraver, living with his wife Harriet and six children. His brother Nathaniel was also an engraver and created portraits of the Amistad freedom fighters including Joseph Cinque.

Jocelyn’s funeral service was held at the New New-England Congregational Church on South 9th Street, Williamsburg. African American men and women attended his funeral. New York abolitionist Charles Ray called Jocelyn “one of the bravest advocates of the anti-slavery cause.”

MOREL, Junius

Junius Morel

1801/ 1806 – 1874
Journalist, Lecturer, Political Activist, Weeksville resident.

North Carolina-born Junius Morel moved to Brooklyn from Philadelphia where became a journalist, lecturer, political activist, and prominent citizen of Weeksville. For more than 30 years, he served as principal of the black school there, called Colored School No. 2.

A prolific writer, Morel reported for The North Star, The Christian Recorder and other local and national abolitionist journals. He was a key Brooklyn member of the Committee of Thirteen, a New York organization dedicated to aiding freedom seekers and thwarting the colonization movement. Morel’s wife, Caroline Richards, was an abolitionist and activist in the local Underground Railroad. After Caroline died in 1838, Morel married a woman named Sarah (born in 1835). Sarah Morel worked with Elizabeth Gloucester and Mary Wilson to raise funds for various organizations that supported African Americans living in New York.

PENNINGTON, James WC

James W(illiam) C(harles) Pennington

1807, Maryland – 1870, Jacksonville, FL
Pastor, Educator, Blacksmith. Brooklyn Heights later South Brooklyn resident.

James W. C. Pennington was born James Pembroke, enslaved in Maryland in 1807. By 1829, he had changed his name and settled in Brooklyn. Pennington worked at the home of Adrian Van Sinderen, president of the Brooklyn Colonization Society, while he studied at the Sabbath school in Newtown, Long Island. His education inspired a lifelong commitment to political activism and a religious awakening that led to a life in the church. He recorded these insights in his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith.

Pennington attended several of the National Black Conventions in the early 1830s and spoke at the 1831 anti-colonization protest in Brooklyn. He became central to the anti-slavery movement, gaining an international reputation for his work with the American Missionary Association and his public speaking engagements.

Pennington attended classes at Yale Divinity School but was denied admission due to discrimination. In 1848, he returned to New York and became pastor of Shiloh Presbyterian Church, Manhattan. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 1849. As a civil rights activist in Brooklyn he tackled racial discrimination on the city’s public transportation.

During the Civil War he advocated for the inclusion of African American soldiers in the Union Army and was an outspoken opponent of emigration. He died in Jacksonville, FL while doing missionary work.

SMITH, Sylvanus

Sylvanus Smith

Described as a “hog driver” from Brooklyn according to the City Directory, Sylvanus Smith was one of the original land investors in Weeksville. He became a trustee for Colored School No. 1 in what is now Downtown Brooklyn and for the Citizens’ Union Cemetery, in Weeksville.

His daughter Susan Smith McKinney Steward became the first female African-American doctor in New York. Another daughter, Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet (b. 31 Aug, 1831 – d. 17 Sep. 1911) worked as an educator and women’s suffrage activist.

STEWART, Maria W

Maria W. Stewart

1803, Hartford, CT – Dec 17, 1879, Washington, D.C
Educator, public speaker, Williamsburg resident.

Maria Stewart was a pioneering activist in Boston, a colleague of David Walker and William Lloyd Garrison, and contributor to the Liberator. She was the first American woman to lecture in public on political themes and publish her work (Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart, 1835). Between 1832 and 1833, Stewart delivered at least four public lectures in Boston. She gave her first speech at the Boston Afric-Female Intelligence Society. The recurrent themes in her speeches were community organization, self-determination, and equal rights. But she left New England disillusioned and arrived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where she taught at the African School. There is very little written evidence of her life in Williamsburg other than a notice in the Williamsburg Gazette stating that she was the lead educator at one of the school exhibitions. She died in 1879 in Washington, D.C. where she had relocated after the Civil War.

TAPPAN, Lewis
& Arthur

Lewis Tappan

May 23, 1788, Northampton, MA – June 21, 1873, Brooklyn, NY

Arthur Tappan

May 22, 1786, Northampton, MA – July 23, 1865, Brooklyn, NY

Evangelical Reformers, Businessmen. Brooklyn Heights residents.

The Tappan Brothers were New England reformers spurred to action by an evangelical impulse. Like a number of merchants, they worked in Manhattan but lived in Brooklyn Heights. They originally favored colonization, and Arthur paid for a man named Abdul Rahman to travel to Liberia. But they modified their views after Rahman died and they saw waves of anti-colonization protests among African Americans. They began to call for an immediate end to slavery.

