Category Archives: Native Americans

The Legacy of David S. Cohen’s Ramapo Mountain People and the Rise of Indigenous Hatekeepers

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own. I do not speak for, or represent, anyone else, but myself.  As a Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape descendant, I owe it to my ancestors to tell their truth. Please make sure to click on the red hypertext links.

Update: On June 17, 2023, the Delaware Nation voted to remove Daniel “Strongwalker” Thomas II from his duties effective immediately, from representing the Tribe,  and stated that he was NOT the hereditary chief of Willie Thomas as that status was not passed on. The full report can be found here.  While the Oklahoma  Delaware Nation appointed him to to act as an official tribal representative to combat “corporations posing as Indigenous nations/non-profits” in 2021, they only removed him a little over a week ago which is two years after the Nation was informed of his background as a convicted felon by his own daughter, and her mother, who also accused him of mental, physical, and sexual abuse/incest. I am glad the OK Delaware Nation finally saw him for  who he is. #FactsMatter

In May of this year, two of my personal essays regarding my own Ramapough Lenape ancestry were published in Our Stories, Our Land, a collaborative project with Rutgers University, Department of Landscape Architecture, and the Ramapough Lunaape Nation.  I hope and pray that the Delaware Nation , under new leadership, will  one day acknowledge that the Ramapough Lenape Nation is NOT a threat to their existence, but that our ancestors were the Lenape who stayed behind after The Treaty of Easton was signed in 1758 at the end of the French and Indian War. We should be viewed, if anything, as their long lost cousins.

The Legacy of David S. Cohen’s The Ramapo Mountain People and the Rise of Indigenous Hatekeepers

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenapehoking

 

For the past two decades, I have dedicated my time to researching my maternal family’s history, which has guided me to write a book. The voices of my ancestors have always led me to where I am today, providing me with clues and revealing a family history that resisted settler colonialism, which caused genocide, slavery, and dispossession. I firmly believe that there is no separation between the living and the dead; the ties that bind us are eternal.

During the colonial era, indigenous people along the Eastern seaboard suffered from paper genocide, which was a policy enacted by settler colonizers to classify and erase indigenous identity and ties to their ancestral homelands. It is actually quite easy to denigrate and dispossess a people of their land, if you call them anything but indigenous.  This practice has resulted in historic trauma that can never be forgotten or denied. The silence of the disappeared voices that remain hidden in the archives speak volumes. However, my family has always known who we are and where we come from, despite the attempts to erase our Afro-Indigenous identity.

https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/Van_Dolzen-1-1
Taphow and Joris land sales show the fluidity of borders and ethnicities in the Northern part of Lenapehoking.

My grandfather’s oral and written history indicated that our family’s lineage consisted of Dutch, German, Swedish, Finnish, British, Scots-Irish, Malagasy, West African, and Native American tribes from Connecticut, primarily from Fairfield County, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Our ancestors were from many tribes, including Munsee, Delaware, Minisink, Wappinger, Shinnecock, Nipmuc, Golden Paugusset, Powhatan, Mohawk, Wampanoag, and others, all connected to a Black and Red Atlantic. Our enslaved ancestors, used as human shields, were first put on the front lines to protect the Dutch from the Munsee Lenape in New Amsterdam, but they also formed lasting relationships and intermarried with the Munsee Lenape. Although marriages between Native men and women of African descent occurred, it was primarily Native women who married men of African descent in our family and were the cultural bearers who passed on their knowledge. Similarly, the Lenape also adopted people of African descent into their tribe. DNA does not determine culture. It is possible to be of African and Native descent, European and Native descent, or a mixture of all racial categories. I respect the hard choices that our ancestors made to ensure their survival and that of their descendants. It is a myth that all Lenape were removed from New York and New Jersey in the late 1700s. It is a fact that many Lenape people stayed behind.  Most of our family never left their ancestral homeland in PA, NY, NJ, and DE, which shows that our ancestors made the right decision and are the true keepers of our sacred Lenapehoking.

Cohen, David S. The Ramapo Mountain People. NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974.

David S. Cohen’s book, The Ramapo Mountain People, which I read ten years ago, is inaccurate based on my family history and the knowledge handed down by my elders including my great-grandfather, Helen B. Hamilton, Yvonne Chandler, Chris Moore, and Pat Mann-Stoliby. Although we descend from enslaved and Free People of Color, including Afro-Dutch Free Black people, our ancestors did not originally arrive in the Ramapough Mountains from the Hackensack Valley starting in the early 1800s, or even in the 1680s when the Tappan Patent was formed. The Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape were always there, albeit in much smaller groups that coalesced into larger entities over time. The Ramapough Mountain area has been settled for the millennia and Indigenous people routinely travelled across the Hudson River setting up camps on both sides. Cohen coined the name “Ramapo Mountain People” in his book and he was correct in stating that they were not the pejorative “Jackson Whites.” However, his book is not a definitive account of our ancestors. It is rooted in a discipline closely affiliated with the field of eugenics and should be seen as a relic of the late-1960s to early-1970s community-based studies. That his book has never been updated in light of new scholarship over the past couple of decades, says a lot.

Cohen’s book ignores a gender issue which clearly affects his ability to even entertain the possibility of Afro-Indigeneity. He fails to acknowledge the existence of a large number of Black-Native relationships that produced Afro-Indigenous children who learned their culture from their Munsee Lenape mothers. He ignores the fact that many people of African and Indigenous descent escaped to freedom together throughout the colonial period and even after. Unfortunately, the names of these Indigenous women were not recorded in official records, but this does not mean that they never existed or that their voices and lives do not matter. Cohen dismisses these relationships as insignificant, despite their long history in the Hudson River Valley region, dating back to the1613 arrival of Juan Rodriguez, a fur trader of African descent from Santo Domingo who married a Munsee Lenape woman and fathered children with her. Intended or unintended, Cohen left people with the mistaken impression that the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape strictly descended from African and Afro-Dutch people who had forgotten their history — a history he decided to give them back.

That being said, The Ramapo Mountain People’s greatest flaw is that it fails to acknowledge the historic erasure of indigeneity inherent in official records such as census records. Native Americans were not listed as such in any US census records between 1790-1840. They were, however,  included in the  racial categories as “Mulatto,” “Black,” “Negro,” “Colored,” “Free People of Color,”  and “White” —- labels that striped them of their “official” indigeneity. This is the time period that Cohen attributes the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape as having relocated to the Ramapo Mountains. How convenient it is to make claims that are hard to prove when records do not exist to the contrary because people were made to disappear on documents. Who is Cohen to decide who is indigenous, or not , based on one-drop  of “Black” blood rule?

In my family, we had ancestors who decided to accept, on paper, the  racial categories that they were given because they could not challenge them especially during segregation and we had ancestors who 100% identified as Afro-Indigenous. Again, one can be Black and Native— they are NOT mutually exclusive identities. I can assure you that my great-grandfather, who was born in 1881 in Newark, NJ, knew who he descended from as  his family always kept one foot in the Ramapough Mountains and one foot in Essex County, NJ. Our family continues to do the same today. Cohen clearly believes that only written sources can be used in research and that our oral history doesn’t matter —- except it does. We have our history that clearly shows that the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape maintained their culture despite slavery, genocide, and dispossession. What Cohen wants is for the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape to wholeheartedly accept the colonized view of history — a top-down, one-sided version of history that leaves no room for a history from below. No, thank you. Our history, oral included,  is our history and it has been shaped by specific historical forces that are not up for debate.

Cohen’s book has been used in the tribe’s quest for federal recognition despite questions about the validity of his conclusions. Cohen now claims that the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape are “of dubious descent.” He has also been very vocal in stating that all Lenape where removed in the late 1700s and therefore  the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape, Nanticoke Lenape, and Powhatan Renape Nations are not legitimate and thereby questions their NJ state-recognition. The Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape have nothing to prove to David S. Cohen, as he insists, they do. Today, Cohen only recognizes the Oklahoma Delaware Lenape, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin, and the Delaware of Six Nations in Ontario. It should be noted that the Lenape people of PA, NY, NJ, and DE have always welcomed fellow Lenape who were removed from Lenapehoking.

Recently, my distant cousin Claire Garland, Director of Sand Hill Indian Historical Association, published “Indian Summer at Sandy Hill: The Revy-Richardson Families at the Jersey Shore,” which serves as an excellent counterpoint to Cohen’s book. It should be evident that Cohen interviewed a small segment of Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape in the late 1960s when he did his research and then applied his findings to the larger Ramapough Lenape population— many who had ceased to live in the Ramapough Mountains, but still lived in other parts of NJ and NY. Claire’s discussion of her centuries-old family history, which is relevant to our own Lenape-identified Van Salee/Van Surlay Revy ancestors,  can be traced back to New Amsterdam/New York City, Orange and Rockland Counties, NY, and Bergen, Essex, Burlington, and Monmouth Counties, NJ. It never dawned on Cohen that the Afro-Dutch of New Amsterdam actually continued to intermarry with Lenape before, during, and after they relocated to the Tappan Patent.

In her article, Claire draws on tax records, land deeds, property transactions, census records, cemetery records, vital records, as well as oral history and family photos and memorabilia to detail her family history. Elizabeth Susan Van Surlay Revy, our ancestor, married into the Richardson family, who were Cherokees from Georgia and stopped in Monmouth County, NJ on their way to the Oneida Nation in the late 1700s, where they settled. Claire’s research proves a continuous Lenape presence in New Jersey from the past until the present day. I am positive that there are also other Lenape micro-histories in existence that have yet to be discovered for all the reasons I discussed above. Decolonizing the archives and re-examining past research is a MUST in order to discover these histories as they do exist.

