what happens to poetry. that's his call too. we don't just need wars or the information of native people to be history. .. who left emily dickinson and longfellow. so there we are.

>> thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's website, brendawineapple.com. book tv continues with mac griswold to get he presents a history on a mansion built in 1962 and owned by the same quaker family for 11 generations. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you for coming and many thanks to those of you that the suffering in the sun. soon the shade of the copper beech will shade too

this is a great -- this is a site specific book and this is the site of

convergence because all of you are setting, standing on one of the most important and historic places in north america. because here, just right on the ground africans and europeans and american indian people came together and really began to work together to create an american civilization and in american society. really this is one of the first times that this happened. it's happening here and under this ground the archaeologically investigation has shown evidence of the way these three cultures came together. so it's an exciting thing to be welcoming mac's book back to this site. and she, of of historians and scholars that i've worked with over many years has a profound sense of sight and place. as you have heard, she has gathered material from this for

archives on four continents and brought together an extraordinary kind of learning. but the thing that makes her unique is her ability to see and to capture in her eyes a sense of how the landscapes work. is it is a great pleasure for me to be here today and to share with you the convergence of this book and the site. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much for that great praise. he used the operative word see. towards the end of my talk today i want you to see the people that walked here. i want them to rise up out of the ground or rode their way in the inlet. after i finish talking and when you've brought your book, i want you to walk around and have cliche to go with you because they are here to be the that's

why i call the stock visible and invisible. it's the only place i can do this talk. can you all hear me? good. as the shelter island in new york what is visible? a serving 18th-century house in its landscape whose owners played on a double roles in the revolutionary war and in the civil war. they built this house -- can you still hear me, i am i doing all right? they built this fun house only the second one on the site. it's a rambling comfortable dwelling that was extended back northward in the late 18th century and in the 19th century from the zero original applicant house, new port stifel which is the center block with the hip roof and the two big chinese. the pillars were added in 1908

as was the front door. so, what do we know about what we see? the sylvesters raised their children whose 11th generation inherited property in 2006. the husbanded their crops in the fields that still belong to this place, 243 acres. they poured candles, they planted gardens, and they planted and cut down trees. one of them corresponded with thomas jefferson about a common wheat past. the around the great grandfather clocks that still stand in the hall. it time and kept time for them through the years. the embroidered bed hangings and churned butter which they sold as newport rhode island even down to barbados. imagine eating butter that had made a six week trip. they spun and wove cloth and wrote down their own recipe for

shoe polish. all the details of the life that we have come to appreciate as americans. as the centuries passed, they invested wisely in the new american ventures. the erie canal in the railroads, and off the coast of south america. they toasted each other from the tinker's now when the metropolitan museum of art, which was purchased with the money made from their successful economic adventures. it now what is in visible is equally a part of our national history. sylvester manor is a cradle of slavery as richard said it became natural system. suez new england throughout the south as far west as texas. in 1680, nathaniel sylvester in english and brought up in amsterdam and his english wife counted 24 people as their

property. the largest number in the north of the time, 11 men and women and 13 children. many have african names and others had creel names such as chiuaro that tells you they had come from other places besides africa. the and then transported to the west indies or to brazil to where this could be a man of french origin, the ending tells you it probably has a hispanic connotation. conjure with it as you like to read. the labor produced the first well for the sylvester's from the west indies sugar trade. on shelter island they tended hogs and cattle. the bride and a broken horses to power the sugar mills and cut tree is to shape to make tasks which were really the shopping bags of the day.

you couldn't do anything with sugar unless you had a barrel to put it in. you couldn't do anything with rahm allows you have a barrel to put it in or anything with molasses unless you had a barrel to put it in. the staves that were cut here were shut down, which means that they were separated into all of their many parts. shipped aboard out of this tiny harbor, off to a bigger harbor at the head where there's 47 feet of water and where the big ships lay off to be loaded with all the provisions to go down to the west indies and to come back with all the sugar product and with the slaves that landed at the site of the water landing right there. go down and take a look. is that ? good. okay. it doesn't matter. so sugar, molasses and rum came back to the manner to new england and was also shipped to europe. sylvester was an experiment in