The brothers were executive officers of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AA-SS) and directed numerous anti-slavery petition drives. They financed the abolitionist newspaper the Emancipator and Oberlin College. In 1840, they broke with Garrison and the AA-SS over the issue of women serving on its Executive Committee and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

Lewis founded Chatham Street Chapel in Manhattan, which had a mixed congregation. The church and his home in Manhattan were attacked during the Anti-Abolition Riots in 1834. Years later, Lewis moved to Brooklyn Heights and remained a resident there until his death. With fellow Brooklyn abolitionists Simeon Jocelyn James Pennington, he assisted the Amistad captives during their sensational trial. Lewis prayed at Siloam Presbyterian Church under Amos Freeman and then Plymouth Church under Henry Ward Beecher.

His wife and children were also involved in the anti-slavery movement. His daughter Julianna served as an officer in the Ladies New York Anti-Slavery Society and attended the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. His second wife Sarah was integral in helping fugitive Ann Maria Weems escape to Canada. Lewis Tappan died in Brooklyn Heights in 1873.

TRUESDELL, Harriet
& Thomas

Harriet Truesdell

July 10, 1786 – June 29, 1862

Thomas Truesdell

July 10, 1789 – March 10, 1874

The Truesdells were prominent abolitionists in New England before moving to Brooklyn, where they lived on Duffield St. in what is now Downtown Brooklyn (1851-1863). Harriet Truesdell served on the organizing committee of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women that convened in Philadelphia in 1838. She was also the treasurer of the Providence Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. Thomas Truesdell was a founding member of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society and a colleague of Lewis Tappan.

The Truesdells were friends with William Lloyd Garrison. The couple attended the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York in 1840 when the abolitionists split. Garrison stayed with the couple in Brooklyn after the meeting ended and before he left for the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

WILSON, William J
& Mary

William J(oseph) Wilson

1818, New Jersey – ?
Educator, Journalist, Community Organizer, Fort Greene Resident.

Mary Wilson

1822, New York – ?
Fundraiser, Businesswoman, Fort Greene resident.

William J. Wilson was born in New Jersey but dedicated his life’s work to the city of Brooklyn. He was the longest serving educator at the African School in Downtown Brooklyn (later Colored School #1), a strong advocate of investing in the city, and an anti-slavery activist. As a national correspondent for the Frederick Douglass’ Paper, writing under the pseudonym “Ethiop,” he examined life, culture, race, and politics in Brooklyn and reported from the black state and national conventions that met annually during the antebellum decades. His tone and style were typified by irreverence, humor and satire. He was a member of the Committee of Thirteen, a vigilance committee also opposed to emigration. The organization formed some time after 1850 and attracted other Brooklynites Junius C. Morel, John N. Still, and a number of other anti-slavery activists from New York. Towards the end of his life, Wilson died in poverty and relative obscurity.

Mary (née Marshall) married William on November 2, 1837 in New York. She owned her own crockery and clothing store on Atlantic and worked closely with Elizabeth Gloucester fundraising for the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan. The Wilsons were active at Siloam Presbyterian Church where they were church elders. In 1863, William, Mary and their daughter Ann moved to Washington, D.C. where they taught in various freedmen schools.

US Department of Education Resources

Prithi — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 21:01:38 +0000

Projects and Resources funded by U.S. Department
of Education Underground Railroad Educational
and Cultural Program (URR)

In Pursuit of Freedom explores the history of abolition and the antislavery movement in Brooklyn, New York. Created by partners at the Brooklyn Historical Society, Irondale Ensemble Project and Weeksville Heritage Center, this project, the first of its kind, comprises original scholarly research; a series of exhibitions at the three partner sites, a curriculum for teachers and their students, grades 4-12; an original theater piece that premiered at the Irondale Theater in May of 2012; a new website; a public memorial in downtown Brooklyn to honor the anti-slavery movement in Brooklyn; walking tours of Brooklyn’s abolitionists’ and URR sites; and a series of public programs scheduled for the next five years.

Legacy of Slavery in Maryland preserves and promotes experiences that have shaped the lives of Maryland’s African American population. From the day that Mathias de Sousa and Francisco landed in St. Mary’s County aboard the Ark and the Dove in 1634, black Marylanders have made significant contributions to both the state and nation in the political, economic, agricultural, legal, and domestic arenas. Despite often seemingly insurmountable odds, Marylanders of color have adapted, evolved, and prevailed. The Legacy of Slavery Study shares its findings through public presentations to audiences both national and local, post-graduate and elementary, religious and secular, and professional and amateur by making numerous source documents, exhibits and interactive studies accessible and easily searchable on its website, mdslavery.net. Scholars, teachers, and members of the public can search for historic figures, for their ancestors, and they can uncover the many factors that made Maryland a politically divided slave state, frequently impelling Marylanders of color to escape to freedom.