The Rise of the Indigenous Hatekeepers

I recently attended a UPenn webinar courtesy of the Wolf Humanities Center and Penn Museum  where the legacy of Cohen’s book was clearly on display.  The video can be viewed here in full. (Please note that the video can be triggering for some, particularly one hour in at the start of the Q&A section.) It was billed as a “discussion that highlights tribal relationships to Lenapehoking, the ancestral and spiritual homeland of Lenni-Lenape and Delaware peoples of the Delaware Valley. Archaeologists and tribal cultural specialists bring the site-specific landscapes and histories to life, illuminating once-vibrant places that remain important to tribal Nations today.” I was looking forward to learning more about the Oklahoma Delaware Nation. While Jeremy Johnson, Director of Cultural Education, Delaware Tribe of Indians based in Bartlesville, OK was informative and respectful, the same cannot be said of Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas. This was actually the first time I heard him and saw him.

Though The Wolf Humanities Center posted his credentials on their site, I will not be repeating them here. I don’t respect a man who launched such hate-filled, venomous attacks on various Lenape present in the room as well as the people who were on the panel sitting next to him. No dignified “hereditary chief” that I know would ever present themselves in public in such a way, especially to those who welcomed him with open arms.  The optics of it all not only looked bad, but also smelled bad. His focus on federal recognition and treaty signing as qualifiers of indigeneity, the not so-veiled references to race, his seeming ignorance of Eastern seaboard Native history, and his avowed 100% insistence that all Lenape were removed from the Northeast mimicked points that David S. Cohen made in his book and subsequent papers. While, I, in no way, shape, or form hold David S. Cohen responsible for the words and actions of another person, the conclusions made in his book are now being used by Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas and other federally-recognized Native Americans. Let’s be clear, these are Native people who want to silence and erase the specific histories of PA, NY, NJ, and DE Lenape, as well as Afro-Indigenous people, especially on the East Coast, by labeling them “Pretendians” and “CPAIN” derogatory terms no different than “Jackson Whites.”

The OK Delaware Nation claims some sort of authority over Northeastern Lenape because they have federal recognition, a status they were given when they accepted relocation to Cherokee land in Oklahoma in 1867. However, the PA, NY, NJ, and DE tribes are state-recognized, have their own inherent sovereignty, and are accepted by the US government as such. I am in 100% agreement with the statement below made by a long list of Indigenous activists and posted on the Last Real Indian website:

“While federal and state recognition are ways that we legally acknowledge and understand Native American and Indigenous Peoples in the United States, a colonial state, we also honor the fact that federal and state status is not the only form of “recognition” and “assertion of rights” for tribes, Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples across North America. We also recognize the problems with disenrollment, xenophobia, anti-Indigenous, anti-Indian, and anti-Black racism that can lead to insidious forms of individual and collective exclusion. Many tribes have been terminated or thought non-existent for example because they do not meet the requirements of another non-Native government (the United States). We reject the premise that federal recognition is the only way to determine American Indian, Indigenous, and Native American identity. It is within this context that we call on all community members to reject attempts by outsiders to determine tribally specific status of individuals and groups. We believe that every tribe’s self-determination and/or sovereign status should allow them to define who is and is not a member of their communities, including adoption as that is a tribe exercising their sovereignty to determine their own citizenship.”  

It is disheartening to see other Natives engage in hate tactics that are straight out of the settler colonial project play book. The fact that the OK Delaware Nation refuses to recognize those Lenape who never left, under the guise that they themselves know that “No Lenape would ever leave another behind,” is absurd. They can never speak on matters with 100% certainty when they weren’t alive to witness the event themselves or know all the hard individual choices people made at the time. They can’t speak of the decisions that Afro-Indigenous people made for fear of state-sponsored punishment —- as if our ancestors had the power to make any decision in the construction of a racial classification system hundreds of years ago. They maintain that the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape never called themselves that until Cohen published his book because they had no name. Not only is this false, but we were called by many names: Munsee, Tappan, Haverstraw, Minisink, Hackensack, Pompton, Acquacanock, Esopus, Wappinger, and others. That these Indigenous bands formed larger confederacies in the wake of colonization, does not mean that the people who inhabited the Ramapough Mountains, and surrounding areas, never knew who they were. Neither does it mean that Cohen gave us our name.

Why The Wolf Humanities Center and Penn Museum invited Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas to be on the panel is beyond me when there were local Lenape groups  available to present. I am not too sure why representatives from local Lenape tribes were not on the panel, as they should have been, and this fact was not lost on many who intended in person and online. I also question why the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Bartlesville, OK would have a representative of their nation sit on any panel with Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas because it made it look like they condoned his rude behavior. He stated that he did not speak for the tribe, but for “the people.” What people? Who gave him the authority to speak on behalf of all Lenape in PA, NY, NJ, and DE?  Is this how the OK Delaware Nation builds alliances with local Lenape? WHY can’t he speak for the tribe now?

The way he performed at the webinar made me question who he was and why was he so angry and disrespectful. I called some of my Indigenous contacts across the country asking them if they knew him, and many did. I am now left with the impression that Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas is a “hatekeeper,” a term I use to refer to the ways in which some Natives from federally recognized tribes advocate for a one size fits all Indigenous experience. It is interesting to note that these Natives are primarily from the Midwest and Southwest who refuse to acknowledge the specific experiences that Eastern tribes faced as the first tribes who were colonized. These Natives also tend to wield their federal recognition around like a club they can hammer other Natives over the head with for not being “Native ” enough. Some have even gone further and have engaged in acts of harassment, bullying, intimidation, and more.

Perhaps the best-known example of a “hatekeeper” is Jacqueline Keeler, a Navajo activist who keeps an “Alleged Pretendian List.” While the original goal of identifying “Prentedians” was based on valid concerns, it has gone above and beyond its original intent and has morphed into a whole different beast. The list that has rightfully been exposed and denounced by many Indigenous people as highly problematic. The following links demonstrate how “hatekeepers” are specifically targeting people, even federally recognized Native Americans with whom they disagree, and are compiling dossiers on individuals complete with personal information, vetting individual family trees and misinterpreting family relationships/ties, etc. to try to discredit people.

Comprehensive Timeline of Keeler’s Harassment of Indigenous People  (with mention of Daniel “StrongWalker Thomas in a couple of places)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_lCuYR2FcZLzFcIu1nuyQqm1JG71vrdl/view?usp=sharing

Community Members Speak out Against the “Alleged Pretendian List”

https://lastrealindians.com/news/2021/5/9/cp3jcylawd83oe095y8npx67n6jng0

The Crashing of Sacheen’s Funeral

https://voshart.medium.com/the-crashing-of-sacheens-funeral-a3c3a7bec173

Opinion: The Real Problem With Jacqueline Keeler’s ‘Alleged Pretendian’ List

https://www.powwows.com/the-problem-with-jacqueline-keelers-pretendian-list/’

It turns out that Keeler is a well-known associate of Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it’s a duck. Their tactics mirror each other.

I wasn’t surprised then to learn that Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas is also affiliated with, and routinely posts in, a Facebook public group called Roots of Illusion, Ramapo/Ramapough that believes in “educating the public of who the Ramapo, Ramapough Mountain People really are.” This group often shares Cohen’s papers as well as the Afro-Dutch genealogy charts featured in his book to make determinations about individual Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape family trees and ethnic identification. The group advocates using DNA tests to determine how much “Native American” admixture Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape have in order to “prove” individuals are not Native. They also share DNA information without a person’s consent which is very unethical. This group has no understanding of ethnic admixture, how genes are inherited, and how admixture is calculated by DNA companies. It is also apparent that they think “race” is  a fixed status, and not a social construct, and that census enumerators were always correct in recording a person’s “race” based on their phenotype.  Needless to say, their one-dimensional view of history where they see “Enslaved/Free Blacks versus Lenape” is troublesome as it is ignorant and places blame unfairly on Enslaved/Free Blacks for the oppression of all Lenape people.  Their Black History Month postings are indicative of their anti-Black racism though they claim not to be so. The Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape, Nanticoke Lenape, and Powhatan Renape are all NJ state-recognized sovereign tribes that Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas does not have jurisdiction over. He knows this and has decided to pursue an agenda to malign these tribes at all costs.

Here are some screenshots from the Roots of Illusion, Ramapo, Ramapough Facebook group:

An example of their anti-Black and ignorant  understanding of the history of settler colonialism.

 

Native Americans can be of any “race.”  Individual Ramapough Lenape are being targeted for derision as evidenced in the posting of these 1950 census records.

 

An example of anti-Black bias post that was posted during Black History Month. Why????
David S. Cohen’s book and papers are routinely shared in their Facebook group where they cherry-pick what he has written.

I want to state clearly that I don’t know if David S. Cohen is working directly with Daniel “StrongWalker” Thomas and other “hatekeepers,” or if he is unaware of how these “hatekeepers” are using his book to promote their own agenda in the way that may cause real harm to others. I have never met David. S. Cohen. I am actually sure we could have a civil conversation about his book and the impact that it has undoubtedly had on Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape descendants that he has never met, in addition to the ones he already knows. What I do know, is that his book has been used to unfairly define a group of people for decades and is also now being used by “hatekeepers” to target and character assassinate the Ramapough (Munsee) Lenape. However, is this really the legacy Cohen wants to leave behind? I wouldn’t think so. I would hope not. 

Time to Mann Up: Nicka Smith, The Legacy of the Cherokee Freedmen, & the Hope For A Better Future

As I listened to the Wolf Humanities Center/Penn Museum webinar, I couldn’t help to think about how the OK Delaware Nation resides within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. This led me to think about my friend, mentor, and professional genealogist Nicka Smith, who recently gave several lectures about her Cherokee Freedman ancestor, US Deputy Marshall Isaac Rogers, to the Cherokee Nation. She provided various written, oral, and DNA (i.e., cousin matching and not admixture) documentation to provide one of the best case studies I have ever seen by a Afro-Indigenous descendant. You can view her presentation below.

I thought about how the Cherokee Nation has finally come to realize the mistakes of the past and are now working on reconciling their history with that of the Cherokee Freedmen to provide a fuller, truer picture of the past. I can only hope that sometime in the future, the OK Delaware Nation will be open to reconciling with the PA, NY, NJ and DE Lenape instead of trying to erase our history in Lenapehoking. Until that day comes, I will continue to pray for Lenapehoking and all Lenape wherever they reside as my ancestors have always done.

