The Manor

by Mac Griswold

  “Mrs. Sylvester came from the west end”: Lodowick Havens, Journal, SIHS.

  The inventory: Inventory of the Estate of Brinley Sylvester.

  murdered: Moss, Slavery on Long Island, 147–49.

  “be Dilgent”: Mary Sylvester, Shelter Island, to Margaret Sylvester, in Boston, December 8, 1737; Chlo: Brinley Sylvester to Margaret Sylvester Chesebrough, December 5, 1749, Dinkel Coll.; earthquake: Mary Sylvester to Margaret Sylvester, December 8, 1737, Dinkel Coll.

  “what God is a bout”: Mary Sylvester to daughter, probably Margaret Sylvester, in Boston, December 8, 1737, Dinkel Coll.

  “the Melancholy tidings”: Brinley Sylvester to Margaret Sylvester Chesebrough, December 5, 1749, Dinkel Coll.

  “a Jugg of Sweet Cream”: Mary Burroughs Sylvester to daughter, probably Margaret Sylvester, in Boston, December 8, 1737, Dinkel Coll.

  “Butter Cups”: Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, to Captain Wiggins, Shelter Island, November 2, 1750; Adams’s wig: John Cotton to Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, June 13, 1748, Dinkel Coll.

  “I am very sorry”: Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, to Margaret Chesebrough, Newport, June 22, 1750, Dinkel Coll.

  A “linnen wheel”: Brinley’s inventory lists four spinning wheels for linen and three for wool, a measure of the importance of textiles to the manor economy. William Conoll (perhaps “Connolly”) applied to Brinley in 1741 for work as a weaver and for lodging. Given the number of wheels, it seems likely that Connoll, or another weaver, was employed to weave what the household spun. William Conoll to Brinley Sylvester, June 22, 1741, East Hampton Library.

  the “Dorey”: Inventory of the Estate of Brinley Sylvester.

  “He was a most tender Husband”: Rev. William Throop, “A Sermon on the Death of Brinley Sylvester” (Boston, 1753), 8. The biblical reference is to Proverbs 11:17: “The merciful Man doth Good to his own Soul.”

  “dear departed friend”: William Adams, New London, to Thomas Dering, Boston or Newport, January 23, 1761, Sylvester Dering Letter Collection #2012.302.1–8, SIHS.

  “We are sorry”: Thomas Hutchinson, Boston, to Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, July 27, 1742, Dinkel Coll.

  “a Piece of Skill”: Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, Oct. 1701–May 1745 (New York: Henry Holt, 1885), 360; Charles W. Baird, Chronicle of a Border Town: History of Rye, Westchester County, New York, 1660–1870 (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1871), 166. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=qXsVAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-qXs-VAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1.

  “She is with us”: Dr. John Smith, Rye, to Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, April 3, 1744, Dinkel Coll.

  “grows very fleshy”: “Given such patchy information, it’s almost impossible for us to diagnose Mary’s ailment. Late-onset bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia? Perhaps an organic syndrome such as Cushing’s disease (‘she grows very fleshy’)?” Dr. Anna Fels, pers. comm., May 25, 2009.

  “wait with patience”: Smith, Dr. John, Rye, to Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, May 28, 1744, Dinkel Coll.

  “supernatural drama”: Mary Ann Jimenez, “Madness in Early American History: Insanity in Massachusetts 1700–1830,” Journal of Social History 20 (1986): 29.

  “seton”: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Derangement in the Family: The Story of Mary Sewall, 1824–25,” Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings 1990, 168–84. Also, Virginia Bernhard, “‘Cotton Mather’s Most Unhappy Wife’: Reflections on the Uses of Historical Evidence,” NEQ 60, no. 3 (1987): 341–62; Elizabeth Prendergast Carlisle, Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Life at Forty Acres (1747–17) (New York: Scribner, 2004), 98–101.

  “the dark room”: For the mentally ill, “a strict regimen, a total confinement from all company … sometimes to a dark room, severe discipline and subjection to a degree of fear and some medicine [were recommended as] the most effective ways of treating such a person.” “Letter from Robert Treat Paine to Joseph Palmer about Mr. Leonard’s Mental Illness,” September 1762, MHS, Boston, quoted in Jimenez, “Madness in Early American History,” 32.

  tried hard: “Madness seems not to have been viewed as a permanent state in eighteenth-century Massachusetts; rather it was seen as episodic. When a person who was once mad acted normally, he seems to have been treated as a sane person, not as a latent lunatic.” Jimenez, “Madness in Early American History,” 27.

  “Your poor mother”: Brinley Sylvester, Shelter Island, to Margaret Chesebrough, Newport, June 22, 1750, and December 5, 1749, Dinkel Coll.

