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Digs unearth slave plantations in North
Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 03/02/03 | Mike Toner

Posted on 03/02/2003 4:03:49 PM PST by Pokey78

Slaveholding plantations, usually thought of as uniquely Southern institutions, were deeply rooted in the fabric of "free" states of the North as well, new archaeological studies are showing.

The hidden history of Northern plantations and their slaves is emerging -- one shovelful of soil at a time -- from excavations in and around historic manor houses in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. From bits of china, kitchen utensils, tools, buttons and personal items, archaeologists are getting glimpses of a chapter of America's past that written histories have either ignored or forgotten.

Most Northern states abolished slavery before the Civil War. But recent excavations show that during the late 1700s and early 1800s, many of what later came to be called manors and landed estates were full-fledged plantations that held African-American slaves under conditions similar to those in the South.

"Historians are stunned by some of the evidence," said Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist at the University of Maryland.

"The popular notion is that slavery in the North consisted of two or three household servants, but there is growing evidence that there were slaveholding plantations," she said. "It's hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history."

Near Salem, Mass., archaeologists have excavated the ruins of a 13,000-acre plantation that produced grain, horses, barrel staves and dried meat. The owner, Samuel Browne, traded those goods for molasses and rum from the Caribbean. The graveyard shows at least 100 African-Americans were enslaved there from 1718 to 1780.

At Shelter Island on New York's Long Island, archaeologists have spent several years peeling open the grounds of present-day Sylvester Manor to reveal the traces of an 8,000-acre plantation that provisioned two sugar plantations in Barbados and made heavy use of African slave labor. During the late 1600s, at least 20 slaves there served as carpenters, blacksmiths, domestics and field hands.

"America was a slaveholding country -- North and South," said LaRoche. "Over the years, that reality has been lost, stolen or just strayed from the history books."

Fleshing out history

The United States banned the importation of new slaves in 1808, but that did not free the millions already in the country, or their descendants. Some states did take action, enacting bans one by one, so that by 1863 the practice was illegal in most of the North.

Because the written record of slavery from the slaves' point of view is so meager, archaeology -- with its emphasis on the physical landscape and material aspects of culture -- is emerging as an important means of filling in omissions and distortions.

"Artifacts can tell us how people washed their clothes, fed themselves, churned their butter and hitched their horses," said Orloff Miller of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. "That's why archaeology can tell what it was like to live as a slave."

Some of the new evidence of Northern slaveholding plantations comes from excavations on the well-manicured grounds of historic estate homes, like the elegant Van Cortlandt Manor on the banks of New York's Croton River, where slaves worked in the fields and orchards.

Other discoveries are turning up in more humble, more endangered locations. In Morris County, N.J., plans for a park-and-ride transit station for New York commuters recently prompted the state to order archaeological investigations of the site, thought to have been home to the 18th century Beverwyck estate.

Before archaeologists finished, they had found the remains of more than 20 plantation buildings, including a dairy, blacksmith shop, distillery and quarters for at least 20 slaves that were part of a 2,000-acre provisioning operation for the owners' properties in the Caribbean.

Beneath the floor of the slave quarters, archaeologists found a set of iron shackles; small caches of pins, needles and beads; and ritualistic arrangements of cooking utensils that reflect the occupants' African origins.

"For a time, Beverwyck was one of the region's finest plantations, but it could only have reached that high state of cultivation through the forced labor of enslaved workers," said archaeologist Wade Catts of John Milner Associates, a New Jersey archaeology firm engaged in the project.

"For most of history, Beverwyck has been known primarily as one of the places that George Washington slept," he said. "Now the tangible evidence we've uncovered allows us to see it in a whole new light."

Catts said there was little doubt that other plantations in New Jersey also had significant slave populations.

As a science, archaeology is more than a century old. But only in the last few decades have researchers devoted much attention to the African-American component of sites, both in the North and the South.

"For a long time, archaeologists who studied plantations were mostly interested in the people who lived in the big house," said Syracuse University anthropologist Theresa Singleton, author of "The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life." "That didn't tell us much more about slaves than we learned from the histories by the people who enslaved them. Archaeology allows us to see history through a different lens."

Digging up a past that many would rather forget has had interesting results on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

'Amnesia' recovery

Slave quarters have been reconstructed at Bulloch Hall, the Greek Revival mansion just off the town square in Roswell. Until archaeological excavations in the late 1990s helped identify the location of the structure, the only hint of the slaves who helped build the mansion in 1839 had been a simple sign pointing in the general direction of "the quarters."