David S. Cohen’s Book and Articles:

The Ramapo Mountain People. NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1974.

The Academia.edu articles below are listed as part of his upcoming book titled Dubious Descent, with the exception of the last article.

https://www.academia.edu/36838452/Sovereignty_and_Recognition

https://www.academia.edu/1225640/The_Name_Game_The_Ramapough_Mountain_Indians

https://www.academia.edu/2008598/The_Limits_of_Advocacy_The_Case_of_the_Lumbee_Indians

https://www.academia.edu/3995343/The_One_Drop_Rule_in_Reverse_The_Nanticoke_Lenni_Lenape_the_Delaware_Indians_and_the_New_Jersey_Indian_Commission

hpps://www.academia.edu/44628690/Whos_Afraid_of_Historical_Evidence_Rutgers_the_New_Jersey_Historical_Commission_and_New_Jerseys_Non_Federally_Recognized_Indian_Tribes_

https://www.academia.edu/29783986/The_Seven_Trees_Motif_and_the_Ramapo_Mountain_People

https://www.academia.edu/28884150/American_Native_Film_Review_docx

htpps://www.academia.edu/37949936/The_Lumbee_Indians_An_American_Struggle

https://www.academia.edu/3690101/Emergent_Native_American_Groups_in_New_Jersey

 

For Further  Reading and Viewing:

Below are some suggested websites, articles and books that you should read if you are interested in exploring some of the issues slavery in the North, Indigeneity, New Amsterdam/New Netherlands under the Dutch vs. British in NY &NJ, paper genocide, and resistance. This is meant as a starting point only. I also encourage people to dig deep into the archives (libraries, historical societies, newspapers, etc.), re-examine what has been written and what may have been left out of the historical record, and write those who have been left out back into the historical record.  It is only when we see how history was experienced by all viewpoints that we can truly understand how this country came into being.

Websites:

https://ramapomunsee.net/

https://sandhillindianhistory.org/contact.html

https://native-land.ca/

http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3153295

The Freedmen of New Amsterdam

YouTube Videos:

Ezra Stiles, Census Making, and Indian Erasure in New England with Jason Mancini https://youtu.be/6lmSB5FkKOw

https://www.youtube.com/@whoisnickasmith/playlists  (Researching the Enslaved playlist) and episode on The Five Civilized Tribes)

https://youtu.be/xJkZG2SKEKI (Finding Isaac Rogers)

 Articles:

Indian Summer at Sand Hill: The Revy and Richardson Families of the Jersey Shore” by Claire Garland in New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Volume 9 , No. 1 (2023) Winter 2023 (p.168-224). https://njs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/njs

“ Reytory Angola, Seventeenth-Century Manhattan” by Susannah Shaw Romney (pp. 58-78) and  “Sarah Chauqum, Eighteenth-Century, Rhode Island and Connecticut” by Margaret Ellen Newell in As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Woemn and Emancipation in the Americas, Edited by Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas, and Terrell Snyder.

“Can Genealogy be Racist? Identity, Roots & The Question of Proof” by Ellen Fernandez-Sacco, Latino Genealogy and Beyond.com, March 22, 2018. https://latinogenealogyandbeyond.com/blog/can-genealogy-be-racist/

 ”Extinction: The Historical Trope of Anti-Indigeneity in the Caribbean” by Maximillian C. Forte, Issues in Caribbean Amerindian Studies, Vol VI, No. 4, August 2004-August. https://indigenouscaribbean.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/forteatlantic2005.pdf

The U.S. Census and the Contested Rules of Racial Classification in Early Twentieth -Century Puerto Rico” by Mara Loveman Caribbean Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2, Julio-Diciembre, Instituto de Estudios, pp. 79-114.  https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/392/39215017004.pdf

“How Puerto Rico became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification by Jeronimo O. Muniz and Mara Mara Loveman, American Sociological Review, Vol. 72, Issue 6, pp. 915-939. https://bit.ly/3Kiz8Yf

“One-drop” — Reckoning with Erasure of Native Identity in Appalachia”  https://www.salon.com/2018/05/21/one-drop-reckoning-with-the-erasure-of-native-identity-in-appalachia_partner/

Book Titles/Authors:

 Beyond Conquest: Native Peoples and the Struggle for History in New England by Amy E. Den Ouden

Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America by Pekka Hämäläinen

Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England by Jean M. O’Brien

African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals by David Hackett Fischer

Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York by Andrea C Monsterman

Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry by Nicole Saffold Maiskell

The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927 by Jace Weaver.

Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States by Kevin Bruyneel

An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, et al.

Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity and Community by  Rain Pru’homme-Cranford, Darryl Barthe, and Andrew Jolivette, eds.

Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom by Tiya Miles

Frontiers of Citizenship: A lack and Indigenous  History of Postcolonial Brazil by Yuko Miki

Tainos and Caribs: The Aboriginal Cultures of the Antilles bySebastian Robiou Lamarche

Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth Century Boston by Jared Ross Hardesty

Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah

Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic by Jennifer Morgan, Angel Pean, et. al.

The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States edited by Miriam Jimenez Roman and Juan Flores

North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885 by Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr.

Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contigency of Race by Nancy Shoemaker

The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle by Malinda Maynor Lowery

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz

We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creek, American Identity,  and Power by Caleb Gayle

The Myth of Indigenous Caribbean Extinction: Continuity and Reclamation in Boriken by Tony Castanha

Long Hammering: Essays on the Forging of an African American Presence in the Hudson River Valley to the Early Twentieth Century by A. J. Williams-Myers

In Defiance: Runaways from Slavery in New York’s Hudson River Valley 1735-1831 edited by Susan Stressin-Cohn and Ashley Hurlburt-Biagini

Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples by Jack D. Forbes

Slavery in the Age of Memory: Engaging the Past  and Museums and Atlantic slavery by Ana Lucia Araujo

The American Discovery of Europe by Jack D. Forbes

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo by Jeroen Dewulf

A History of Connecticut’s Golden Hill Paugussett Tribe by Charles Brilvitch

Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom: Mulattoes & Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America by A. N. Wilkinson

The Book of Negroes: African Americans in Exile after the American Revolution (2021 edition), Edited by Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown

Black Indian Genealogy Research: African-American Ancestors Among The Five Civilized Tribes, An Expanded Edition  by Angela Y. Walton-Raj

Freedmen of the Frontier Volume 1:  Selected Cherokee, Choctaw, & Chicasaw Freedmen Families by Angela Y. Walton-Raji

Freedmen of the Frontier Volume 2:  Selected Creek and Seminole Freedmen Families by Angela Y. Walton-Raji

Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery by Joel Long

Black Lives Native Lands White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England by Jared Ross Hardesty

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 by Calvin Schermerhorn

The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast by Andrew W. Lipman

Brethren By Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery by Margaret Ellen Newell (A must read)

Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1803; Pretends to be Free: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey, and  David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City  by Graham Russell Hodges

Slavery in the North: Forgotten History and Recovering Memory by Marc Howard Ross

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren

In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 by Leslie A. Harris

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America  and Generations of Captivity by Ira Berlin

Slavery and Freedom in the Mid-Hudson Valley by Michael E. Groth

Slavery and Universities: Histories and Legacies by Leslie Harris, et. al.

Scarlet and Black: Slavery: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History (Vol 1) by Marisa J. Fuentes and Deborah Gray White, eds.

Scarlet and Black: Constructing Race and Gender at Rutgers, 1865-1945 (Volume 2) by Kendra Boyd and Marisa J. Fuentes, eds.

Pirates, Merchants, Settlers and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Dutch Atlantic by Kevin McDonald

Memories of Madagascar in the Black Atlantic by Wendy Wilson Fall

Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America by Karen Cook Bell

Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas by Alvin O. Thompson

Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War by Vincent Brown

Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America by Damian Alan Pargas, ed.

The Archaeology of Social Disintegration in Skunk Hollow: A Nineteenth Century Rural Black Community by Joan H. Geismar

From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World by Eugene D. Genovese

Black Rebellion in Barbados: The Struggle Against Slavery, 1627-1838 by Hilary Beckles

Purchasing Whiteness: Pardos, Mulattoes, and the Quest for Social Mobility in the Spanish Indies by Ann Twinam.

The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean by Gerald Horne

The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War by Jonathan Daniel Wells

Slave No More: Self-Liberation before Abolitionism in the Americas by Aline Helg

Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean by Randy M. Brown

Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence by Alan Gilbert

Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution by Judith L Van Buskirk

The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution by William Cooper Nell

The Negro in the American Revolution by Benjamin Quarles

The Colony of New Netherlands: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America by Jaap Jacobs

New Netherlands Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic ties in Seventeenth-Century America by Susanah Shaw Romney

Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730 by Joyce D. Goodfried

hat the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia by Arica L. Coleman

 

Off the Battlefield, But Still Suffering from PTSD

This blog is dedicated to our cousins Helen Hamilton, Keith Lyon, and Raymond Armour who were on this jouney with us from the start and whom all joined our pantheon of ancestros within the past 8 months. They are now our newly-appointed Ancestor Angels and biggest cheerleaders. We will keep saying their names so that they will always be remembered.
L Cousins Helen Hamilton, Keith Lyon, and Raymond Armour

On behalf of the extended Lyon-Green-Merritt family, we would like to thank the Town of Greenwich Board of Selectmen, State Representative Michael Bocchino, the Conservation Commission, Nancy Dickinson, Christopher Shields, and the rest of the Cemetery Committee of the Town of Greenwich, The Office of the Town Clerk, the Greenwich Preservation Trust, CeCe Saunders, Brian Jones, and the staff of Historical Perspectives, Inc., the Greenwich Historical Society, and the Rye Historical Society for their help over the past four years. A special thank you goes to Josephine Conboy and the Greenwich Preservation Trust who worked hand in hand with State Rep. Michael Bocchino to advocate for a new CT cemetery law that will protect other ancient burial grounds from the descecration our family experienced. Another thank you goes to Jeffrey Bingham Mead who challenged me years ago to research and preserve not only the history of Greenwich, but also to write about a history he knew was important for people to read. Finally, I owe a big thank you, to Eric Fowler, Anne Young, and the Law Department of the Town of Greenwich for dealing with me directly these last two years as it was not an easy thing to do and I admit it.

