"Bilhah Abigail Levy Franks," attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck. Manhattan, circa 1735. Oil on canvas from the collection of the American Jewish Historical Society, Waltham, Mass., and New York City. Abigail Levy Franks wrote a series of lively and intimate letters to her son living in London. These document the important role Jews played in the cultural and commercial life of colonial New York.

Cross Roads and Cross Rivers

Diversity in Colonial New York

By Kathleen Eagen Johnson

Pursuit of trade introduced a varied group of partners, some willing and some forced, to this landscape. In New York, the commercial activity that had initially involved Native Americans and Europeans soon grew to include people who had once lived in Africa and Latin America. This double stamp of commerce and cultural diversity has marked New York since its very beginnings.

Images of stockaded villages built by the Hudson River’s Mahikan tribe and exotic animals represent European preoccupation with Native Americans and the fur trade. The territories controlled by the Sint Sinks, Wappingers, Minnessincks, and other groups are indicated on the map as well.

For centuries before the arrival of the Dutch, the Wekquaesgeeks farmed, hunted, and fished near the confluence of the Hudson and Pocantico Rivers. Contact with Europeans initially revolved around trade: Native Americans exchanged furs for manufactured goods.

Europeans coveted the territory that Native Americans controlled and negotiated its purchase. Rarely did either party fully understand and agree upon the rights and limits of such transactions, in part due to cultural differences regarding the concept of land ownership. In this locale, during the 1640s, relations between the Wekquaesgeeks, other River Indians, and Europeans grew violent as cultures and economic interests clashed. Soon after, Frederick Philipse acquired land from the Wekquaesgeeks and Sint Sinks.

A passion for trade enticed the earliest Dutch settlers to New Netherland, later called New York. The colony was founded in 1609 by a merchant corporation, the Dutch West India Company, rather than by a country.

Like other Europeans, the Dutch were religious as well as commercial imperialists. They did not see cultural diversity as a source of strength, but rather as a potential source of chaos and curse. Primarily Protestant Calvinists, citizens of the Netherlands were particularly sensitive to this issue. They had just ended centuries of domination by fighting a religious war with Spain, a Catholic country. The Board of Directors of the Dutch West India Company preferred that the population of New Netherland, an infant and tender colony, be composed only of Dutch settlers, and thus remain homogeneous. That was not to be, because the Dutch did not settle there in large numbers.

In 1664, the Netherlands surrendered political control of New Netherland to England. The mother country chalked up the loss of New Netherland as a failed experiment and concentrated on exploiting other colonies they considered more successful. But in New York, Dutch cultural domination did not end quickly. In rural areas and in towns such as Albany, the Dutch language was spoken well into the Nineteenth Century, living on as an integral part of worship in the Dutch Reformed Church. Dutch customs, foodways, farming practices, and other forms of cultural expression survived as well. New York architecture and furnishings bore a distinctive Dutch stamp for decades, if not centuries.

Frederick Philipse conducted business in New York under both Dutch and English rule. He immigrated to New Netherland in 1653, the foreman of construction for the Dutch West India Company. Through shrewd and diversified trading, advantageous marriages, and political skill, he became one of the richest men in the colony. Frederick Philipse’s first wife, Margaret Hardenbroeck, who conducted her own international shipping business, and their son Adolph, were partners in the family’s varied enterprises.

Margaret Hardenbroeck was a wealthy widow when she married Philipse. Through her own efforts and through those of her extended family, Hardenbroeck enjoyed access to a vast network of merchants in Europe. Her second husband found these connections a highly attractive benefit of marriage.

Margaret Hardenbroeck serves as a classic example of the indomitable Dutch female trader. Under Dutch law and custom, women enjoyed more autonomy and economic opportunity than they did under English rule. Female and male children inherited equally, and females could act as individuals in business transactions and own real estate separate from that of their husbands.

This and other freedoms were in direct contrast to English custom and law. Even after the Dutch colony’s conquest, women continued to work with their husbands as partners in business and also ran their own shops, farms, and inns. Adoption of English law gradually eroded away the former independence of Dutch women, leaving them more dependent on their fathers or husbands.

Margaret and Frederick’s son Adolph, an active merchant, followed in his parents’ footsteps. To secure his power base, he also held important political posts in colonial New York’s government. Adolph was the owner, albeit largely absentee, of the property known as Philipsburg Manor, Upper Mills.

