A History Not Quite Visible
by Dorothy Dow Crane

October 1711. Robert Livingston is upset. Two of his ten African captives have disappeared from his Columbia County manor. They run through the fields, they push through the brush, they make their escape over the land near where what is now Route 9G dips to the Roeliff Jansen Kill before it climbs the long hill north. Robert, almost certain that the two black men have been aided in their escape by Indians, posts Palatine guards on the manor to prevent further losses should the Indians return. He tells himself that as first the leaves and then the snow falls, the men will return to his care, his protection, and to his fields. But the men do not turn up on his doorstep. Livingston's 25-year-old son Philip hires Indians to track the men north. When Philip hears the slaves have reached Canada he contacts the governor there, but receives no help in getting the men returned. After two years of frustrating correspondence, Philip finally goes to Canada to retrieve his family's human property. The men refuse to return to the manor with him. The only alternative left, he writes home, is to pay Indians to steal the men and bring them back to the manor.

In the end, the price is too high. Philip returns home empty handed. The value of human assets is not lost on the young Philip Livingston. He goes on to purchase shares in four slaving vessels and to import hundreds of slaves to America from the West Indies.

February 1715. Slaves aren't allowed to marry, but for Ben, property of Johannes Dyckman, marriages don't make family. Blood does. His daughter is his world, the only thing that keeps him going. He pleads with Dyckman not to sell her to Robert Livingston, not to take the one thing that makes his life worthwhile, not to send her away so vulnerable, so unprotected, so alone. When Dyckman refuses and sends the girl off for a decent sum, the pent up rage and despair explode. Ben attempts to kill Dyckman. He's not quick enough. Too blinded by emotion to be effective, he's stopped in the act. Constable Jacob Plough hauls off Ben: down Kings Highway (now Route 9), past the land that is now a golf course at Ogden Mills, the motels in Hyde Park that now offer special rates to those visiting FDR's Home . . . to Poughkeepsie, where he is executed by burning.

* * *

Blue and gold NYS historical markers dot northern Dutchess and southern Columbia counties like bulletin board push pins denoting historical landmarks in our midst: the old Peter Pultz Tavern three blocks east of the present Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck, the Kipp-Beekman-Hermance house in what we now call Rhinecliff, built in 1700 on land Hendrick Kipp had purchased from the Indians just a few years before. Some of our streets (Livingston and Montgomery for example), recall prominent old families. The story of the Palatines who left Germany seeking religious freedom only to be met here with harsh conditions and broken promises is remembered in the naming of Germantown, Palatine Park, and the East Camp Road where they wintered close to starvation. But the early history of the African men, women, and their children in the Hudson Valley are stories we have not registered with local monuments and street names. These stories have almost faded into the woods like Robert Livingston's two runaways.

The history is available, of course, in the library. William McDermott, author of Dutchess County's Plain Folks describes how slavery entered the Hudson Valley with the Dutch, shrewd businessmen who had no illusions about the amount of manpower needed to put this land into production. In 1700 there were over 2000 slaves in New York State, 175 of whom lived here in the mid-Hudson Valley. By 1790 the number of slaves statewide had jumped to over 21,000. The New York 1790 census for Rhinebeck (which at that time included what have since become the separate towns of Red Hook and Tivoli) lists a total population of 3,662 individuals, of which 421 were slaves and 66 were free blacks. The only town in Dutchess County with more slaves than Rhinebeck was Fishkill, with 601; Poughkeepsie ranked third with 199 slaves, less than half those in Rhinebeck. Two centuries later the color of Rhinebeck has whitened appreciably. According to the 2000 census the population of Rhinebeck, Red Hook, and Tivoli combined has increased some seven-fold, yet the percentage of those identifying themselves as African American has fallen from 13 percent in 1790 to under 3 percent now.

Hudson Valley landowners such as Henry Beekman and Robert Livingston depended on both tenant farmers and slaves to clear land and work the fields. Slaves planted, harvested, and then loaded the agricultural bounty of the Hudson Valley onto the ships docked at Rhinecliff headed for markets down river. In addition to farming, the colonial estate lords were entrepreneurs who operated mills and other small businesses where slave labor could be used when the growing season was over. Thus did men and women brought by force from Africa become smithies, cobblers, masons, and sawyers.