When the Battle Is Over, I’m going to SING and SHOUT!: We Claim Victory!

They got to keep their driveway. It was never about their driveway or their property for us! NEVER!

We GOT EVERYTHING WE WANTED!!!!

It was all about preserving OUR cemeteries, especially the “Colored Cemetery” section of Byram Cemetery, and making sure all our ancestors would be remembered and properly memorialized. It was about making sure that our ancestors in the “Colored Cemetery” would be able to rest in peace, alongside their kin, after having their section of Byram Cemetery made into someone’s front lawn. It was about making sure our Lyon ancestors’ original intention for the “Colored Cemetery” to exist where it always has been was RESPECTED and given the historic, accurate name it always had. It was about making sure OUR LINEAL RIGHTS as descendants were finally acknowledged. Most importantly, it was about paying tribute to the Native-African presence that has always been in Greenwich and which has always been reflected in the Lyon-Green-Merritts of Color who have the DNA, oral, and written history to back up their Native-African heritage — no one ever had the right to tell us what we always have been. Finally, it was about paying tribute to the history of slavery that was personified in the North which led to our ancestors working together on the Underground Railroad and engaging in the social justice/resistance acts of abolition.

We Were NEVER the PROBLEM/http://www.timidmc.com/shop/

After almost a year of being on the Cemetery battlefield, on August 6th, my 5 cousins and I learned that the judge DENIED The Stewarts their 2nd Motion to Strike us from The Jeffrey M. Stewart et. al. v. The Town of Greenwich et. al. lawsuit. We had been waiting for the day for a judge to read all our documented evidence. Then, on Wednesday, August 8th, we were asked to send a letter indicating our support for the Town of Greenwich’s Stipulation of Settlement as the Now Named 6 defendants. The next day, on August 9th, the Town of Greenwich Board of Selectmen approved the Stipulation of Settlement at 10.42 am. I was at the funeral of my Uncle/Cousin Raymond Armour where I had the honor of announcing the settlement to my family and to him directly. It will now be sent to the judge. Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of this case.

The “Colored Cemetery” is where our Native-African ancestors were buried. Make no mistake, our ancestors ARE BURIED there and have been for centuries. The Stewarts’ constant and continued denial of our ancestors physical presence in the “Colored Cemetery,” speaks volumes about THEM more than it does our ancestors. In my blogposts on my Green-Merritt ancestors and on the now resurrected, hidden historic community of HangrootI documented our ancestors lives in Greenwich, CT and noted how they were the ONLY family of Native-African descent to live next to their former slave owners and slave owner descendants for over a century. In fact, they made up the majority of People of Color in Greenwich in the mid-1800s. DNA also links us to the Lyon, Merritt, and Green families. But, The Stewarts want others to believe that not one of our ancestors were ever buried there??? Please…

The “Colored Cemetery” at Byram Cemetery

In my many blogposts on the “Byram African-American Cemetery,” I documented how our extended family felt upon learning about the desecration of our “Colored Cemetery.” We have been waiting for justice to be served for four years. We always KNEW The Stewarts didn’t have a case. I mean how do you abide by a Cease and Desist Order in 2014 after you desecrate the “Colored Cemetery,” then invite the descendants of people buried there into your home to discuss putting a plaque on tree in honor of the “Colored Cemetery,” and then wait over a year to file a lawsuit that denies the existence of the same cemetery? We won’t even discuss my epic 277-page response, three 1890 contemporary newspaper articles mentioning the first desecration of the “Colored Cemetery,” the 1901 dated, time-stamped, and accepted copy by the Town of Greenwich Clerk map, Historical Perspectives, Inc.’s documentary study, or all the letters written by my cousins which were submitted to the court as proof. If you are interested, you can read all the evidence here  (Docket#: FST-CV-17-6033549-S).

The Privileged Don’t Pay the Price, But Others Have to…

A lawyer friend asked me recently how I felt about the process that led to the settlement and what were the things that troubled or concerned me about the settlement? I told him that I did what I had to do to protect the rights of my ancestors to rest in peace and not be erased from history. That being said, while I am happy about the outcome, I do feel that the Stewarts and the Town are now able to just walk away and both entities act like everything was done for “due diligence” and can say “let bygones be bygones.” They can easily both “go home with footballs,” as Attorney Marcus stated in the Greenwich Time newspaper on 8/11/18. Obviously, they never considered the racial and class dynamics that were being perpetuated in prime time that were no different from what my ancestors experienced. They had the power once again to deny us everything and that was not lost on us —not for one second, one minute, one hour, one day, one year nor for centuries.

Meanwhile, I am battle-worn, battle-scared, and suffering from PSTD feeling like I was forced against my will to run thousands of miles to the top of a mountain and now some people feel that I should run down the other side of the mountain immediately when I am physically and mentally exhausted. No, that is not going to happen. I need time to deal with the past two years and especially the past 8 months. I don’t have the luxury to just walk away now, as others apparently do, because my ancestors CHOSE ME to be their unified voice to articulate their pain, loud and clear, with my head held high…just like they showed us all when they walked towards freedom. It was a burden I willingly carried and I did it to protect my ancestor’s burial site and elucidate their RADIANT lived history that should NEVER be erased. I need time to breathe clean air again and re-charge my batteries. I would like to think that I’m like Timex and can take a lickin and keep on tickin,” but I’m not. Vegatron does have her limits. Don’t worry. I will be just fine in the end. His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.

Both The Stewarts and The Town’s Law Department put my family under tremendous, unnecessary stress. The Stewarts knew it was a cemetery from the beginning. The Town did not follow proper procedures in acquiring abandoned cemeteries. Both entities threw The Stewarts’ wealth in our faces like hot bricks just out the fire. The “no disparagement clause” in the settlement is for their mutual benefit. At no point, have they even offered an apology to my family —not privately, not publicly. Though that is something I know they would never do and I am not holding my breath for, it’s those little things that sometimes matter most.

My family and I worked out our issues with The Town in early April and this has allowed us to move forward. From the beginning until present, The Town said, and now will do, what they said they would do when they actually acquired the abandoned cemeteries. Our family will be active partners with the Town going forward to create a historic “Colored Cemetery”. However, The Stewarts are another matter. As of today, there will be NO Kumbaya moment. I want nothing to do with people who have no integrity and show no respect for the sacred resting spaces of others.

There are NO Statutes of Limitation on Historic Trauma/Historic Erasure

Desecrating an ancestral burial ground for greed is traumatic. Arguing that we must excavate our ancestors to satisfy that greed and morbid curiosity is traumatic. Denying that our ancestors ever existed and trying to erase their physical presence in this world is traumatic. It is traumatic because you KNOW that slavery was never designed for Native-and African-American family reunification. It was designed to sever the ties that bind. And then, here we were in 2016 and just as we located our oldest ancestors, we found out that the couple, who made our ancient burial ground into their front lawn, tried to use us against The Town. You realize that had you not had Guardian Angels in Greenwich who immedately notified you of The Town’s actions, they would have gone with the photos you sent them, selfies included, with the letter you unknowingly wrote in their favor to the Town of Greenwich meeting on 9/22/2016 and act like they had secured the approval of the descedants of the enslaved/formerly enslaved buried there. Duplicity in action!

I strongly feel that The Stewarts need to be held accountable for their actions that led them to desecrate our burial ground. Two years ago, I wrote that no one should expect us to be neutral on this matter and we meant it. Since Section 34 was part of their lawsuit— though the “Colored Cemetery” has been in existence for centuries as part of Byram Cemetery — and is now forever etched in our collective memory, we will continue to tell the truth that their lawsuit was an obvious land grab to increase the value of their waterfront property. It was also a racist lawsuit since they could have argued their case without mentioning race in the first place. They are the ones who DECIDED to go there and WENT there! We are the ones who always told the truth.

 

Jeffrey M. Stewart et. al. v. The Town of Greenwich 

 

August 28, 2016 Is The Day Our Ancestors Decided This Very Outcome

The Stewarts made several wrong assumptions back in 2016. 1) That we would not know anyone in Greenwich because we didn’t live there. 2) That we weren’t educated and couldn’t detect the gaping holes in their story on Day1; 3) That we would never be united with our Lyon cousins. Our ancestors, on both sides of the color line, decided that would not be the case. They chose me on that day to repeatedly ask the all important question which was “If no one owns the land as you indicated by doing a deed history search, then why are you following a Cease and Desist letter?” Our ancestors chose my cousins Pat and Eddie to bare witness on that particular day, too.

I believe in many things. I believe that that my God is an awesome God who loves everyone unconditionaly. I believe that in my Father’s house there are many mansions. I believe that my ancestors are with me wherever I go. I believe that death is but a necessary happenstance. I believe that there is no shelf-life in the Hereafter and that, as descedants of originally enslaved people, family reunification happens automatically upon transitioning — even if it never happened during our years on Earth. I believe in the power of God to direct my path. Like Assata Shakur, ”I believe in living, I believe in birth, I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth and I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, sea sick sailors, can still be guided home to port.” On August 28, 2016, I KNOW my ancestors guided me to THEIR ancient burial ground here on Earth to help guarantee that our side of the family would be represented at the September 22,2016 meeting alongside our Lyon kin.  A family UNITED will never be DEFEATED. My cousins and I will continue to make them proud.
We are the Lyon-Green-Merritts

 

My Research Is My Therapy: Next Up On the Agenda

I will be continuing my research to get state and federal recognition for the Green-Twachtman House — the house my 3rd great-grandfather built in 1845 at 30 Round Hill Road (Hangroot) —as a confirmed UGRR site. My 3rd great-grandmother, Mary Johnson, was a self-emancipated woman who arrived in Greenwich, CT in the mid-1820s from Virginia.