  “an agreeable woman”: B. Sylvester, Shelter Island, to Andrew Oliver, Boston, August 18, 1752, East Hampton Library.

  left to tenants: First to a Thomas Fanning of Southold, then to his brother, Phineas, of Laurel, near Riverhead.

  17. THE DOORS

  “fantastic nightgowns”: Horace Walpole, quoted by Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (New York: Viking, 1978), 58.

  loves both portraits: Joseph Blackburn, “Mary Sylvester” (1754), MMA 16.68.2, and “Mrs. David Chesebrough” (1754), MMA 16.68.3, gifts of General Sylvester Dering II in 1916.

  black-and-white photo: The photograph is included in the SMA, NYU.

  the Dering brothers’ firm to fail: Thomas Dering was forced to mortgage his wife’s half of the Sylvester estate to London merchants Lane & Booth; he rented the other half from his brother-in-law, David Chesebrough, who was initially unwilling to have the Derings as tenants because he feared the rent would never be paid. Margaret Chesebrough tried to prevent such a sale and evidently was successful. The mortgage “was after his death discharged by his children.” Mr. Jacobson (of Lane & Booth), London, to Thomas and Henry Dering, Boston, April 21, 1762, Sylvester Dering Letter Collection, SIHS 2012.302.1–8; contract: Thomas Dering and Mary Dering, Shelter Island, with Thomas Lane and Benjamin Booth, May 23, 1767, Gen Sylvester Dering Docs. 21, “for one equal undivided half part of all that certain Farm … on the said Shelter Island”; Margaret Chesebrough, Newport, to Thomas Dering (Boston?) April 6, 1762, Sylvester Dering Letter Coll. “Narrative of the life of Thomas Dering,” Dinkel Coll.

  Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: Thomas Paine, Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, etc. (Philadelphia: R. Bell, Jan. 10, 1776), SMA, NYU, Spec. Coll. E211, p. 1235, 1776b.

  new American government: L’Hommedieu served in many positions throughout his life; Dering was a delegate to the New York Provincial Convention, which adopted the Declaration of Independence passed by the Provincial Congress on July 4, 1776. After the battle of Long Island, like many other Long Islanders, he was granted a leave of absence to go home to look after his affairs. “Narrative of the Life of Thomas Dering,” Dinkel Coll.

  “colonial dark ages”: Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; first paperback ed. 2001), 7.

  L’Hommedieu: Elizabeth van Beek, “Ezra L’Hommedieu (Aug. 30, 1734–Sept. 27, 1811),” http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00487.html?a=1&n=Ezra%20L%27Hommedieu&d=10&ss=0&q=1.

  William Floyd: Eugene R. Fingerhut, “William Floyd (Dec. 17, 1734–Aug. 4, 1821, http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00290.html?a=1&n=William%20Floyd&d=10&ss=0&q=1.

  spent his own money: Van Beek, “Ezra L’Hommedieu.”

  “developed novel arguments”: See Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society and Politics in Colonial America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 153.

  “The institutional disruptions”: Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven, 153.

  young missionary friend: Thomas Dering, Shelter Island, to Charles Jeffrey Smith, June 18, 1767, Dinkel Coll. Smith was a protégé of the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock, who founded Dartmouth College.

  George Whitefield: George Whitefield, Boston, to Thomas Dering, Shelter Island, May 2, 1764, Dinkel Coll.

  political and intellectual Boston circles: “Mr. Dering who … was early informed of all that w
as there [Boston] going on took a decided stand for Liberty and a deep interest in the establishment of our independence.” “Narrative life of Thomas Dering,” Dinkel Coll.

  “O poor New England!”: Boyd Stanley Schlenther, “Whitefield, George (1714–70)” (ODNB, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29281.

  “the Most alarming News”: Thomas Fosdick, New London, to Nicoll Havens, Shelter Island, April 27, 1775, Dinkel Coll.

  “whatever Measures may be recommended”: “Shelter Island Declaration of Independence”: Printed form for the New York State “General Association … subscribed by the Freeholders, etc.,” May 1775, reproduced in Mallmann, Historical Papers, 64; original, SIHS, 1974.81.1.

  Connecticut was held: New London, and some other towns such as Fairfield, were destroyed. Suffolk County Historical Society Register 4, no. 3 (Dec. 1978): 41–56, 47–48.

  twenty-one cartloads of goods: Frederic Gregory Mather, The Refugees of 1776 from Long Island to Connecticut (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon, 1913), 248, 369, 744–49, https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=fId2AAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-fId2AAAAMAAJ&rdot=1.

  more than three thousand British troops: Mather, Refugees of 1776, 176.

  they fired without warning: Diary of Ebenezer Miller of Miller Place, Long Island, New York, 1762–68, ed. Margaret Davis Gass and Willis H. White (Miller Place, NY: W. H. White, 1996), 3.

