The Manor

by Mac Griswold

  “sometime of Shelter Island”: Simons, “Bigamy in Boston,” 7; Massachusetts State Archives, Suffolk Files, case 3766, second paper.

  “The children of the Founders”: Bailyn, Merchants, 109, note 89, 216.

  a judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Wills of six Southampton or Southold residents were proved before Giles Sylvester, Esq., in 1706 and 1707. Abstracts of wills, New-York Historical Society (WNYHS), 1:425, 427–29, 434, 438.

  Giles fought back: On July 16, 1692, the New York Council ordered Suffolk County to desist from levying taxes. The question should have been moot by 1692, as manors had been incorporated into a colonywide administrative system by means of the act of May 13, 1691. But perhaps because there were many gray areas concerning manor patents in general, the Sylvesters’ 1692 petition was granted. Giles Sylvester III, Shelter Island, to Fitz John Winthrop, New London, October 27, 1683, MHS Proc. 2, 4 (1887–89): 29; NY Council Minutes 5:87; N.Y. Col. Mss. 38:155; Journal of General Assembly, I:77–79; NY Council Min. 6:111/2; NY Col. Mss. 38:155. (N.Y. Col. Laws, I: 237–38.)

  letters he wrote: Giles Sylvester III, Shelter Island, Oct. 1, 1674, to Fitz John Winthrop, in New London, WP 19:27; Giles Sylvester III, Shelter Island, Aug. 19, 1677, to Wait Winthrop, Boston, MHS Proc. 2, 4 (1887–89): 287.

  “English as only British colonials can be English”: Bailyn, New England Merchants, 194.

  “As for Mr. Sylvester’s living”: Hannah Sylvester, in Boston, to William Nicoll, April 25, 1709, SIHS 1973.31–103.

  “the ideal of a cultivated”: Bushman, Refinement of America, xii.

  “Brother G: S: [Giles] owed Camble”: Barck, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 1:116.

  “all that messuage”: Giles Sylvester to Ephraim Savage and James Lloyd, August 10, 1689, GSDD 10. Savage was Hannah’s father and Lloyd was Giles’s brother-in-law, married to Grizzell Sylvester.

  all his remaining property: Will of Giles Sylvester, March 12, 1707, proved June 19, 1708, NY Co. Wills 7:375.

  “after my said Debts are paid”: Will of Giles Sylvester.

  “the mansion house of Capt. Nathaniel Sylvester”: February 5, 1719, Suffolk County Deeds, Liber B part 1:169.

  one of the four children: The four were not identified by name in NS’s will, but two, Obium and Tom, are later named in the trail of documents during the 1680s and ’90s transferring the boys from one Sylvester family member to another. Will of NS.

  It was not uncommon: Philip D. Morgan, writing about later colonial South Carolina runaways, states, “Those said to be visiting relatives, friends, or acquaintances outnumbered those attempting permanent escape by about four to one.” The Connecticut slave and later freedman Venture Smith ran away twice, returning the first time (1754) to his former master, and the second, in the 1760s, when he was to be sold upstate, finding a new master in Stonington, where most of his family lived. Philip Morgan, “Colonial South Carolina Runaways: Their Significance for Slave Culture,” in Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 6:3 (1985), 57–78, 67. Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture Smith, etc. (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 1996), chap. 2.

  the stretch of New England: Legitimate travels on a master’s business (in addition to sales from one owner to another), along with interactions with the large free black population in the North and with indentured whites, gave many slaves during the first century of Northern colonial slavery (1650–1750) a surprisingly wide knowledge of seventeenth-century geography: its roads, ports, county towns, and countryside. See Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 56–60 and note 29 (chap. 2).

  “to find the horse”: Barck, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 1:144; Boston News-Letter, no. 87, Dec. 17, 1705.

  “negro man named Obium”: Ibid., 1:121, “Inventory of James Lloyd’s Estate … September 22, 1693.”

  “unwilling to part with us”: Nelson to Lloyd, January 31, 1710, in Barck, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 1:187–88.

  “practical consciousness”: Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xxiii, quoted by Fitts, “Northern Bondage,” 59.

  more clothes: See Hodges and Brown, “Pretends to be Free:” Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1994), xxxii. On the other hand, Edgar McManus writes that in various periods “slaves were well clad for all sorts of weather,” that “clothes were a considerable expense of slaveholding,” and that some masters “provided their slaves with ‘Sunday clothes’ for special occasions besides ordinary working clothes for the job.” McManus, Black Bondage, 93.