Most slaves in Dutchess County, however, did not live on Hudson Valley estates. In 1790 one in ten Dutchess County households included at least one slave. The average number of slaves per slave-holding family was just under three; only 14 slaveholders in the county owned more than ten slaves. It was common for "middle class" families to own a few adult slaves. These African men and women, classified as property, often worked and lived side by side with their owners. The family's slaves usually lived in the basement, the attic, or the kitchen. Everyone--slaves, slave owners, and all the children--breathed the same air under the same roof. They heard one another cough in the night. They formed complicated relationships of power and dependency shaped by the intimacy of sharing space. What was this like, this knowing and yet not knowing of one another?

June 1745. Sam and Bette--parents, but not husband and wife, for marriage would not become legal for slaves until 1809--arrange for the baptism of their two children, Samuel and Sarah, at the Dutch Reformed Church in Rhinebeck. Sam and Bette are owned by Henry Beekman, and as a Christian, Beekman is responsible for the souls of those dependent on him. A 1706 statute states that baptism in no way alters the legal status of a slave but, deep down, does Henry Beekman's heart rest easy? How does he balance his "ownership" of other Christians against his Christian faith that holds all baptized beings as equal before God? Should a Christian enslave other Christians?

July 4 1799. New York's Gradual Manumission Act begins the legal abolition of slavery in the state--an issue that will have significant effect on the family of Pastor Frederick Quitman. It has been a year since Pastor Quitman moved into the new parsonage of what's now called the Old Stone Church on Route 9 just north of Wey's Corners. Quitman probably welcomes the slightly warmer climate of the Hudson Valley after the harsh winters of Cobbleskill, where he has spent the last three years. Nonetheless, his joints still yearn for the tropical warmth of the West Indies where he led his small Lutheran congregation for 15 years. Quitman left the islands reluctantly, after continuing slave revolts made him fear for the safety of his family.

He has brought with him to his new home in Rhinebeck his two slaves, Eme and her son, Jack. Frederick's son, John, is born in 1799, the same year as the Manumission Act. The 1800 census lists 12 people in the Quitman household: besides Frederick and his wife there are four sons, two daughters, one older "free white female" (perhaps a grandmother), one "other free person" who--given the color labels of the census categories used then--is not white, and two slaves, presumably Eme and Jack.

Eme prepares meals, washes endless clothes, and rocks the fretful little ones, including John. Jack helps his mother with her daily chores and plays with the Quitman children. Late at night, when his pastoral and family duties are fulfilled for the day, Frederick Quitman works on his book, Treatise on Magic. A rationalist, he is concerned about certain "superstitious" practices of Christianity, especially the claims that some individuals have the power to channel voices of the dead. From his time in the West Indies, he must be familiar with African practices of obeah (later vulgarized as voodoo), but regardless of his opinions about magic, African and otherwise, he believes it is wrong to own another human. When New York passes the Gradual Manumission Act (manumission is the freeing of a slave by his owner, emancipation refers to freeing of slaves by the government) Quitman's name is first on the Rhinebeck Manumission List, boldly declaring Eme and Jack no longer human property.

* * *

Did Eme and Jack stay on after manumission, helping the Quitmans raise their many children? The historical marker in front of the Quitman house informs us that Frederick's son John, born in 1799 when Eme and Jack were a part of the Quitman household, distinguished himself in the Mexican War and went on to become governor of Mississippi. It neglects to say that he owned four plantations and over 300 slaves, became an ardent advocate of southern rights, and went on to defend slavery in Congress. Today as I pass the yellow parsonage, now the Museum of Rhinebeck, I wonder what complicated discussions did--or did not--take place between Pastor Quitman and this son who moved to Mississippi. What memories of Eme and Jack followed John Quitman into the heavy heat of the Mississippi delta?