  In the usual way of occupiers: For the war and its aftermath on Long Island and Shelter Island, see Mather, Refugees of 1776; Gaetano L. Vincitorio, “The Revolutionary War and Its Aftermath in Suffolk County, Long Island,” LIHJ 7, no. 1 (Fall 1994): 68–85; Helen Otis Lamont, The Story of Shelter Island in the Revolution (Shelter Island, NY: Shelter Island Historical Society, 1975); and Sylvester Dering’s 1779 correspondence with his father, Sylvester Dering Letter Coll.

  “We … are returned”: Sylvester Dering, Shelter Island, to Mrs. Ann Monk, July 15, 1783, East Hampton Library.

  wood cut on the property: “Account of Wood Taken, British Forces Rhode Island to Thomas Dering 3,500 cords of wood £1400, 1783,” GSDD, 30, and “Memorial S. Dering to Sir Guy Carlton, for wood 1783,” GSDD, 34.

  “three thousand cords of wood”: Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, ed. Barbara Miller Solomon, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 3:214.

  Up the Connecticut River Valley: Amelia F. Miller, Connecticut River Valley Doorways: An Eighteenth-Century Flowering, An Illustrated and Annotated Checklist of 220 Doorways (Boston: Boston University for the Dublin Seminar of New England Folklife, 1983), introduction, 14, and “Checklist of Doorways.” 48, 56, 57, 60, and 106. Many of the scroll-pedimented doorways noted were added to earlier houses between 1749 and 1795, with the 1750s and 1760s the decades favored for their construction.

  “Tea Table,” and the “6 Teaspoons and Tongs”: Inventory of the Estate of Brinley Sylvester.

  the local historian Ralph G. Duvall: The History of Shelter Island, 53.

  “so the paper”: Griswold Papers, Fales Library, NYU.

  “There are carpenter’s marks”: Griswold Papers, Fales Library, NYU.

  Duvall had also written: Duvall, History of Shelter Island, 53.

  “historic research”: “Historic Structure Report, Progress Report, June 15, 2001,” and Robert Hefner, “Sylvester Manor: Brinley Sylvester’s c.1737 House, 80 North Ferry Road, Shelter Island, N.Y,” Historic Structure Report, Architecture Component, prepared for Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, Inc., March 2013.

  the tactical masterpiece: Terry Golway, Washington’s General: Nathanael Greene and the Triumph of the American Revolution (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), 241.

  “Are you going”: Griswold Papers, Fales Library, NYU.

  18. FAMILY AND SLAVERY

  papers: Records of the sale (1827) and the settlement (1828) between Samuel S. Gardiner and Esther Dering. SMA, NYU III/A/4/46/12; Liber K Ass’t Clerk’s Book, 144–47, Riverhead, NY.

  the 1,312-acre farm: In 1796 Henry Packer Dering released half of the acreage of the manor to Sylvester, apparently in exchange for land of equal value in Montgomery County, New York. Contract, S. Dering with Henry P. Dering re estate settlement 1792, GSSD 42, Contract, Henry P. Dering to S. Dering, release of land 1796, GSSD 46.

  public auction: For the sale in chancery 20 Oct. 1827, see Suffolk County Liber K Ass’t Clerk’s Book, 144–47.

  Mrs. L’Hommedieu: She detailed the debts owed to her, to the estate of Ezra L’Hommedieu (her late husband), and to Samuel Smith Gardiner (her son-in-law) as well as some notes on the auction and on sales from her husband’s estate such as Robins Island. SMA, NYU II/C/2/29/24.

  the Nicoll family: Patricia Shillingberg, pers. comm., Sept. 21, 2012.

  the family rift: The matter remains unresolved. See Charles T. Dering testimony, Supreme Court proceeding, “In the matter of the appeal of Samuel S. Gardiner from the admeasurment of the dower of Esther Sarah Dering widow,” May 19, 1828, SMA, NYU III/A/4/46/12; Liber K Ass’t Clerk’s Book, 144–47, Riverhead, New York.

  Thomas Dering’s 1786 probate inventory: “An Inventory and Apprisement of the Personal Estate of Thomas Dering Late Deceased, This 2nd Day of June 1786 by Ezra L’Hommedieu Esq. Mr. James Howell & Mr. William Bowditch.” Shelter Island NY Papers Acquired Dec. 12, 1993, Queens Borough Public Library.

  Comus was purchased: Hepzibah Edwards, Boston/Marshfield?, to Thomas Dering, Shelter Island, n.d., between Dec. 1762, the date of the Derings’ arrival on Shelter Island, and July 1765, when Comus is listed in an inventory. Sylvester Dering Letter Coll., SIHS.