In Closing…His Eye Is On the Sparrow and I KNOW he watches ME

Let it be forever known that I am the daughter of Joyce Greene Vega, the granddaughter of Richard W. Greene, Jr., the great-granddaughter of Richard W. Green, Sr., the great-great granddaughter of George E. Green, the great-great-great granddaughter of Allen and Mary Green, and the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Anthony and Peg Green.

I’m going to leave this Walter Hawkins video right here so I can go back to singing amd shouting! We got the VICTORY! 

 
 
#DaughterOfJoyceGreeneVega #BaptizedInMessiahBaptistChurchByRevMichaelWayneWalkerIn1981 #80LegionParkwayBrocktonMA

Press Coverage:

 
 

Part II: The DNA Trail from Madagascar to Manhattan & Our Family’s Malagasy Roots

This is Part II of a blog series about how my Malagasy ancestors arrived in NYC in the late 17th century and ended up in NJ . In Part I, I showed how one can still see the ethnic admixture that our Malagasy ancestors left our family with that show up in our DNA even today.

I dedicate this blog to all my relatives who descend from our 4th great-grandmother, Tun Snyder, and our 3rd great-grandmother, Susan Pickett,  as well as to our newly-found Full Sequence mtDNA M23 cousins whose ties to our family go way back to a shared Malagasy ancestor. I thank each of you for being part of our family history.

 

People of Madagascar

 

The Global Trade in Malagasy Slaves

Before we can even discuss the DNA trail from Madagascar to Manhattan, a brief look at the global trade in Malagasy slaves is needed. Prior to the arrival of Europeans in Madagascar, there was an internal slave trade within Madagascar as well as an external slave trade up the East African Coast. In addition, starting as early as the 9th century, Malagasy slaves became commodities in the Islamic Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean. Arab and East African slave traders routinely purchased slaves in Madagascar and then sold them to slave owners in East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, and across Southeast Asia (see the Schomburg Center’s online exhibit The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean). The Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, Spanish, and American slave traders, who arrived in Madagascar between 1500-1800, thus became part of this global trade in Malagasy slaves that brought these enslaved people westward to South Africa, St. Helena’s Island, South America (e.g., Brazil and Argentina), the Caribbean (e.g., Barbados, Jamaica, and Cuba), and North America (e.g., Quebec, Canada, Boston, New York/NJ, South Carolina, and Virginia).
[While the discussion below is centered on the enslaved Malagasy people who arrived in NY/NJ in the late 1600s and early 1700s, I would like to mention here that my friend Wendy Wilson-Fall has recently published her book Memories of Madagascar and Slavery in the Black Atlantic. Her book discusses the arrival of enslaved Malagasy in Virginia. I highly recommend this book to those people who do descend from these Virginia enslaved Malagasy.]
Madagascar to New York Slave Trade

Shady NY Merchants and Pirates: A Perfect Collaboration

A sloop ship carrying slaves and purchased goods       

 

 

 

Pirates.png

 

Slaves from Madagascar were directly imported into New York City and surrounding areas, Boston, and Virginia during two time periods–primarily between 1678-1698 and 1715-1721. In the early 1670s, New York and Boston merchants first dabbled in the trade in Malagasy slaves in the Caribbean, especially in Barbados and Jamaica. To give you an idea of how large the Madagascar to Caribbean slave trade was at that time, between 1682-1687, 11 slave ships carrying 1,741 Malagasy slaves arrived in Barbados and 345 Malagasy slaves arrived in Jamaica. The 1700 Barbados census showed 32,473 slaves and half were from Madagascar.  While these NY merchants first started off buying and selling Malagasy slaves in the Caribbean, they would later periodically sell the slaves who were not purchased there, in slave markets in the United States, including Boston and New York.

I should add here that Malagasy slave also arrived in Charleston, SC during this same time period as planters from Barbados  were among the original settlers of Charleston. They certainly would have brought their Malagasy slaves with them.  We know that a form of rice called “Carolina Gold” originated in Madagascar and was brought to Charleston in the 1680s. These enslaved Malagasy would have arrived here with rice production skills that would have been valued in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

 

From the book Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York by Cathy Matson (p.198)

 

Given the ports of call that NY Merchants would make on their return trip from the Caribbean, it is possible that Malagasy slaves also ended up in all those places.

 

Why Did NY Merchants Go to Madagascar in the First Place?

New York merchants went to Madagascar for three reasons primarily. First, it was all about making an even larger profit off the trafficking of black bodies. A slave in Madagascar could be purchased for 10 shillings while a slave from West Africa cost £3 or £4. There are 20 shillings per £, so it was extremely profitable when you consider that, on the New York slave market, a Malagasy slave was worth between £30-£40. To put it in further perspective, 10 shillings would be the equivalent of $500 today.

Second, NY merchants took advantage of a legal loophole in buying slaves from East Africa. Although the Royal Africa Company had a monopoly on the West African slave trade, the East India Company controlled trade in the Indian Ocean, but they had no policy regarding  buying Malagasy slaves and selling them elsewhere in the world. Thus, NY merchants were able to procure cheaper slaves from Madagascar and make a huge profit. This loophole, however, only lasted for so long.
Third, NY merchants were able to expand the trade in Malagasy slaves with the complicity of unscrupulous government officials and pirates. With the aid of Governor Benjamin Fletcher, these merchants worked in tandem with pirates to trade their goods at exorbitant prices for slaves in Madagascar and for goods purchased in the East Indies, India, China, and the Middle East. To give you an example of the price inflation of these goods, a gallon of rum in Manhattan would sell for 2 shillings, but in Madagascar, that same gallon of rum would be worth £30. Needless to say, both NY merchants and government officials would invest in the NY to Madagascar voyages.  This trade was illicit at best as it meant that these merchants and pirates were smuggling in goods in flagrant violation of the British Navigation Acts.
While there are some records of the ships that entered NY waters with Malagasy slaves during this time, including 8 ships that arrived in the 1690s with approximately 1,700 enslaved Malagasy, the exact number of these slaves imported into NY will never be known due to the illicit nature of this trade. We do know that Malagasy slaves first arrived in New Amsterdam on the Wapen van Amsterdam as early as 1663 with 265 individuals, out of 345 purchased, still alive which was one year before the British takeover of New Amsterdam.

7 of the 8 Merchant/Slave Ships that entered NY. The 8th ship was from an unknown private trader

 

 

The NY merchants involved in the Madagascar to NY slave trade were among the wealthiest, politically connected NY residents at the time. They included Frederick Philipse, Stephen Delancey, Nicholas Bayard, Jacobus and Stephanus van Cortland, Abraham Van Horne, Robert Livingston, Caleb Heathcote, Peter Schuyler, Rip Van Dam, Ann Lynch, and others. These merchants built their vast estates, like Philipsburg Manor in Westchester, NY and Schuyler Flatts in Albany, NY, with a slave labor force that included Malagasy slaves. These families also intermarried with each other as a way of maintaining their concentrated wealth. In addition, they took advantage of the political turmoil that was happening in the American colonies during King William’s War (1688-97) and Queen Anne’s War (1702-13). Because of a weak British government, American colonial governments came to rely on privateers to take on the French. The privateers were commissioned to capture French ships on the high seas and then split the ship’s goods with NY merchants and government officials when they arrived back in New York City harbor.  What started off as privateering turned into pirating as soon as the privateers realized that they could cut out the middlemen—the government officials. Thus, the pirates and NY merchants started to work together for their mutual benefit. By the way, the pirates were just as notable as the NY merchants and included, Captain William Kidd, Thomas Tew, Adam Baldridge, Samuel Burgess, Robert Culliford, and others.

The New York to Madagascar voyage took on average 4-6 months. The NY merchants would load up their ships with small arms, ammunition, food provisions, beer, wine, clothes, shoes, seeds, books, slave trading-items (e.g., shackles, beads, iron-bars, gunpowder), etc. They would first stop at Madeira, then head to either the Cape Verde Islands or the Canary Islands. Their last stop would be St. Helena’s Island in the southern Atlantic Ocean before heading onward to Madagascar and St. Helena was the first stop on the return trip. St. Helena was colonized by the British in 1659 and was considered an essential part of the East India Company’s real estate. Any ship trading in Madagascar had a tax levied against them in the form of payment of one Malagasy slave. Over the centuries, Malagasy people formed the great majority of the island’s slave population.

Now, just imagine being in the cargo hold of a slave ship sailing for 4-6 months on the return trip to NY. It’s no wonder that the average mortality rate on these ships averaged 19% with some voyages having mortality rates as high as 31%. Part of the mortality rate was due to the fact that the enslaved were already slaves in Madagascar having been captured by other ethnic groups before being sold. The rest had to do with the despicable, inhumane conditions inherent on any Transatlantic slave ship voyage. One of the most harrowing accounts is that of the Gascoigne Galley slave ship that arrived in VA in 1721 from Madagascar with 133 slaves, out of 192 individuals purchased. The slaves on this ship had “distemper in their Eyes,” of which a great many became blind and some of their Eye Balls come out (Platt, p. 568).” These slaves were practically unsalable. Who knows what became of them. It breaks my heart knowing what my Malagasy ancestors went through during this time. Yet, they somehow managed to survive. What a strong people they were. TEARS. There, but for the grace of God go I.

I should add here that the voyages from Boston to Madagascar also included Native Americans who would eventually be sold as slaves in the Caribbean and in Madagascar. The journey from Boston would have also been in the same 4-6 month range. Hence, the enslaved Malagasy would have taken the place of Native Americans who had been in the same cargo hold on the return trip to Boston. In 1678,  40-50 Malagasy slaves were brought to Boston and sold for £15-£20  each. Such was the vicious nature and horror  of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. To know that two groups of my ancestors were taken from their original homelands and exported halfway around the world is heartbreaking. Sometimes words fail me.