The Philipses inserted themselves into the international trading network that dominated the Atlantic world, mastered its mechanics, and comprehended its risks. They understood the European system of exporting raw materials from far-flung colonies and, in turn, creating markets in these colonies for manufactured goods and other commodities. The Upper Mills property was a vital part of the Philipses’ worldwide business.

The Philipses mitigated risk by enlisting partners, most often other New York merchants, when underwriting venture cargoes. They cultivated an extensive trading network and opened new markets for eager sellers of commodities such as tobacco. With limited success, Frederick Philipse worked around monopolies established by the government. He, like other New York merchants, also speculated in land, which was viewed as a long-term investment.

Shipping records reveal the types of cargo carried on Philipse family ships. Furs, whale oil, and tobacco left New York and Virginia for Europe. Flour, hardtack, livestock, and timber traveled to the West Indies where plantation owners concentrated on producing sugar cane to the exclusion of most other crops. In return, they offered sugar, cocoa, sassafras, and logwood. Manufactured goods traveled from Europe for consumption in the colonies. Exotic painted cottons and spices came from the East Indian Ocean. Human cargo arrived from the West Indies, West Africa, and Madagascar.

The extensive system of trade created by the seafaring Dutch afforded wealthy residents of the colony well-appointed surroundings. These objects belonged to the Van Cortlandts, another early New York family involved in international shipping.

Briefly in the 1680s and significantly in the 1690s, Frederick Philipse actively pursued the slave trade. On occasion, he imported small groups of Africans from the West Indies and from present-day Angola. Some of these enslaved people were sold in other colonies, some came to New York, and some worked for the Philipses in Manhattan, on the Manor, or on their ships.

Philipse was one of several New Yorkers who circumvented the official routes for the importation of enslaved people by dealing with an enclave of pirates who used Madagascar, an island off the east coast of Africa, as a base of operation. These pirates found the port of New York a safe haven under the governorship of Benjamin Fletcher, who profited from his business relationship with them. Fletcher’s successor as colonial governor, however, did not continue to offer the warm welcome pirates had previously enjoyed and made sure that their partners in New York paid the price.

Frederick Philipse suffered for his involvement in the Madagascar slave trade. A ship captain in his employ narrowly missed hanging; Philipse lost a ship and two valuable cargoes; and he and his son were barred from holding provincial office for years, a blow that severely threatened the family’s commercial power base. Their punishment had nothing to do with the moral issues of the slave trade, but resulted from his failure to comply with the British Empire’s maritime laws.

In 1664, England had conquered Dutch New Netherland, a troublesome foreign competitor in the midst of England’s American colonies. The English quickly realized that the unique Dutch imprint was not easily erased. Conversely, the Dutch, as well as French and Jewish merchants, understood the value of learning the English language and legal modes in order to promote their own businesses. As the controlling minority, the English found themselves in a curious situation of integrating their former commercial foes into the English trading network.

The adoption of English as the official language proved culturally wrenching. Since all news and commercial notices were printed in English, fluency became a prerequisite for success. Although the abandonment of Dutch was bemoaned, by the 1740s the young in Manhattan were speaking English as their primary language. As Dutch people in an English-dominated world, the Philipses realized that it would be prudent to cultivate the support of the crown in order to further their business ventures, although they certainly did not refrain from circumventing English law. Political allegiance may have become more palatable when the Netherlandish Stadtholder William and his wife Mary ascended the British throne in 1689.

Are these objects symbols of political loyalty? The use and display of objects bearing symbols of British monarchs represented recognition of, if not allegiance to, the British empire. Archeologists working on at Philipsburg site recovered these fragments, here displayed with a related whole example. This stoneware, made for an overtly British market, came from Continental Europe and illustrates the international character of Philipse family trade.

The furs and lands that fell in the purview of Native Americans were highly desired by Europeans. Frederick Philipse dealt with two groups of Native Americans: the River Indians of the lower Hudson Valley and the Iroquois of Northern and Western New York State. Furs fetched high prices in Europe where deep wilderness had long been depleted. In exchange, Philipse and other traders offered Native Americans wampum, guns, metal tools, cloth, and cheap ceramics.

As southern New York became depleted of furs, New York merchants turned a covetous glance to the powerful Iroquois Confederacy and the fur-rich lands under its control. Albany merchants lobbied the government and were granted a monopoly in dealing with the Iroquois. Frederick Philipse circumvented the ban by establishing a house in Albany run by his father-in-law.