In rural Mason County, Ky., archaeologists recently identified an old wooden barn as the country's only extant slave pen, one of the prisonlike compounds where slaves were kept overnight during transport from the East to the cotton fields of Mississippi and Louisiana in the mid-1800s.

The busloads of curiosity seekers who descended on the farm for a closer look prompted an ultimatum from the owner. Archaeologists could either remove the structure or he would tear it down. The building, disassembled one timber at a time, will soon be reconstructed at Cincinnati's Underground Railroad center.

In Philadelphia, when the new $9 million Liberty Bell Center opens this year, the grounds of the most famous icon of American independence -- and later the symbol of the abolitionist movement -- will now acknowledge an aspect of African-American history that almost got left out.

During excavations or the new center, archaeologists recovered thousands of artifacts from the red brick mansion where Washington stayed in Philadelphia. But it took public protests for the National Park Service to decide that the story of Washington's slaves deserved space in the pavilion, too.

"Most Philadelphians would be shocked to know that Washington had slaves with him in the city," said University of California, Los Angeles, history professor Gary Nash, who helped spur the Park Service decision.

The slave quarters, and any artifacts they hold, lie just outside the entrance to the new center. They were undisturbed by construction, and the Park Service plans to leave them in place, to be studied and interpreted at some future date.

"Written history is always subject to a kind of cultural amnesia. Some of it is deliberately forgotten and some of it is inadvertently lost," said Nash. "That's why artifacts and their context are so important. They can speak to us for the people who left no written record."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: history; northernplantations
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To: mhking
Of course, there were never slaves north of the Mason-Dixon line.< /sarcasm> The slave Tituba, that helped set off the Salem witchcraft trials in Massachusetts is one well known historical example. There were slaves in New York, before the Revolutionary War, as I could prove through family records. Our Northern brethren were hardly innocent.
21 posted on 03/02/2003 5:10:14 PM PST by xJones
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To: Pokey78
But....do they care at all about the CURRENT slave trade in Sudan? Sheesh.
22 posted on 03/02/2003 5:16:21 PM PST by goodnesswins (Thank the Military for your freedom and security....and thank a Rich person for jobs.)
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To: Restorer
Most were Irish Catholics that rejoised at the FReedom in America and the liberation from the English yoke. They went Protestant because you had to worshop somewhere.
23 posted on 03/02/2003 5:17:00 PM PST by Little Bill (No Rats, A.N.S.W.E.R (WWP) is a commie front!!!!)
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To: Pokey78
"Historians are stunned by some of the evidence," said Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist at the University of Maryland.

"The popular notion is that slavery in the North consisted of two or three household servants, but there is growing evidence that there were slaveholding plantations," she said. "It's hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history."

Nothing new here to Southerners and true historians.

24 posted on 03/02/2003 5:28:19 PM PST by varina davis
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To: lawdude
""What did Bush know, and when did he know it?""

"What did Katie know, and when did she know it?"

ahh yes.. Mata Katie

the grinning girl from the gulags
25 posted on 03/02/2003 6:10:16 PM PST by ALS
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To: PoisedWoman
I don't find these allegations of "slavery" convincing. Housing a group of workers in buildings is hardly evidence. A large ranch has bunkhouses for cowboys, after all, and the guys get paid as well as receiving part of their compensation in form of room and board.

I totally agree -- this is really rather silly, and all that;s happening here is a bunch of "archeologists" are trying to justify further funding.

Here's my proof -- probate records were extremely accurate in those days, and a probate record will typically list every piece of property (furniture, clothing, utensils) on a room-by-room basis. The slaves will be listed as part of that property.

I've seen the records, and they are publically accessible.

So why would someone try to 'figure out' history from little broken chards in the ground, when a FULL WRITTEN RECORD already EXISTS?

It's because various statutes require archeological digs/ surveys be done on certain sites as part of the price of getting building permits, etc. So an archeology industry of this sort grew to suck up the available $$, and stories like this are created to justify the ongoing existence of such requirements.

26 posted on 03/02/2003 6:10:46 PM PST by WL-law
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To: Little Bill
Regardless of what you may believe, the great majority of Irish who came to America prior to the 1790s and especially the 1820s were Irish Protestants fleeing social and economic restrictions placed on them by the Anglo-Irish dominant in the island. Some were descended from the "settlements" in Ulster and elsewhere of Scots and English. Some were Old Irish who became Protestant for one reason or another.
27 posted on 03/02/2003 6:14:26 PM PST by Restorer (TANSTAAFL)
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To: xJones
There were slaves in New York

Way back in the colonial days, there was an outbreak of fires in NYC, leading to hysteria on the part of whites. Slaves at the time made up about 40% of the city's population, and some were tortured into confessing to a French/Catholic plot to burn the city and kill all the whites.