  “A Great Coate”: Nelson to Lloyd, January 31, 1710, Barck, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 1:187–88.

  “curious old hymnbook”: “Curious Old Hymnbook and Buried Golden Treasure at Huntington, the Volume that Once Belonged to a Slave,” The Brooklyn Eagle, September 16, 1888.

  Recent research: Sondra S. O’Neale, Jupiter Hammon and the Biblical Beginnings of African American Literature (Metuchen, NJ: American Theological Library Association and the Scarecrow Press, 1993), 20–22; also see Margaret A. Brucia, “The African-American Poet, Jupiter Hammon: A Home-born Slave and His Classical Name,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 7, no. 4 (Spring 2001): 517; Bolton and Metcalf, “The Migration of the Jupiter Hammon Family,” LIHJ, May 2013.

  “if any be afflicted”: James 5:13.

  a “single event”: On June 4, 2002, Steve Mrozowski characterized as rapid deposition the fill in some of the postholes in front of the house as against the spread of the midden which took place over time: “Its consistency (of the fill) tells you it was a single event—and this one was fairly fast.” Griswold Papers, Fales Library, NYU.

  The house and everything around it: The description in this and the next sentence is based on Hayes, “Field Archaeology,” 42, 45, 46, and Gary, “Material Culture,” 101.

  Brinley is a thrifty man: Gary, “Material Culture,” 101.

  hauled out: Timbers cut and shaped for new construction were used quickly because the joints would tighten together as the green wood dried, Robert Hefner, pers. comm., 2006. The dendrochronology data collected in 2004 on construction timbers for seven East End houses indicated that most were utilized within a year of felling. Sylvester Manor, one of the two inhabited houses in the sample, was unable to supply enough datable timbers because it was decided that the investigation would have caused too much household upheaval for Mrs. Fiske. D.W.H. Miles and M. J. Worthington, with Edward Cook and Paul Krusic, “Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory Interim Report 2006/47: ‘The Tree-Ring Dating of Historic Buildings from Eastern Long Island, New York’” (Oxford: Oxford Dendrochronology Lab, December 2006), http://www.hvva.org/Long%20Island%20dendro%20report.pdf.

  16. ILLUSION AND REALITY

  coterie: Berkeley’s planned college in Bermuda was never granted funding. The English portraitist John Smibert, who painted Dean Berkeley and “the Bermuda group,” also painted Brinley’s cousin, Colonel Francis Brinley, and his wife; David Chesebrough, Brinley Sylvester’s son-in-law; and Andrew Oliver, Brinley’s cousin.

  An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision: An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision was first published in 1709; M. A. Stewart, “Berkeley, George (1685–1753)” (ODNB, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2211.

  rational dominion: Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the American elite generally admired landscape views from the safety of a drive, or from a formally planted enclosure.

  from the front door to the main road: See “Shelter Island in 1870,” ca. 1928, attributed to Ralph G. Duvall, for Brinley’s original drive.

  moved to Newport: Nathaniel II and Margaret Hobert Sylvester may have lived with relatives. See an indenture between Francis Brinley (Nathaniel’s uncle) and Francis and James Carr, Aug. 19, 1701, for the division of a house “by ye harbour” owned in common, as well as two parcels of land into two parts, each with “two cellars, tw
o lower rooms, two chanbers [sic] and two garrets.” “Abstracts from Rhode Island Colonial Land Evidence,” Newport Historical Magazine 2 (1881–82): 223–26.

  “landskips”: Essayist Joseph Addison (1672–1719) first wrote on the theory of “natural gardening” in 1712 in The Spectator. Americans followed the English lead some forty years later. Horace Walpole, A History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1771 / pub. 1780), reprinted in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, eds., The Genius of the Place, etc. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 313.

  The local library: For books purchased in London by Abraham Redwood for the lending library named after him in Newport, see Alice Brayton, “Rhode Island,” in Gardens of Colony and State I: 221.

  prenuptial agreement: Giles Sylvester to Ephraim Savage and James Lloyd, August 10, 1689, GSDD 1:10; Col. Francis Brinley (II) to Brinley Sylvester, Mar. 14, 1720, GSDD 11. See also William Sanford (cousin), Newport, to Brinley Sylvester, Apr. 19, 1720, East Hampton Library.

  a new will: Will of Wm. Nicoll, March 19, 1719—probate Aug. 27, 1723, NY Co., NY Will Book vol. 9, 565, and “The Nicoll Family of Islip Grange, etc.,” Rosalie Fellows Bailey (Order of Colonial Lords of Manors in America, n.d.).