During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, immigrants from the British Isles, Scandinavia, France, the Low Countries, and present-day Germany entered Manhattan and the lower Hudson Valley. The newcomers saw this frontier as a place of opportunity.

By the end of the Seventeenth Century, nearly 30 families with Dutch, German, French, Walloon (Belgian-French) and English surnames lived on the Manor. During the Eighteenth Century, the manor prospered. In 1779, a tax list recorded 174 taxpayers, or a population of almost 1,000 people. Personal histories suggest that many of these people had lived elsewhere in the American colonies before settling on the manor of Philipsburg.

Some Europeans worked as artisans in Manhattan, producing structures, furniture, and tools. These artisans used their skills to meet the needs of a burgeoning merchant class. The individual artifacts created often proclaimed their makers’ geographic origins as seen in the style and construction techniques used. The physical characteristics of objects also speak to the tastes and preferences of their owners. The diversity of forms underscores the culturally pluralistic society present in early New York.

Africans And Atlantic Creoles, Enslaved And Free

The very first blacks who arrived in New Netherland may not have come directly from Africa, nor were they necessarily enslaved. Historians refer to these people as Atlantic Creoles because they lived on both the east and west shores of the Atlantic Ocean and, as a group, were of mixed ancestry. Middlemen in trade between Europe, Africa, and North and South America, they served as merchants, translators, and sailors. Their tongue served as the common language of trade. Jan Rodrigues and a handful of other Atlantic Creoles in New Netherland were free, but not all were. Two enslaved men belonging to the Philipse family were Atlantic Creoles; their stories reveal information about the role of Atlantic Creoles in world culture and trade.

Nicholas Cartagena’s last name suggests that he, or his ancestors, came from the city of the same name located in present-day Colombia. Enslaved, he worked as an interpreter on a Philipse vessel bound for Madagascar. There, without prior approval, the captain of the ship sold Cartagena to Philipse’s slave supplier.

Jack, whose name was common among Atlantic Creoles, escaped from the manor of Philipsburg during the mid-1690s and may have returned to Africa aboard a privateer. Philipse described him in a letter as a "remarkable fellow" who was probably headed toward the Persian Gulf by way of Rhode Island. Philipse anticipated that Jack might find employment there as a sailor.

 

The Residents Of The Upper Mills

The initial group of enslaved people at Philipsburg may well have come from the Kongo Kingdom of Angola. In 1685, nearly 150 Africans boarded Philipse’s ship, the Charles, at the port of Soyo. These people were probably prisoners of war from the Kongo. The ship first stopped in Barbados, where 105 were sold. The voyage ended in Rye, where the remaining nine slaves disembarked.

B’Kongo (meaning "of the Kongo") people probably served as the imprint group for the African community at Philipsburg Manor. The B’Kongo culture was highly structured and sophisticated. The B’Kongo people were known as successful rice farmers. While their rice cultivation skills were not immediately transferable to the Hudson valley because of its colder climate, their general knowledge of growing and processing grain was. They were also, as a culture, skilled in the art of blacksmithing.

One of the most intriguing aspects of B’Kongo culture was its open and accepting theology, one that centered on ancestor worship and intercession by a group of deities who answer to a supreme deity. Some B’Kongo people also incorporated aspects of Christianity, introduced by the Portuguese in the form of Roman Catholicism during the fifteenth century, into their religious belief system without diluting their faith.

Between 1680 and 1750, most of the people who lived on this site were African or of African descent. The enslaved Africans constructed, operated, and resided on a complex that consisted of a mill, manor house, bake house, slave house, wharves, and a church. Dina, Caesar, and Venture, among others, labored as millers, bakers, sailors, dairy workers, coopers, and servants. They and the other 20 enslaved men, women and children living here at the time of Philipse’s death in 1750 formed a community. The naming patterns, such as Sampson and Little Sampson, and Diamond and Little Diamond, suggest that families lived together at the Upper Mills.

 

Cultural Conflict And Accommodation

Among the most severe examples of racial strife and violence in colonial New York were the events surrounding the so-called slave rebellion of 1741. What began as an arson investigation evolved into a witch-hunt marked by racism. In a search to find those responsible for setting a series of fires that swept Manhattan, dozens of poor whites and blacks were accused, tried, and subsequently imprisoned or executed. Among them was Cuffee, an enslaved man owned by Adolph Philipse. Cuffee was accused of setting fire to a city warehouse owned by Adolph’s brother, convicted, and burned at the stake. Members of the provincial government, fearing class war, used the event to promote racism as a way of driving a wedge between servant-class whites and enslaved and free blacks. Also a result of the incident, New York’s Colonial government enacted an extremely harsh slave code.