If I remember correctly, a couple dozen blacks were burned at the stake, one of the few times a court in America has legally enforced such a punishment.

28 posted on 03/02/2003 6:18:33 PM PST by Restorer (TANSTAAFL)
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To: xJones
Found a couple of sites on the NYC uprisings. I guess there were two.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p285.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p286.html
29 posted on 03/02/2003 6:21:40 PM PST by Restorer (TANSTAAFL)
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To: Pokey78
I wonder ... just how would you know from a skeleton whether it was a slave or not? Just because it was a black person doesn't necessarily mean the person was a slave. Also it's very possible that they wanted to live and work on a plantation, estate etc. for the the same reasons today that others work for wealthy people. I guess it depends on your outlook when you find the skeletion.
30 posted on 03/02/2003 6:25:06 PM PST by nmh
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To: Pokey78
This article has a certain stench about it... . Why was it that when the slaves got to the north they were "free" ? Why did sounthern blacks escape and head north if not for freedom?
31 posted on 03/02/2003 6:29:58 PM PST by nmh
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To: afz400
...to fend for themselves.

A fair definition of freedom, that. It's all I want, if the government would only let me.

32 posted on 03/02/2003 6:38:22 PM PST by Oberon (I wish T. Jefferson were here.)
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To: nmh
Why was it that when the slaves got to the north they were "free" ? Why did sounthern blacks escape and head north if not for freedom?

That wasn't always the case. It only became so during the intermediate time when slavery was illegal in the northern states, but still legal in the south.

And let us not forget that a great many slaves were transported on ships based out of Boston harbor. Many a manacled African stood on the block there.

33 posted on 03/02/2003 6:48:33 PM PST by Oberon (This tagline intentionally left blank.)
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To: Restorer
"It's hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history."

You go against prevailing knowledge. All modern Americans know about slavery was what we we learned from Alex Haley and his fictional "Roots". The whole subject of slavery in America has been taken over by looters like Jesse Jackson. If people really cared about slavery, they would be jumping up and down screaming about slavery in Sudan and other third world countries.

34 posted on 03/02/2003 6:49:14 PM PST by xJones
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To: Restorer
On my father's side, one group of ancestors came over around 1800. They were Scots-Irish from the province of Ulster (County Tyrone). Research shows that there was no shortage of reasons to leave: Along with the lure of the New World (that had won freedom from England) that Scots-Irish had been emigrating to for a century already, plus British economic measures against Ireland supressed business that competed with England or Scotland. Then there was the near civil war of 1794, the insurrection of 1798, and a famine in 1800. The future of the province was not only financially discouraging, but physically dangerous.
35 posted on 03/02/2003 6:59:16 PM PST by visualops (Mincing words just makes bits that stick in your teeth.)
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To: Restorer
My Mothers family was from Ulster, Tories to the inch and starving in the Maritimes, along with rest of rest of the King and Country crowd, Cathiolic and Protestant, missed your chance 'eh lad.
36 posted on 03/02/2003 7:18:46 PM PST by Little Bill (No Rats, A.N.S.W.E.R (WWP) is a commie front!!!!)
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To: Little Bill
My grandmother's side of the family were Scots-Irish Presbyterians named Patterson. A lot of their ilk immigrated to Western PA in the late 1700's and early 1800's to work the land on the new frontier. Not a slave owner in the bunch.
37 posted on 03/02/2003 8:16:23 PM PST by Ciexyz
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To: nmh
>>This article has a certain stench about it...<<


It certainly does.
It's common knowledge that there was some slavery in the northern states, too. What area of the world back then did not?
What is never mentioned is that the vast majority of whites (even in the south) did not own slaves. They were just trying to scratch a living off the land. This thing about slavery is being over-done.

38 posted on 03/02/2003 8:38:59 PM PST by Missouri
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To: unspun
No American slaves or slave owners in my family. All my ancestors arrived around or after the Civil War and didn't own slaves. Who knows what they did in Europe thousands of years ago, though.
39 posted on 03/02/2003 9:51:01 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: Question_Assumptions
Well if you can't account for them, then you need to feel the guilt! Get your checkbook out and pay reparations, now!
40 posted on 03/02/2003 10:12:58 PM PST by unspun (The most terrorized place in America is a mother's womb.)
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