  The sell-off: For land sales 1652–1733, see Barbara Schwartz and Mac Griswold, in cooperation with the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the Shelter Island Historical Society, “Shelter Island, New York, Land Acquisition and Dispersal, 1652–1733,” 2000, typescript, SIHS.

  continued to live on the North Fork: Rev. Jacob E. Mallmann, Historical Papers on Shelter Island and Its Presbyterian Church (Shelter Island: Shelter Island Public Library, 1985 reprint. First published New York: A. M. Bustard, 1899), 39–40.

  no town government was set up: Until 1666, when the island was confirmed as a manor, Shelter Islanders had recorded deeds in Southold and attended that town’s annual meetings, but they had no voting privileges.

  commanded the handful: Mallmann, Historical Papers on Shelter Island, 39–40. In November 1683 the island was set off as a township, but no action was taken to form a government until 1730, when it was forced to do so by the act passed on July 12, 1729.

  “Mr. Silvester’s island”: The Diary of Joshua Hempstead, 206. By the time Brinley regained his confirmed possession of property on Shelter Island in 1735, the island had been incorporated as a town in 1730. Without insisting on any manorial rights per se, Brinley nonetheless became de facto “lord of the manor,” serving in local and regional positions all his life.

  The Sea Lions: Cooper probably visited the Nicoll family at Sachem’s Neck. Wayne Franklin, author of James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pers. comm. 2005.

  in 1735, the verdict: “Wednesday Oct 22nd, 1735, Brinley Sylvester ag. Patrick Lithgow ex dem [on the demise of] Wm Nicoll … On Motion of Mr. Murray the Court gives Judgement for the plaintiff for four fifths of the Tenements in the Declaration,” New York Supreme Court of Judicature Minute Book: March 13, 1732/33–October 23, 1739, p. 189, Municipal Archives, New York City; Dwight, Ruth, vs. Sylvester Brinley, Feb. 1735, Supreme Court Judgments, P-216B-1 (Ruth Dwight was William Nicoll’s mistress and mother of John Nicoll, William’s illegitimate son, who would have inherited the manor had Nicoll won the case), New York Judgment Index Retrieval System; “Legal documents: Patrick Lithgow, Heir to William Nicoll, Son and Heir to Benjamin Nicoll vs Brinley Sylvester,” SMA, NYU I/140/36, 37; legal opinion, B. Sylvester v. Wm. Nicoll 1735, GSDD 15.

  Nicoll: William Smith Pelletreau, A History of Long Island: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1905), 2:234–36.

  the last nineteenth-century Indian: “Church Records of the Presbyterian Church Shelter Island N.Y. 1806–65 inclusive,” “Records of Deaths: BettyToby [sic] Ceaser AE 75 February 2 an Indian woman 1834.” SIHS 2004.59.

  “a very handsome man”: Lodowick Havens’s (1774–1854) undated memoir quotes Mrs. Nicoll Havens, Desire Brown Havens (1744–1828), who could have remembered Brinley Sylvester from childhood. More likely her description is a composite memory, compiled from other Shelter Islanders’ recollections. Lodowick Havens, Journal, n.d., SIHS.

  “rhone [roan] stallion”: October 28, 1745, entry for £139.10.6 to Capt. Nath. Pollan. Shelter Island Account Book 1738–46 (Brinley Sylvester), East Hampton Library.

  multiple positions: He served variously as supervisor, assessor, clerk, and overseer of the poor: as clerk and overseer in 1738, 1740, 1743; as clerk and supervisor in 1744, 1745, 1746, 1749; and as clerk and assessor in 1750, 1752, the year of his death. Mallmann, Historical Papers, 155.

  “investigate the complaints of Indians at Montauk”: NY Col. Mss 68:151.

  “pieces of Gould”: Record for October 9, 1745: cash paid to Brinley Sylvester by Matthew Steward of New London for “6 Ram Lambs” includes these currencies as well as bills of “New England money.” Shelter Island Account Book 1738–146, East Hampton Library.

  convulsions: Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), 22.

  “Newtonian stratosphere”: Christopher Hill, “God and the English Revolution,” in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, vol. 2, Religion and Politics in 17th-Century England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 333.

  “this amiable shepherd”: Frances M. Caulkins, Memoir of the Rev. William Adams, of Dedham, Mass., and of the Rev. Eliphalet Adams, of New London, Conn. (Cambridge, MA: Metcalf and Company, 1849), 47.