early global capitalism, and was a successful one. the first sylvesters that brought the island as a business proposition, not as a home, had credit in the markets of amsterdam and london. governor john with rot jr. of connecticut borrowed 400-pound sterling from nathaniel's brother who lived in london in 1661. when when drop kuran short of cash he was reading for the patent that would give him his colony of connecticut which to us would come as a shock as it did to me when i first realized it in the quiet friends library in london, the society of france was the sylvester's face. they were among the first handful of quakers in the world that believed in the inter life, the sanctity and the worth of individual worship. how could they have held, bought and sold human beings as slaves?

the answer is very simple. for nearly a century after the quaker founder george fox received his first fiery vision from the lord, the friends, like everyone else who could do so, held slaves. in 1758, the meeting was the first to outlaw slavery among its own members. by then, the silvester's were no longer quakers but they were still slaveholders. and they remained so until 1820 - london, was his name, london, the last person that held a perpetual bondage. slavery was ended in new york state in 1827. only 34 years before the nation was split by the civil war in 1861. though slavery as a system disappeared, the huge shadows of prejudice, economic disparity and governmental and justice remain today. take a look at north carolina

voting walls voted in on thursday. in my years of research, i have come across many that have locked on this ground in my research and i would like to conjure up a few of them in this afternoon as i have done in the book. look that way and you will see 1654 p and 17 other members were coming here to witness the deed for a piece of land in the oyster bay. they were wearing an amalgamation of both european and native american costumes. he was a tall man that carried himself well and he's coming out to meet nathaniel mosul tester so standing rather nervously right there. that is a lot of upstanding and outstanding native americans for him to meet on his own soil.

so down there is mary by year. how many people know who mary didier is? raise your hand. okay, mary was the english woman who was a quaker and what was called a public friend. and she came here in 1659 when the quakers were being persecuted in boston by the puritans. and this place was a haven for the quakers. they held slaves and they also protected their friends as they were married from new haven to say long and on to boston. mary is down there and thinking about whether she should go back to boston from which she had been banished. eventually she climbed into a little boat may be the same that you see on the back cover of my book. and she sailed off to boston. and nathaniel and grizell knew

she was going to her death and she did, too. she was hanged in may of 1660 and she was hanged from the gallows when the wind blew through her skirt -- very weird to have a woman hanged -- when the wind blew through her skirt and shivered a little bit in the breeze somebody said she hangs like a flag. and some deals said she hangs like a flag for man to do justice by. as that happened it was the last of the hangings in boston. now, over there by the farm, which you may have seen as you came in a walking through the garden. you may have seen some big farm buildings there is obium, african name, young man standing here maybe 15, 16-years-old and is hearing the news that as a division of 1680 of all the

possessions of nathaniel sylvester he's going to be shipped to boston, away from his community and away from all his friends. so he goes to boston and the only way -- because his life is hard to parse out -- the only way that we know he tried to free himself is from a tiny dry note and an account book that says "1 pound sterling pays for the horse that obium ran away with." think this through. what is a young black man on a horse witold lead doing it? someone is going to stop him coming and they did. they captured him and they took him to oyster bay, l.i., and there he met a woman called rose. he stayed in slavery for the rest of his life. he got some time after 1757 a long life, 1680 come 1757.

they were moving forward now. and rose and obium's sun is the first published african-american poet to read so the ties that stretch out from this place not just from africa and europe, but also on to the muscle of the country are pretty remarkable. mary kissell tester -- sylvester. be quiet for a minute because also besides the voice of the tour guide, you will also hear the voice of mary sylvester screaming asking where her children are. where are my children. underneath the genteel house and behind the image of this lovely woman in the 1740's and 50's is the figure of madness. she was so ill that for the age

when most people would have stayed at home with their families, no matter how crazy they were, barry was taken off to westchester county and institutionalized. she came back home and treatment was of no use. she died in 1750. and i found this out only in a sermon published about her husband, brinley sylvester who was a love the husband. he wrote letters to his daughters who were not living on the house island anymore and you see how much he cared about this madwoman. he would fight to his daughter's your mother is not well. and you can see from the institutional records what that actually meant. although we don't know what it is that she suffered from. so there she was in her dress,