From Slavery to Freedom at the Senator John Heinz History Center features a new 3,200 square foot long-term exhibition, an anthology The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience (Heinz History Center, 2013), groundbreaking research displayed in the exhibit and online microsite, scholarly lectures at the museum or through our partnership with the Center for African American Urban Studies and the Economy (CAUSE) at Carnegie Mellon University, an online curriculum guide for teachers and educators, a film series at and in collaboration with Carnegie Library Homewood Branch, and an urban garden project in partnership with Pittsburgh Park Conservancy at Frick Environmental Center that features foods, plants, and flora related to African American foodways and the Underground Railroad. For more information please see: heinzhistorycenter.org

The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s project, Legacies of the Underground Railroad, will involve a series of initiatives, including: artifact acquisition and research that will be published on the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Educational Portal; a series of on-site and traveling exhibitions; new college curriculum for undergraduate use that will be placed on the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Educational Portal; artifact digitization that will be made available to researchers and staff members on-site; and, the restoration and preservation of an authentic nineteenth century slave pen that is housed at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The Cooperative Underground Railroad Education Partnership, at the Charles H. Wright Museum, provides educational resources on the Underground Railroad and Anti-Slavery History. Resources include the Underground Railroad – website, the And Still We Rise exhibition on-site with displays on slavery and anti-slavery history, including touch screens and the Children Discovery Room (on site), designed for school-aged children. In addition, through collaboration with Eastern Michigan University, the Partnership provides a website to help K-12 teachers present accurate history of the Underground Railroad and its history in Michigan. thewright.org

DUMBO Walking Tour

Prithi — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 11:00:00 +0000

Sat, Apr 5, 11am
$25/$15 for BHS Members

Today’s DUMBO of galleries and gourmet coffee was once a bustling harbor and an important stop for goods and people, including enslaved Africans. Later the streets were home to those who envisioned an equal and free society. Suzanne Spellen, aka Brownstoner blogger “Montrose Morris,” guides us through this fascinating history.

In Pursuit of Freedom » Search Results » VIPREG2024 how to use 1xbet free bet promo code Qatar

Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

Anti-Colonization Debate

Abolitionism in Black and White

Print Propaganda

Practical Abolitionism

Amistad

Land, Voting, Citizenship: Weeksville

Land, Voting, Citizenship: Williamsburg

A Gradual Emancipation (1783 – 1827)

Slaveholding Capital

Gradual Emancipation

Early Free Black Community

Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

Fugitive Slave Law

Queen Sugar

Black Businesses

Freedom Seekers

Henry Ward Beecher

The Gloucesters and John Brown

Timeline

For Educators

Introduction and Alignment to Standards

Section I: First Wave of Anti-Slavery Activism (1785-1834)

Section II: Abolitionism inBlack and White (1831-1840)

Section III: Land, Politics, and Anti-Slavery Protest (1834-1846)

Section IV: The Economics of Freedom (1840-1855)

Section V: The Crisis Decade (1850-1859)

Section VI: “The Half Has Never Been Told” Brooklyn’s Civil War (1861-1865)

Games

IT HAPPENED in BROOKLYN

In pursuit of Freedom

You did it!

Create Your own Anti-Slavery Poem

Walking Tours

Abolitionist Biographies

BEECHER, Henry Ward

COUSINS, Robert H

COX, Samuel H

CROGER, Peter

CROGER, Benjamin

FREEMAN, Amos N

GLOUCESTER, James N & Elizabeth

HARNED, William

HODGES, William

HODGES, Willis

JOCELYN, Simeon

MOREL, Junius

PENNINGTON, James WC

SMITH, Sylvanus

STEWART, Maria W

TAPPAN, Lewis & Arthur

TRUESDELL, Harriet & Thomas

WILSON, William J & Mary

US Department of Education Resources

DUMBO Walking Tour

Abolitionism in
Black and White

Land, Voting,
Citizenship: Weeksville

Land, Voting,
Citizenship: Williamsburg

Introduction and

Alignment to

Standards

Section I:

First Wave of

Anti-Slavery Activism

(1785-1834)

Section II:

Abolitionism in
Black and White

(1831-1840)

Section III:

Land, Politics, and

Anti-Slavery Protest

(1834-1846)

Section IV:

The Economics

of Freedom

(1840-1855)

Section V:

The Crisis Decade

(1850-1859)

Section VI:

“The Half Has

Never Been Told”

Brooklyn’s Civil War

(1861-1865)

GLOUCESTER, James N
&
Elizabeth

TAPPAN, Lewis
& Arthur

TRUESDELL, Harriet
& Thomas

WILSON, William J
& Mary