While some of the contention that marked colonial New York can be attributed to its wide cultural mix, there was cultural blending as well. Pinkster, a spring holiday celebrated in the Hudson Valley during the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, drew on both African and Dutch traditions. Ostensibly marking Pentecost, a Christian holiday, its practice in the Hudson Valley included such Africanisms as the naming of a king, dancing in Kongo style, and shelters decorated with vines and leaves.

 

Dissolution Of The Upper Mills

In 1750, the death of one individual, Adolph Philipse, caused major disruption at the Upper Mills. His death marked the end of direct family interest in this site and the break-up of its African community.

The family tried to sell the property – including the miller, boatman, and some of the other slaves – as a package. This was a common practice in the Eighteenth Century. There were no takers. The enslaved people who composed the Upper Mills community died, were sold, or went to live at other Philipse family properties. Slavery as an institution would continue in New York until statewide manumission was achieved in 1827.

A passion for trade laid the groundwork for early New York’s culturally diverse population. New Netherland was founded by a corporation, rather than by a political entity. Initially, the directors of Dutch West India Company imagined a homogeneous, all-Dutch colony, but lack of interest in migration on the part of their countrymen crushed that dream. Thus, achieving economic success demanded a variety of settlers.

Commerce and cultures mixed in Seventeenth-Century New York. The Wekquaesgeeks and other River Indians, who had lived here long before the arrival of the Europeans, traded highly desired furs and land with the newcomers. Artisans and laborers from many parts of northern Europe flowed into Manhattan. A merchant class developed, one composed of Dutch, English, and French traders as well as Spanish, Portuguese, and German-speaking Jews.

Tenant farmers of northern European descent were enticed to live throughout the colony; many came to live on the Manor of Philipsburg. The first blacks who entered New Netherland were not all enslaved, but soon race and slavery were inextricably linked. Enslaved people came from parts of West Africa, Madagascar, and the West Indies. Some were native born. They labored as artisans, sailors, farmers, and servants. Colonial New York, a frontier society, simultaneously exhibited cultural segregation, blending, and conflict.

For most white and black colonials living in New York, shared race, religion, language, and class ranked as more critical factors than did allegiance to a particular country or ethnic group. Most early New Yorkers did not nurture a strong, lifelong attachment to one ethnic or tribal group, in part because large numbers of people did not immigrate together, a more common demographic pattern in the nineteenth century. Eventually, many colonists defined themselves by taking a stand for or against political allegiance with England, a decision that tended to cut across ethnic and, to a certain extent, racial lines.

 

The Fate Of The Philipses And Their Partners

Prosperity resulting from the mercantile success of Frederick and Adolph Philipse allowed subsequent generations of the family to pursue a gentry lifestyle. The Philipses were now more English than Dutch in orientation; this shift would lead them to remain loyal to the crown during the American Revolution. At the war’s conclusion, they were among those attainted of treason by the New York State Legislature. Their personal possessions and real estate were seized and sold. The Philipses’ empire and the Manor of Philipsburg as an official entity were destroyed.

What happened to the willing and unwilling business associates of the Philipse family? Manhattan remained closely tied to the crown, in part due to its commercial ties to the mother country. The inhabitants of Westchester County, a demilitarized zone between Loyalist New York City and largely Rebel upstate, suffered loss of life and property. Tenant farmers were allowed to buy land formerly attached to the manor. New York’s Commissioners of Forfeiture turned over the manor church, the Old Dutch Church, to the congregation. Well-connected Patriots bought the Upper Mills.

During the Revolution, political affiliation often cut across ethnic lines. Native Americans in the colony of New York aligned themselves with both sides. Most Jews fought as Patriots. British troops used the promise of freedom to entice enslaved Africans to leave Patriot owners and to join their ranks. Sometimes freedom was granted; often times it was not. The irony of the Declaration of Independence, a document stating that all men are created equal, was not lost on Africans.

"Cross Roads &Cross Rivers: Diversity In Colonial New York" will run through August 15, 2000, although the exhibition will be closed during January, February and weekdays in March. To order the exhibition catalog, telephone 914/631-3992, ext.18. To learn more about Historic Hudson Valley’s historic properties and programs, call 914/631-8200.