and in the house we are lucky to know about all the rooms and what was in them. and in one small space about twice the size of the carpet, which is called the dark room in the inventory you find a cheaper bed, but not the cheapest kind of bed. it would have been a bed for a valued house slave were given the treatment program of the time, it could have been married sylvester's bed where she was incarcerated in the dark. there was no window. so what was suitable for a slave was also suitable for a madwoman. think about that. speeding along. thomas is walking over the peninsula and was a free man and

he had the last name. he had been freed after the death of his owner in maryland and he was sold 21 acres of land on the north side of the island tend days before the man that sold the property fell off his horse and died. some things are lucky. he had paid this man who grew up in this house he paid him $750. a huge amount of money. we still don't know how in his earnings as a slave that happen quite frequently in the north by 1800 which is when he would have started amassing all this money we don't know how to make it but he had $750 up the creek who knows where the second bridge

is. raise your hand. okay it runs across the second bridge and just beyond is the most beautiful piece of land on the island. it has a beautiful view of the harbor and where the land was looking out the harbor. that is land the would cost a reputable dealer ship today $7.5 million. his daughter sold that land. she didn't have the education or the stature to realize she should hang onto that and pass on to a member of her family. so the white pillared houses on that property right now you'll find julia johnson as a centerpiece in the book and as an image on the spine. by the late 19th century, the

manner belonged to a man that was married into the family not once but twice. he fathered four daughters, she died, the wife coming and he married the sister, something that happened often in 19th century life. he was a professor, nutritional chemist. he made several fortunes, one of them the mines that i mentioned off the coast is byrd maneuvered off the coast of south america. and he invited the whole cambridge intelligence yet down here so under the beech tree is the great short story writer and they are walking hand in hand as they are writing a poem.

they were fond of celebrities and they even save what they called queen victoria's shoe. there is the murmurings in the shade at the peachtree. and last of all i come to the daughters, cornelia who owned the house in 1903 and who made it into the house that she always imagined. henry richardson who is the architect of the lincoln memorial? henry came and recorded what the house was as a was built and those papers along with ought of the papers are now at nyu where they are a part of the sylvester archive so that you can go there and see what the house is like,

when it was built and what he did to it which included. cornelia was one of those women that should have had a better education. she somehow transformed the manor. she was a single woman all her life of the time that it was like having one leg. this house more or less became her other leg. the person that i prefer is her sister who was a wonderful writer that made these sketches including one of julia haydon. lillian wrote a memoir of her grandfather samuel smith of the

gardiner family who lived here. she wrote a and 1921. so the sisters, cornelia in 1944 and lily and who died in 1927 brought this place into the 20th century. i'm going to read what she had to say about the manor in 1921. both cornelia and her sister occasionally felt burdened by the weight of history and by the disquieting suspicion some things might not have been exactly as they had imagined. they felt and the sorrow of learning about the instability that lies at the heart of all things. such emotions they have been out in slight gestures stirring the

supernatural magnetic strangeness of every visitor to the fields. lillian who observed, recorded and recalled more objectively than her sister her pencil sketches conned trusted with the impressionistic watercolors wrote in a memoir that she read aloud at the island historical society meeting. she told her she years as an eight or 9-year-old israel as a child that can make such fear. when she threw a pebble against the field and the spark flashed and then she smith case the might smell of what? we thought it was brimstone but her memoir went on it was the five-year of hell and we had discovered an entrance. we never played there again. we never spoke of it again. heaven or hell sylvester has

been both and i hope you'll read about it in the pages of my book. thank you so much. [applause] what am i doing? q&a. yes. so anybody that has questions, please come to the young lady in the striped shirt. i hope you have questions. speaking to the microphone and here comes the question. good. >> i will be happy to try to answer them. can you all hear her? [inaudible] >> it's on. my question is i have the book

and as i was going through the book i was kind of puzzled why you refer to native americans in the book as indians although in your talk use a native americans i'm just curious. >> i use a lot of usages and i use the new york times usage which changed about five years ago they began to call native americans indians. i have spoken to many of the people out here who are indigenous and they say they like being called indians. so i honor them. another question please.