And when I walk by the Dutch Reformed Church on the corner of South Street and Route 9 in the village of Rhinebeck, I wonder whether Henry Beekman's Sam and Bette were allowed to attend services in the church slaves probably helped to build. Did they sit with their owners in the family pew or upstairs in the balcony? What was the color, the texture of the congregation on a Sunday morning in 1750?

Nowadays, the only visual reminder we have of the slaves who lived and worked in Rhinebeck two centuries ago can be found across the street from the Dutch Reformed Church at the Rhinebeck Post Office, dedicated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939. Olin Dows' mural of Rhinebeck depicts our local history, panel by panel, beginning with the purchase of land from the Sepasco and Esopus Indians. On the walls above our heads Richard Montgomery and Janet Livingston Montgomery plant locust seedlings at their estate, Grasmere, while a dark-skinned man tends the brick kiln in the foreground. In another scene, three black men load heavy bags of produce onto a vessel at Slate Dock in Rhinecliff. The steam ship Clermont can be seen in the distance on the river. Above the window where I mail my packages, Chancellor Livingston and his mother, Margaret Beekman Livingston, arrive at church in their coach, driven by a black man in livery.

Free Blacks in the 18th Century
But not every person of African descent in early Dutchess County was a slave. In 1790, 440 free blacks were listed on the countywide census. By 1800 the number had increased to 931. Among them would have been the forebears of Walter Patrice, a retired IBMer who now lives in Poughkeepsie. Patrice remembers his mother telling him that his ancestors, free blacks, moved to Milan from New York City in 1753. The old family home, known as the Henry Jackson house, is tucked into a curve on Rowe Road, probably one of the few one-lane dirt roads left in our area. Jackson was a prosperous farmer who raised Holsteins, pigs, and turkeys for the local market. Walter Patrice has a hunch that Jackson Corners is probably named after one of his ancestors on the Jackson side. Patrice often wonders where his great grandparents are buried. He says his mother said it was "somewhere north of Red Hook." The family photos and papers were lost in a fire. A book about Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax printed in the late 1800s with the elaborate signature of William Jackson, Walter Patrice's grandfather, is one of the few family heirlooms remaining.

Like Walter Patrice's family, free persons of African descent were more likely to live away from the river, towards the central and eastern part of the county. In his book, William McDermott speculates that the abolition movement may have gained an early foothold in this area of the county, leading blacks to anticipate better treatment than they might have received in towns closer to the river. It's difficult to reconstruct the textures of the lives of Dutchess County's small farmers and craftsmen--black and white--because they lacked the luxury of time to enter their activities into daybooks like those kept on the large estates. Their hours, like ours today, were filled with the necessary tasks done day after day to keep food on the table and families secure.

September 2005. The records of the Rhinebeck Cemetery list a grave marked as Jack, a native of Africa, d[ied] at an advanced age, "most faithful and industrious man." Could this be the Jack freed by Frederick Quitman? A few ancient headstones sit on a small hillside tucked against the tree line on the north side of the cemetery, the section designated for Rhinebeck's slaves. Jack's marker might be among them, but weather, pollution, and lichens have conspired to make the inscriptions illegible. Someone wanted to honor Jack's life, his long passage from Africa, his loyal service and skilled hard work despite that involuntary passage--someone, I imagine, who was close to Jack and grateful for his contributions to this small, struggling community, someone, no doubt, who would be sad that the words of honor are now indecipherable.

When I cross the bridge to Kingston I sometimes think about the ferry Abraham Kipp ran between Rhinecliff and Kingston in 1754, and how Kipp and his slaves looked at the same Catskills I see today. When I walk out my front door on Livingston Street, my arms loaded down with my brief case and laptop, it occurs to me that the small, white clapboard house directly opposite me, once the home of Richard Montgomery and Janet Livingston, was home to their slaves as well. As I drive east from Red Hook on 199, stop at the car wash to get rid of the road dust and then head for the Taconic Parkway, I think of Henry Jackson tending his Holsteins and getting ready for market. Every day we glide over the surface of a dark, rich history. It's almost visible.