From Pirates of the Caribbean to Pirates of Madagascar

Madagascar became a pirate’s haven after the Port Royal, Jamaica earthquake and tsunami in 1692. With the devastation wrought by the earthquake and the subsequent British crackdown on piracy in the Caribbean, these pirates set their eyes on Madagascar, especially St. Marie’s Island and St. Augustine’s Bay. Madagascar was an ideal place to set up shop as the Indian Ocean was a major international trading region. Ships were regularly traveling between the East Indies to India and then to the Arabian Peninsula. This meant that these ships would be easy targets for the pirates in Madagascar who became known as the “Red Sea Pirates.” It is estimated that 1,500 pirates were sailing in the Indian Ocean between 1695-1700 such was the call of pirate booty.
Map of Madagascar in the 1690s
Madagascar, in the 16th and 17th century, had no central government. There existed mini-kingdoms based on different ethnic groups. The pirates exacerbated ethnic divisions within Madagascar with their trading. They also created a Malagasy elite class as they fathered children, known as zana mulata, who became powerfully locally with Malagasy women. Its interesting to note that, at the beginning of the Indo-Atlantic Madagascar slave trade, the items exchanged for slaves were things like beads, copper wire, novelties, textiles, and silver coins. However, by the end of the 17th century, firearms, muskets, and gun powder were the preferred items to be exchanged for slaves. James C. Anderson, noted that, among the Sakalava in 1699, an able young adult slave man was worth 2 muskets, 5 small boxes of powder, 5 balls, and 5 flints whereas an able young adult slave woman was worth 1 musket, 10 boxes of powder, 10 balls and 10 flints. Malagasy women, of course, were valued more for their reproductive capacity. The local demand for firearms undoubtedly fueled political instability and further slave trading.
Map featuring different Malagasy ethnic groups

Why did the Madagascar to NY Slave Trade End?

Let’s be clear, the Madagascar to NY slave trade ended solely for economic reasons that had NOTHING to do with slavery. The pirates of Madagascar ended up raiding enough ships from India in the late 1690s that the Mughal rulers in India began to openly complain to the East India Company. They even went as far as to penalize East India Company officials by imprisoning them and threaten to remove the British from their trading network. That was enough for the British to crackdown on piracy in the Indian Ocean. The measure they took included installing anti-pirate colonial governors, like Lord Bellomont in New England and NY, to combat piracy and illegal trading, establishing military courts to try pirates, as well as undertaking military operations against pirates on the high seas. The East India Company also cracked down on NY merchants who were carrying supplies to the pirates in Madagascar as well as violating the Navigation Acts by selling NY goods for profit. The East India Act of 1698 effectively ended the Madagascar to NY trade, including the trade in Malagasy slaves. Whereas the number of African slaves in 1664 New Amsterdam was only 300, after the British takeover, that number more than doubled to 700 slaves no doubt due to the great number of enslaved Malagasy imported into the colony.

This ban only lasted until 1715 when the East India Company allowed trading with Madagascar to resume under certain conditions. The East India Company went ahead and granted licenses for trading, including slave trading. Only those ships with licenses would be allowed to trade with Madagascar. Each licensed ship, with £500 worth of goods exported from England, was also required to dock at St. Helena’s island and had to pay a tax levy of nine “merchanteable” Malagasy slaves. Slaves were expected to be between the ages of 16-30, two-thirds male and one-third female. The resumption of the Madagascar slave trade was different in some ways from the earlier period in that most of the slaves ended up in Virginia as opposed to NY. Some ships did enter NYC and surrounding areas though. NY merchants, given their earlier history, were still wary of the East India Company and often masked their Madagascar cargo as being from “Africa.”  From 1715-21, over 500 Malagasy people were sold as slaves in NY. That being said, Virginia received over 1,400 Malagasy slaves during this same period.

I should add here, in deference to my Boricua roots, that Malagasy slaves entered the Spanish and French speaking Caribbean during the entire Transatlantic Slave Trade. France was complicit thoughout the slave trade which actually saw the first Malagasy slaves sent to Quebec, Canada as early as 1623. France also colonized Madagascar and enslaved Malagasy were also sent to the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Reunion, and Seychelles, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Spanish slave traders bought and sent enslaved Malagasy throughout the Spanish empire. Under Spanish colonial rule, Malagasy slaves were sent to Mexico, Central America, Southwest and Central United States, Spanish Florida, the Philippines and other Pacific Islands in addition to the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Catalan slave traders were also sailing to Madagascar in the early-1800s and directly shipping slaves to Cuba.  Those slaves may have also ended up in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

By 1721, the East India Company again stopped trade with Madagascar. Like the earlier period, unlicensed vessels also headed to Madagascar and pirate activity continued as did the burgeoning trade in goods from the East Indies. In 1720-1721, there were reports that several unlicensed ships were again carrying supplies to pirates and buying slaves from Madagascar and selling them in Brazil, the West Indies, and  Virginia. The East India Company effectively ordered any ships carrying slaves from Madagascar or goods from the East Indies to be seized. After 1721, there was no direct importation of enslaved Malagasy people to the US and by the 1730s, the age of Indian Ocean piracy ended. Pirates either returned to their countries of origin, died, or were absorbed into the dominant Malagasy culture.

Malagasy people continued to enter the United States in other ways after the importation of slaves from Madagascar ended in 1721. Some were brought in by the French in New Orleans and Quebec, some arrived as slaves from the English-, Spanish- and French-speaking Caribbean and Brazil, some arrived as free Black immigrants, and some of these slaves arrived on slave ships from West Africa after slave traders left Madagascar, headed to West Africa, and then smuggled them disguised as West African slaves into the States. Fonte Felipe , in his Tracing African Roots blog, discusses how “recaptive” slaves from Southeast Africa ended up in West Africa.

Malagasy Slave Resistance: The Struggle to be Free

Though Malagasy people were enslaved, they did resist oppression in a number of ways in the colonial era. Despite having different levels of success or plain failures, the enslaved Malagasy engaged in acts of resistance and played an active role in changing the circumstances of their involuntary servitude. From the founding of Malagasy maroon communities in Cape Hangklip, False Bay, South Africa and Jamaica, to Malagasy slave insurrections on the island of St. Helena, to the Malagasy taking over of the Meermin slave ship, to slaves of Malagasy descent taking part in the  NY Slave Revolts of 1712 and 1741, to the runaway slaves of Malagasy origin in NY and NJ who sought freedom on foot, these enslaved Malagasy were exercising their right to self-determination. I would like to think that some of my Malagasy ancestors stood up for themselves. Certainly, Black lives mattered to them then as they do to us now. I can only respect the decisions they made which no doubt did, or could have, resulted in their deaths. I praise their names. RESPECT!

The runaway slave ads below were taken from Graham Russell Hodges book, Pretends To Be Free: Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey. In this book, there are numerous ads describing how Malagasy slaves ran away and the attempts by their owners to capture them.

 

Runaway Slave Ad
Runaway slave ad
Runaway Slave Ad

Africans in New Amsterdam in the 1600s and Our Malagasy Ancestors’ Melting Pot Origins

People of African descent arrived with the Dutch at the beginning of their colonization of ManhattanJuan Rodriguez was the first person of African descent to arrive in 1613 after the Dutch claimed the territory in 1609. By 1626, the Dutch began to settle Manhattan and were actively involved in the slave trade. They imported 11 slaves into New Amsterdam that year. Geni.com has a page devoted to Africans in New Amsterdam and they have listed the following number of Africans, arriving in small numbers, up until the British takeover in 1664.

 

Africans in New Amsterdam 1612-1664 from Geni.com

 

Not only does our family descend from the first Malagasy slaves to arrive in colonial NY, our extended family line also goes back to some of the first West Africans in New Amsterdam —to Emmanuel D’Angola, one of the 20 men who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1630, as well as Hilary “Swartinne” Criolyo, a free black woman from Brazil, who arrived in 1644 with her husband the Dutch Captain Jan De Vries I. Some of the first slaves in the early 1600s came from Angola, Guinea, and the Congo and their surnames reflect their countries of origin. The Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) captured a Portuguese slave ship and brought these slaves to work for for WIC in New Amsterdam. These slaves, and others, were the ones who built the infrastructure of New Amsterdam, including the buildings, bridges, fences, and roads as well as maintained the fort. In addition, they cleared land, planted crops, loaded and unloaded ships, and were trained to be stonemasons, bricklayers, blacksmiths, etc. They were also instrumental in protecting New Amsterdam from Native American onslaughts. I should also add that Native Americans in New Amsterdam were also among the first slaves as well. Our ancestors without question intermarried with them as both Africans and Native Americans made up the enslaved population.
Emmanuel D’Angola and Hilary Criolyo/mother of Jan De Vries II, and Augustine van Dunk lines

These first Africans were later joined by other West Africans, like the Akan-Asante, Popo, Moko, Ibo, Yoruba, Adra, Jon, Ibibio, Coromantines, and others, as well as seasoned slaves from Brazil, which the Dutch controlled at that time, and the West Indies (i.e., Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, and Curacao). The WIC also brought in “Spanish Negroes” and “Spanish Indians.” These were free blacks and Native Americans, from the Caribbean and South America, who were captured on Spanish or Portuguese ships by the Dutch and then sold as slaves in New Amsterdam. With their darker skin, the Dutch assumed that they must have been slaves.

The diversity of slaves in New Amsterdam meant that the descendants of these original Africans would have interacted with all of the above populations, including the Malagasy who would arrive decades later, as well as the white indenture servant population. This is the melting pot world our Malagasy ancestor entered when she arrived in colonial New York in the late 1600s – early 1700s. She and her descendants would have had children with slaves or free blacks who came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. They may have also had children fathered by a slave owner as female slaves were very often at risk for sexual abuse by their slave owners and/or their male family members.

It should be acknowledged that slavery under the Dutch colonial government was dramatically different from the system of slavery that the British instituted after 1664. Perhaps the biggest difference was that, under the Dutch, slaves could become free either by being granted “half-free” status or by being granted their full freedom. Under the “half-free” status, slaves were given land which they farmed for themselves, but had to pay tribute to the WIC as well as be available to protect the colony. Their children would still be considered slaves though. If they were granted full freedom, they were free and their children inherited that status. The first slaves in New Amsterdam received their freedom in the 1640s after having worked as slaves for almost 20 years.