  “as you say nothing of Comas”: Ibid.

  “Dear Brother I must tel you”: Margaret Chesebrough, Newport, to Thomas Dering, Boston, April 6, 1762, Sylvester Dering Letter Coll., SIHS.

  “Dear Coz”: Hepzibah Edwards, Boston, to Thomas Dering, Shelter Island, October 22, n.d., but after Dec. 1762 and before July 1765. Dinkel Coll., SIHS.

  “Inventory of Personal effects”: A Comus, Cato, Judith, Matilda, a man, London, and a “negro male child,” London, were listed in 1765; absent from the list in 1786 is “a man, London,” who apparently had died; London, the child, had by then become “a young negro Man”; “Negro woman Hagar” was retained by Thomas Dering’s widow as her property in 1787. “Inventory of Goods of Thomas Dering,” July 12, 1765, Long Island History Room, East Hampton Library; “Mary Sylvester Dering, List of Goods retained from the estate,” GSSD 41.

  The season began with currants: List of trees and flowers in bloom on Shelter Island, 1797, 1799, 1804, probably compiled by Mary Catherine Havens L’Hommedieu, wife of Ezra L’Hommedieu and sister of Esther Sarah Havens, wife of the then owner of the manor, Sylvester Dering. SMA, NYU, Record Group II, Series B, Subseries 9, Box 28, Folder 23.

  “English cherries”: See The Diaries of Augustus Griffin, 1792–1852, ed. Fredrika Wachsberger (Orient, NY: Oysterponds Historical Society, 2009), 93; Lilian Horsford Farlow, “Memories of Samuel Smith Gardiner” (June 1923), SIHS L.S.F. Names/Gardiner.

  “yielded under a skillful husbandry”: Dwight, Travels in New England and New York, 3: 215.

  first Federal Census: Helen Otis Lamont, The Story of Shelter Island in the Revolution (Shelter Island, NY: SIHS, 1975), 61; First Census of the United States, 1790, New York, “Names of Heads of Families, Queens County to Westchester County, Shelter Island Town,” 165.

  Presbyterian church: A strict hierarchy based on wealth and status—as well as race—was observed in the assignment of pews. Comus was also baptized on his admission. “Church Records of the Presbyterian Church Shelter Island N.Y. 1806–65,” SIHS 2004.57, Book Box 49.

  “Among other possessions”: Mallmann, Shelter Island and Its Presbyterian Church, 59–60.

  The subtext is resistance: The historian William D. Pierson writes that for such jokes to work, “the slaves had to communicate the foolishness of the white position by using the master class’s own logic against it,” and also notes that since “
West Africans traditionally used proverbs both in legal argument and as a rhetorical device in resolving family and village controversies, we should understand the use of proverbial wisdom by black bondsmen before the bar of New England public opinion to be a continuation of an African form of resistance to injustice.” Piersen, Black Yankees, 156, 147.

  Comus’s African American dialect: For an early-eighteenth-century New England exchange between whites, blacks, and an Indian in which all “speak Negro,” see Knight, “The Journal of Madam Knight,” 63–64; for African immigrants’ need to create their own lingua franca as a language distinguished from that of their captors, see “Talking Half African,” in Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 154–85.

  “secure approval”: Moss, Slavery on Long Island, 77–78.

  The legislative progress of emanicipation: http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/PDFs/Laws_Affecting_Blacks_in_Manhattan.pdf and Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color, 128–50.

  “Few enslaved people got free”: Sweet, Bodies Politic, 227.

  “Sparks of Compassion”: Sweet, Bodies Politic, 141, quoting an unnamed Rhode Islander, in the United States Chronicle, Jan. 29, 1784.

  the central problem of race relations: Sweet, Bodies Politic, 228.

  three generations: Samuel and Mary Gardiner, E. N. and Mary Horsford (and Phoebe Horsford, second wife of Eben), Cornelia Horsford. On January 22, 1811, Sylvester Dering sent Dido, mother of Julia, to Ezra L’Hommedieu for medical treatment for her child, possibly Julia, who is “very much afflicted with sores about her neck.” SMA, NYU II/B/1/3/4.

  an 1887 magazine article: Lamb, “The Manor of Shelter Island,” 361–89.

  Captain Phineas Fanning: Will of Phineas Fanning (1724–96), Suffolk County Wills, Liber A 460–61;Walter Frederic Brooks, History of the Fanning Family: A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Edmund Fanning, 2 vols. (Worcester, MA, 1905), 1:147, 148. Phineas Fanning rented Sylvester Manor, 1760–62, immediately before the Derings moved to the island.