>> you have to go back to the microphone. >> hello. i also have the book. i haven't finished yet, but i'm working on that. i'm curious this is an immense history and there's a lot of different stories that go with it that i'm sure you came across. i'm just wondering why you chose to focus so much or why you chose to write about slavery part of it. why did you choose that as the subject given the history of it? >> that is a wonderful question. thank you for asking. when i first came to this house i met andrew and i walked into the panel parlor and i said where does that door go and he said to the slaying of a staircase. this was 1984.

i certainly didn't know that the wealth established in new england and established throughout the nation was the work of many black hands. so i thought i was a story that was worth telling about this place. particularly as i looked at the accounts and inventories you would see people in that terrible shadowland of being both person where they would be in one document as negro, 35 pounds and in another document he or she might be called a name so my point was to look at the history and the beginnings of the many strands of the african strands that have made this place where it is today where we set.

thank you. yes. >> i know you did a lot of excavations. where were they? >> what is extraordinary is in the circle -- you okay? in the circle of steve who was the head of the team who dug here for nine years he put a spade in the ground or just the shovel. i don't know what it's called. it wasn't a trowell. what it came out to be what say him later stretching underneath most of the front lawn. so, amsterdam as we're nathaniel sylvester was raised and it seems as though that very highly nucleated kind of life that he lived in amsterdam on the canal

where he lived and his house was still there you can see these incredible of vertical houses and real lives life here was a vertical with the windows i don't want to make it more grammar but it was one of the 30 houses in this country at the time in the 16 sixties that had what was called a torch tower up the front so all of the richness that you find in the documents went in to the men. steve at one time said nothing is ever thrown away. and i think that is what the archaeology really showed. does that answer your question somewhat? >> can you address what the relationship of the family is and what it did and what was the

relationship that brought them here. >> a great question. thank you. in 1642 -- that's going back now, nathaniel's brother purchased his first plantation acreados. in 1646, nathaniel made a trip in august of that year when the current was turning to take the boats straight across to west africa and came back with slaves. at that time the planters were going through the sugar revolution when it began to turn barbados into the most profitable of all of the british colony's. so it year after year the people of barbados -- africans died on

barbados but they were replaced. they were never able until after 1838 they were never able to achieve a reproductive rate that meant people would reproduce on the island. so constant sylvester and nathaniel silvestre and their partners come a very well placed english man called thomas middleton who was on the committee for the foreign plantations you were over here on shelter island, they bought this place in 1651 for two reasons. if they bought it for the political instability because in 1651 the cavaliers and the roundheads were hard at work fighting each other on barbados even though he had his head chopped off in 1649 that they were still at it. so it looked like maybe constant and thomas middleton were going to be out of luck.

they thought let's have this island that doesn't cost much. it's only a quarter of a teaspoonful sugar per acre as opposed to the land on barbados at the same time which was i think a cup and a half. the first africans to arrive here for hannah and hope, their daughter hope, and they came as the property of grizell brinley as a portion so they were termed her property. is that helpful? so that is a connection that only lasted -- i will wrap up. it only lasted until the next generation from 1646 to 1651 wendi bobbit until 1680 when nathaniel who died.

there were other purchases of sugar, rum and africans after that but it wasn't a continuous trade. they drank a lot of rum and i drink it with her. [laughter] if there are no more questions -- okay. sorry. >> during their research did you find the instances of the master breeding with the slaves? >> i did not. i looked for it everywhere. i can't say that i'm sure hoke it occurred but given the likelihood i would say it is likely. i didn't find any. but all i can say. anybody else?