Likewise, under the Dutch colonial slave system, the Dutch Reformed Church recognized slave and free Black marriages and baptisms,  they could take care of their children which was their responsibility, when not working for the WIC, they could hire themselves out for paid wages, they were also allowed to raise crops and animals on WIC land, and black people could bring  cases to court and serve as witnesses against others. We see that the Dutch believed in maintaining the slave family unit for the most part.
With the arrival of the British in 1664, everything changed. The British immediately instituted the first laws regulating slavery the way they had done in Virginia and other southern colonies. Between 1665 and 1683, New York City’s Common Council passed a series of restrictions on the activities of slaves and free blacks alike. Some of the changes included children of slaves now could only inherit the status of their mothers, children could be separated from their family, slave masters were now able to hire slaves out for their own profit, slaves, free blacks and whites were not allowed to associate with each other, slaves couldn’t leave their master’s home without permission, etc. The list goes on and on. The codification of slavery was now complete.  Within this historical context, it is not surprising that the New York Slave Revolt of 1712 happened at all.
The response of our D’Angola, De Vries, and Van Dunk ancestors was to leave New Amsterdam behind. Who could blame them? By the mid-1650s, these free blacks had been given land in an area on the outskirts of the town near the Fresh Water Pond and had been accustomed to their freedom and knew what that meant. We know that by 1670, Claes Manuel, Jan De Vries II, and Augustine Van Dunk lived near this area which was considered part of the Stuyvesant Farm which was owned by Peter Stuyvesant, the Governor of New Amsterdam. As people in New Amsterdam chafed under the British and as land became scarce, many Dutch families started to cross the Hudson River and settle in the area known as Hackensack River Valley.

Tracing My Family’s Colonial Roots From NY to NJ: All Roads Lead to the Tappan Patent

In 1683, a group of 16 individuals, primarily from the Bowery Village, purchased land from the Tappen Indians in the Upper Hackensack River Valley. This tract of land was called the Tappan Patent and was located 12 miles north of Manhattan on the Jersey side of the Hudson River. Because of a land dispute between New York and New Jersey, the land title wasn’t granted officially until 1687.  As you can see below, Claes Manuel and Jan De Vries II were two of the 16 original land grantees. By 1712, they were also joined by Augustine Van Dunk. These families were considered mixed-race and would have been  Dutch culturally,  Their land was then inherited by their descendants upon their deaths.

By the mid- to late 1700s, as New Jersey adopted their own set of laws that restricted the movement of free blacks and slaves, the descendants of the Manuel, De Vries, and Van Dunk families moved into the Ramapough Mountains. Many were then absorbed into the Ramapough Lenapi Indian nation and consider themselves to be Native American today. Our extended family has direct ties with members of the Ramapough Lenapi that indicate our ancestors’ shared family history and culture with them. We proudly embrace our indigenous Ramapough Lenapi roots.

Tappan Patent Land Grantees

 

The Tappan Patent was only 12 miles north of Manhattan

 

Our 4th great-grandmother was born between 1790 and 1800 in Tappan, NY which was part of the original Tappan Patent. Her name was Tun Snyder and her maternal line was of Malagasy descent. We are descendants of her daughter Susan Pickett and her granddaughter Laura Thompson. Her female ancestor most likely came over in the late 1600s- early 1700 time period. Through an analysis of our DNA and DNA cousins, we know that our Pickett-Snyder line was a mix of Malagasy, West African, Lenapi, and European, primarily Dutch, people. We also have Euro DNA cousins who are related to well-known founding families of Bergen County, NJ and Rockland County, NY like the Blauvelt, Banta, Ackerman/Ackerson/Eckerson, VanBuskirk, and Demarest families. There is only one way our family can share genetic ties to these families and that would be via consensual or nonconsensual relations between our ancestors.

The Blauvelts were the slave owners of Tun and her ancestors and they were also Tappan Patent land grantees. The Blauvelts of the Tappan Patent can be directly traced to Gerritt Henricksen Blauvelt who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1646 and received a grant of 50 acres of land. The Blauvelt farm was right next door to the Stuyvesant Farm. The Blauvelts and their slaves would have known the D’Angola, De Vries, and Van Dunk families as they owned land that was also next to the Stuyvesant Farm in New Amsterdam. Could male members of the Blauvelt and free black/mixed race families have fathered children with Malagasy female Blauvelt slaves in New Amsterdam? We may never know, but it could be a possibility. However, it is certain that, after these families moved to the Tappan Patent, some of their descendants, in fact, did. All roads lead to the Tappan Patent indeed.

 

List of exchanged goods for Tappan Patent land

The sons of Gerritt included Johannes Gerritsen Blauvelt and Huybert Gerritsen Blauvelt—two of the original Tappan Patent land grantees. They moved to the Tappan Patent with their brothers Hendrick Gerritsen Blauvelt, Isaac Gerritsen Blauvelt, and Abraham Gerritsen Blauvelt, their sister, Margrietje Gerritsen Blauvelt, who married Lambert Ariaensen Smidt, and their sister, Marritie Gerritsen Blauvelt, who married Cozyn Haring. As you can see, the Smidts and Harings were also Tappan Patent land grantees as well as in-laws to the Blauvelts. In fact, it was Huybert Gerritsen Blauvelt who sailed up the Hudson River, with his brother-in-laws Peter Haring and Adriaen Lambertsen Smidt, to negotiate the purchase of this land in 1682 with the Tappan Indians. What we see here then is that the Tappan Patent land grantees were relatives, in-laws, and neighbors, who included two free black families among them, which in itself was unheard of at the time. They were not an unknown group of disparate individuals who randomly met one day and decided to purchase land. Nope. They were a carefully chosen, trusted group of people who wanted to found their own community away from the British which they did. They all brought their slaves with them when they relocated to New Jersey, too.

Tun was owned by Fredericus (Frederick) Blauvelt in Tappan, NY. Fredericus (1728-1809) was the son of Joseph Blauvelt and Elizabeth Van Delson. Fredericus’father was Joseph Blauvelt, the son of Henrick Gerritsen Blauvelt (1697-?), and was one of the first Blauvelts to be born in the Tappan Patent. When Fredericus died in 1809, Tun was willed to his granddaughter Ann Mabie.

 

Federica Blauvelt’s 1809 will mentioning Tun (Transcribed wrongly as Ton)

It should also be noted that the status of slaves changed upon the death of their slave masters. Most were inherited by the family members of slave owners while others may have been freed upon their death. What we do know is that Federicus Blauvelt’s wife Anna Maria DeWindt  inherited two slaves from her father as the will below shows. Were these slaves somehow related to Tun? We don’t know for sure. All we know is that John left instructions for “his negro boy Jack and negro wench Sublie” to live with his daughter and her husband after he died and for Anna Maria to look out for Sublie as she grew old. Tun would have known these individuals as she lived with them.

 

 

Tun was sold or loaned out out a couple of times as a slave and finally ended up with the family of Gerrit Ackerman whose family was also from the Tappan Patent. The Ackermans (also known as Ackersons/Eckersons) intermarried with the Blauvelts, Demarests, and others. Tun labored as a “servant slave” most of her life. In his 1846 will, Gerrit Ackerman instructed his sons to look after her and even willed her son Samuel property in the form of a house. She died in 1881 in Saddle River, Washington County, NY.

I will be writing a separate blogpost in the future on Tun and her ancestors as my cousin Andrea and I are now going through all the Blauvelt wills, Bergen County and Rockland County vital records, etc. searching for clues to her ancestry. So far, I have located the wills of 6 Blauvelts who passed their slaves down to their descendants or freed them. Tun’s story is yet to be told. Stay tuned.

 

The DNA Trail Continues: Our Full Sequence M23 mtDNA Cousins

Some of our M23 mtDNA cousins

Last year, my cousins Andrea and Helen took Family Tree’s Full Sequence mtDNA test to see what else we could find out about our maternal Malagasy line. A year later, we have 9 Full Sequence mtDNA cousin matches who share our M23 haplogroup. I have been in touch with 6 of our 9 FS mtDNA cousins and we have learned several things about their family histories. We haven’t found our common ancestor and may not be able to do so given the nature of slavery.

So what gave we learned? Four out of our 6 mtDNA cousins have ties to the NY/NJ area along with my family. Two mtDNA cousins, Brenda and “Donnie”, are actually 5th cousins who share the same set of 4th great-grandparents who were born in Nova Scotia. Their 5th great-grandmother Rose Fortune was born in VA and who, as a 10 year old girl, boarded a ship in NY to Nova Scotia at the end of the Revolutionary War. Her parents were Black Loyalists and their family is documented in The Book of Negroes. We have found some documentation that their 6th great-grandparents were from Philadelphia and were owned by the Devoe family.

The Devoe family were French Hugeunots who arrived in New Amsterdam in the late 1600s and who settled up and down the Hudson River before some of their descendants moved to NJ and PA, including Philadelphia. We have found documented evidence that in 1762, Captain Michael Devoe of Ulster County, NY, had taken out a runaway slave ad for his slave Prince who was of Malagasy descent.  Prince was a valuable slave as he had nautical skills that were very much needed on the Hudson River and his loss would have been keenly felt. Clearly, the Devoes had acquired Malagasy slaves in NY and the children of those slaves would have been inherited by their descendants.

 

Runaway Slave Ad for Prince

 

 

Hudson River Counties

 

On the map above, one sees how close Ulster County is to NYC as well as to Albany, Westchester, Putnam, Rockland counties. NY merchants involved in the NY to Madagascar slave trade had vast estates in all these counties. Again, the Malagasy slaves who arrived in the late 1600s and early 1700s would have been sold up and down the Hudson River region and beyond.