  “Guinea trade”: Sarah Deutsch, “The Elusive Guineamen: Newport Slavers, 1735–74,” NEQ 55, no. 2 (June 1982): 229–53.

  “Only a few of New England’s merchants”: Bernard Bailyn, “Slavery and Population Growth, in Colonial New England,” in Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England, ed. Peter Temin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 256.

  “I want to make Sum money”: Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, to “my Dear Kinsman,” November 1, 1750, Dinkel Coll.

  The sloop Hampton: James Truslow Adams, History of the Town of Southampton (East of Canoe Place) (Bridgehampton, NY: Hampton Press, 1918), 141.

  “Beachman’s Drops”: Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, to Joel Bowditch, December 6, 1745. Shelter Island Account Book, 1738–46, East Hampton Library.

  “the Best of Tarr”: Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, to “my Dear Kinsman,” November 1, 1750, Dinkel Coll.; George Berkeley, Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Enquiries Concerning the Uses of Tar-Water (London, 1744, reprinted Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2008).

  “rum”: Draft by Col. Geo. Bennett of Jamaica (British West Indies) on? (Mr. Brinley Sylvester), directing money payable to him on account, to be paid to Richard Bill, Boston Merchant (Bennett’s Boston agent). Discharged June 17, 1720. East Hampton Library.

  James Fanning: June 2, 1739, Shelter Island Account Book 1738–46, East Hampton Library.

  “the genteel ideal”: Bushman, Refinement of America, 25.

  largest entry: The number may have been somewhat greater or less, since the breakdown of men, women, children, and the aged or infirm is unknown. Sales were computed in different currencies: when Joshua Hempstead of New London sold a young black woman in Southold for £90, in 1735 the amount was perhaps paid in printed currency of lesser value, such as the money of Connecticut or New York, not sterling. Inventory of the Estate of Brinley Sylvester, Esq., May 9, 1753, East Hampton Library; Hempstead, Diary, 287; see George Mumford of New London, September 1, 1756, lists fourteen slaves by name, sex, age, and valuation for a total of £426. Inventory of the Estate of George Mumford; New London 1756 Probate Files #3779.

  the average price for a slave: Moss, “Slavery on Long Island,” Table VI, 73.

  to inflict punishment: Moss, Slavery on Long Island, 147, 155–57; Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color, 117–23.

  “the visitations of God”: New-York Weekly Journal, January 5, 17
35/6, quoted by McManus, Black Bondage in the North, 91.

  The code: Sources for this paragraph include Moss, “Slave Laws, Slave Reactions: Island Slaves Under the Law,” chap. 4 in “Slavery on Long Island,” 147–202; McManus, “The Law and Order of Slavery” and “Life at the Bottom,” chaps. 5 and 6 in Black Bondage in the North, 72–107; Higginbotham, “The Early New York Experience,” chap. 4, section 2 in In the Matter of Color, 114–35; and Lepore, “The Tightening Vise,” 59–89.

  these two wedding gifts: The 1915 gift of General Sylvester Dering II to the Metropolitan Museum of Art included a 1690–1700 covered porringer (Acc. #15.98.3 a,b); two Vernon porringers, (Acc. #15.98.1) dated 1720–35 and (Acc. #15.98.2) dated 1700–30; and a tankard (Acc. #15.98.4) dated 1705–15.

  “of Newport”: The ties with Newport strengthened again as the Sylvesters’ daughters grew up; they were sent to Boston for their education, but “resided a part of the time at Newport, for the education of his [sic] two only daughters Margaret and Mary.” “Narrative of the life of Thomas Dering,” unknown (mailed from Utica, New York), Oct. 19, n.d., to Eliza P. Brumley and R. Brumley Esq., Seamans Savings Bank, Wall St., New York, Dinkel Coll.

  Brinley had his dog shipped: William Sanford, Newport, to Brinley Sylvester, Southold, August 5, 1719. Dinkel Coll.

  agreement with Nicoll: Suffolk County Deeds Liber B, part 1: 169. See also Schwartz and Griswold, “Shelter Island, New York, Land Acquisition and Dispersal,” Map 4 and List of Residents in 1708.

  affidavits: Colonel Francis Brinley, Roxbury, to Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, March 14, 1720, GSDD 1:11, SIHS.

  ejectment: Receipt, Brinley Sylvester to William Smith, Oct. 1, 1727, Newport, for actions of ejectment, for £4, East Hampton Library; Receipt, Brinley Sylvester to David Corey for William Nicoll for £182.12.3, October 11, 1736, for two actions of ejectment brought by William Nicoll, SMA, NYU I/A/140/37.