>> all right. [applause] i would like to say special thanks for this whole adventure that we have had this afternoon. you have done a marvelous job. so give yourself a hand too. [applause] thank you peery the dow was phenomenally and it's nice to see the sun has finally been beaten into submission and people move. it was wonderful. thank you for being here today. there is a loss in that this property is no longer being handed down in the same way that it has been since 52 but the advantage is that there is an organization here now that this dedicated to preserving to the

remaining 243 and making sure we don't lose another one. there is an organic farm that this plant here. we have history programming and plans to preserve the house and restorer the gardens. so while the history and the narrative comes to a sort of close and there is a loss in that there is something exciting about the future that we expect to hear from a long time. i invite you to come back. we are open alternate saturdays until that is too cold to do that. the book proves one thing in particular that there is a spiraling history that goes off in these incredible directions and we are looking forward to sharing the story with all of you in the future generations to come. thank you for today. please sign up for the book signing which is going to be

over here and she will be sitting graciously at the table and we look forward to signing books and please see us again and again thank you come mac. [applause] >> for more information, visit the author's website, macgriswold.com. >> most of us went to school at the time we heard sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. tell that to the holocaust museum guard murdered by a neo-nazi who is violent illusions were kept alive in his online community. tell that to the women who live in fear of being a great because it misogynistic phone line threat they see all the time. tell that to the kids that stay home from school because they are traumatized by the taunting

they received anonymously on line and tell that to tyler clementi who's the student that committed suicide because of a tweet but ridiculed him for being gay. the sticks and stones saying isn't true in the web sites, plater, youtube and facebook. and in fact in the online world, words and pictures and videos and online games are in affecting the global what tea fire riss of hate that is a threat to people and society. we wrote who viral hate continue nitze spread on the internet because the d manning, the greeting and spiraling content are not of the necessary byproduct of the freedom of expression. we believe that freedom of expression as important as it is, and it is, doesn't trump human dignity to the we wrote our book because we believe people shouldn't sit by when we

see the on-line attacks on people because they are different. the anti-defamation league, the 100-year-old institution where they are the national director and i chair the national civil rights committee has a mission to stop the defamation of the jewish people and to promote justice and fair treatment for all. as part of this mission, it has worked for years with an epidemic of online hate that without question is harming individuals and society. while certain aspects of internet eight have received international attention like cyber bullying, unfortunately the problem in general isn't high in the consciousness of the internet community and parents of educators and leaders. we believe the indifference to the growing and harmful problem meets the change. we care about these issues not just because we are civil rights activists and we have seen the effect of the attack physical

and verbal but this is also personal. he's a holocaust survivor from the place and time where propaganda is the accomplice to the death of millions. as he explains it, the holocaust didn't begin with the oven that began with words. at the global forum on last month we both explained the fire risk of heat is spreading the every day in ways hitler and his propaganda experts never could have imagined. he's been a towering figure in anti-semitism for decades whose involvement in fighting online heat is a natural and i am now an openly gay man happily married and my husband is in the audience. but a growing up i went through the degrading comments that were widely socially acceptable. heat speech on the internet covers a wide range of things

and as we explain in the book the internet has become a communications tool for extremists on the right and left. before the internet such people would meet down alleys and exchange their propaganda in plain brown wrappers and now with the push of a button and click of the mouse they can reach millions in seconds >> with harvard university press. what are some of the books that you are publishing this fall? >> we have a great tidal on the political philosophy title with emotion and this is of the great work she has been doing to talk about the role of the motion in the political society and how we

strive for the common good and the role of emotions and creating the society. >> she's with the university of chicago judge richard posner. >> it reflects on judging. this is a terrific book where the judge addresses the kind of state of judging and he is in particular it addresses the increasing complexity of judging and handling cases and how technological what chances impact of the role of judges and he addresses the cases i think the particular interests, the district of columbia case and gun rights and so it's a strong

book. >> is it an intellectual book or written for a general audience? >> the writing is very accessible and he is at this point in his career reflecting on his career in the cases and positions he has had it is meant for a general audience. >> what is one other book you want to share with us? >> we have an exciting book called the collaboration and we are looking forward to this book because he has gone through archives and found he is telling us story of the influence on hollywood working in the period of 1933 to 1940 and a couple strengths of the story and not just the influence of hollywood.

the market in the global market. the german market would have this kind of influence. the film houses the would be that general market could be influential of hitler not just enough market but having their representation in hollywood to the impact of the film's here in the united states and globally. that is a preview of the books of harvard university press this coming fall.