We have identified the family line of the two other M23 mtDNA cousins, Lois and Dorothy, who match my family. That line is the Timbrook-Titus line and this line originates in the Greater New Brunswick, NJ area. In the 1870s, my family has a Rev. Isaac Timbrook living with our Thompson-King ancestors in Newark, NJ and a Violet Timbrook is living in a house owned by our 3rd great-grandfather Cato Thompson, who was married to our  M23 3rd great-grandmother Susan Pickett, in the 1850s. The Timbrooks are related to our Malagasy descended Pickett-Snyder line. Lois has a 4th great-grandmother named Sarah Timbrook Titus who was also from New Brunswick. We believe Isaac is her nephew, the son of her brother Edward Timbrook. Dorothy is connected to a Fanny Titus who may be related to this family line as well. We are still sorting out the family relationships, but we do know that this is the one family line that may link to our common Malagasy ancestor.

 

Our mtDNA matches from South Africa, St. Helena, Barbados, New York and Nova Scotia

 

Our 5th mtDNA cousin Rhoda is an outlier in that her roots are in the South. To date, all of the people in the Malagasy Roots Project who have the M23 haplogroup have been found with ties to the Northeast. Of course, more people need to be tested to see if other haplogroups found in Madagascar are also present in this geographical area. What is interesting about Rhoda is that she highly likely had an ancestor of Malagasy from the NY/NJ area who was sold South at some point.

My friend Richard Sears Walling has recently been publicizing an illegal slave trade that occured in NJ in 1818 whereby about 100 African-Americans, both free and enslaved, were sold South into slavery by Judge Jacob Van Wickle. This slave trade occured in the New Brunswick/Old Bridge, NJ area and it is quite possible that all of us may have had an ancestor who may have been sold South in this trade. It should be noted that in 1850, Isaac Timbrook is working as a farmhand on a farm owned by the great-nephew of the judge, Steven Van Wickle. The interconnections between people and places does serve as a backdrop to our potential shared history.

Lastly, our 6th mtDNA cousin Alan has a grandmother who was half-Malagasy/half British and who was born on the island of St. Helena. This island was the first stop on the return trip from Madagascar. An import tax was paid in the form of Malagasy slaves on ships that arrived in St. Helena’s port. For Alan to be related to all of us means that we either shared a common ancestor in Madagascar whose descendants ended up in two different locations or maybe two females ancestors became separated when a ship from Madagascar stopped in St. Helena on its way to New York. Alan’s connection to our M23 cohort is of particular interest as it shows the importance of St. Helena as a stopover point on the way from Madagascar to New York. Alan can trace his maternal ancestry back to his 3rd great-grandmother, Sarah Bateman, who was born in 1815 on the island of St. Helena. Her maternal ancestors were Malagasy for certain.

Alan was so kind to share a family photo of his grandmother and mother taken in the early early 1900s as well as photos of Malagasy people in St. Helena. He is lucky to have such an important connection to Madagascar.

 

Alan’s grandmother, Elizabeth Annie Scott, holding his mother, Mabel Elizabeth Harvey, as a baby in St. Helena

 

Malagasy people in St. Helena

 

A market day in St. Helena

 

Another market day in St. Helena

 

View of St. Helena

Historical Truth and The Schulyer Flatts Burial Ground Revealed

One of the hardest things we have to do in researching our slave ancestors is to dig DEEP for the truth that exist somewhere out there about their lives. Our ancestors were stripped of the normal genealogical paper trails that others can find with ease for often they were just counted as property in between all the other non-human goods in inventories and wills. Many times they were also buried in unmarked graves, in unmarked or lost cemeteries, that have long since returned to Mother Earth or were just built over.  How then can we reclaim these ancestors who are our own? How can we reconstruct their lives when we seemingly have no clues as to who they were or where they came from?
My 3rd cousin Andrea and I took the 23andme DNA test three years ago in order to break through our genealogical brick walls. DNA tests were becoming popular then and we felt like we had nothing to lose. How can you lose anything when most genealogical records do not exist for your slave ancestors? We lucked out when Andrea’s mtDNA haplogroup came back M23. She is a matrilineal descendant of our shared 2nd great-grandmother.
Descent from Laura Thompson Green, our mtDNA M23 2nd great-grandmother
When we got Andrea’s results back, we were amazed at the haplogroup designation which originated in Madagascar. We went on to test our other M23 cousins, including our 100-year old Cousin Helen whose grandmother Mary was a sister of our 2nd great-grandmother Laura. An unknown window to our family history opened up to us. This was one African country, without question or hesitation, that we knew we could now call our own. It was then that we both started to embrace the opportunity that this M23 haplogroup had given us and we became obsessed with finding out how our Malagasy ancestors came to the NY/NJ region. This blog post is an attempt to answer that question. We may never know the name of our original Malagasy ancestor, but we now know how, where, and when she arrived in colonial NY and her descendants ended up in NJ. That is a whole lot more than we ever knew before our DNA test. It was this ancestor who gave us the gift of her M23 mtDNA that allowed us to follow the trail back to her and to discover the socio-historical events that circumscribed her life. We are so grateful to her for we have now reclaimed that which slavery took from us — one segment of our roots, our Malagasy roots.
We will never know where our earliest ancestors of Malagasy descent are buried. But, in 2005 in Colonie, NY, an unmarked slave burial ground was discovered there. The historical erasure of these fourteen nameless individuals, who were found in the Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground, was to be no more. The remains found included one man, 6 women, 2 children, and 5 infants. By historic design, we know little about them. What we do know is that, after a mtDNA test was performed, 4 were designated as being of West African/Central African descent, 1 descended from a Native American woman and was of mixed-race, and 2 sets of remains were from women of Malagasy descent with a M haplogroup designation. The Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground should be viewed as a stand-in burial ground for all those forgotten slaves who toiled all over colonial New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The re-emergence of this burial ground is a testament to the fact that the some of the earliest slaves in colonial NY/NJ were Native American, West African, and Malagasy. It is also a testament to the indisputable fact that there are many African-Americans, my family included, who have historic ties to this land that predate most of the other non-Native American immigrants who became Americans much later on.
The Schuyler Flatts Burial Ground was built on land owned by the Schuyler familly. Peter Schuyler, who occupied the estate between 1711-1723, was one of the NY merchants involved in the Madagascar to NY slave trade. He, along with his brother-in-law Robert Livingston, routinely invested in ships that made the trip to Madagascar to sell goods and then returned with enslaved Malagasy in their cargo hold along with other items for sale. He also owned sloops that trafficked on the Hudson River from Albany to Manhattan and owned property in Manhattan, Bergen County, NJ, Westchester, and Albany, NY. On those properties were no doubt slaves of Malagasy descent among others. Schuyler may be remembered for many things, but, make no mistake, he was one of the players in the NY slave trade. For those of us with Malagasy roots, he will be remembered for being actively involved and complicit in the NY to Madagascar slave trade along with all the other NY merchants families. — the Philipse, Livingston, Van Cortland, Delancey, Bayard, Lynch, Van Dam, Van Horne, Heathcote, and other families — who sold our ancestors into slavery.
I am not one to sanitize a historical truth when it involves my ancestors. History needs to be understood as it was experienced by everyone and not the chosen few. As far as I am concerned, the lives of my slave ancestors are just as valuable historically as any other person who ever lived. Their lives did not happen in a historical vacuum and their stories need to be told. Their lives were indeed valid. I can’t over-emphasize how important it is for us to seek out our ancestors’ stories.  All of us, who are descendants of slaves, need to reclaim the lives of our ancestors so that others may learn of their existence and their contributions to American society. We owe it to them NOT to continue to aid in their historical erasure. If we do not do it, who will? The choice is ours. Let us all then shine a light on those who came before us. Our ancestors are always with us and their stories are encoded in our DNA.

References

On Colonial New York:
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. 1998.
Goodfriend, Joyce D. Before The Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1992.
Cohen, David Steven. The Ramapough Mountain People. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.  1986.
Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African-Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. 2003.
Hodges, Graham Russell. Root & Branches: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. 1999.
Lepore, Jill. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan. New York, NY: Vintage Books. 2007.
Matson, Cathy. Merchants & Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press. 1998.
Taylor, Alan. American Colonies: The Settling of North America (The Penguin History of The United Sates, Volume 1). New York, NY: Penguin Books. 2002.
Shaw Romney ,Susanah. New Netherland and Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in the Seventeenth-Century America. Chapel Hill, NC:University Prss of North Carolina. 2014.
Wills Foote, Thelma. Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 2004.
On Madagascar:
Allen, Richard, Ed. European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850. Athens,OH: Ohio University Press, 2014.
Armstrong, James C.  “Madagascar and the Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century.” Omaly sy anio (Antananarivo University of Madagascar), no. 17 (1983): 211:34.
 Elphick, Richard and Hermann Giliomee, Eds. The Shaping of South African Society, 1652-1840. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University  Press. 1979.
Hopper, Jane. “Pirates and Kings: Power on the Shores of Early Modern Madagascar and the Indian Ocean.” Journal of World History, Vol. 22, no. 2 (June 2011) : 215-242.
Judd, Jacob. “Frederick Philipse and the Madagascar Slave Trade.” New York Historical Society Quarterly 55, no. 4 (October 1971): 354-74.
Manning, Patrick. The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 2009.
McDonald, Kevin P. Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic World. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 2015.
Platt, Virginia Bever. “The East India Company and the Madagascar Slave Trade.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 26, no. 4 (October 1969): 548-77.
Sheriff, Abdul. Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 2010.
Vernet, Thomas. “Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast, 1500-1750.” In Slavery, islam, and Diaspora, edited by Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and APul E. Lovejoy, 37-76. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. 2009.
Wilson-Fall, Wendy. Memories of Madagascar and Slavery in the Black Atlantic. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 2015.
 
On Native American Slavery:
Newell, Margaret Ellen. Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2015.
Resendez, Andres. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2016.
On Spain’s Involvement in the Slave Trade:
Fradera, Josep and Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Eds. Slavery and Anti-Slavery in Spain’s Atlantic Empire. New York, NY: Berghahn Books. 2013.