>> please let us know about book fairs and festivals in your area and will be happy to add them to our list. e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org. >> booktv continues now with mac griswold. he presents a history of a mansion on shelter island, new york, that was built in 1652 and owned by the same quaker family, the sylvester's, 411

generations. this is about 40 minutes. >> thank you all for coming. thanks, many thanks to those of you who are suffering in the sun. soon, the shade of copper beech will shade you gently. so i promise to speak long enough for that to happen. now, every endeavor like this that spans so many years is a collaborative effort, and we are very lucky you today to have richard rabinowitz they will come up and say a few words, because it is he and linda kaplan, both of the american history workshop, who pioneered the story of northern slavery, and particularly in new york, with the two great shows at the new york historical society. and so richard is going to set the context for just a minute, and then i'll come back on stage

and tell you about the book. [applause] >> i'm thrilled to be here with you today. this is a great day of convergence. this is a convergence of the book that has been growing for 20 years and has brought so many people and so much knowledge and so much wisdom together. it's also of course a celebration, this is really a site-specific book and this is a great site of convergence. all of you are sitting, standing on one of the most important historic places in north america. because here, just right on our grounds, africans and europeans and american indian people came together and really begin to work together to create an american civilization, and american society. in the first, this is one of the first times that this happens. it's happening right here, and

under this ground the archaeological investigation has shown evidences of the way these three cultures came together. so it's a very exciting thing to be welcoming max book back to this site. and she of all the historians and scholars that i've worked with over many years has such a profound sense of sight and out of place. and as you've heard, she has gathered material for this from 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 through her eyes a kind of sense of how landscapes work. so it's 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]

>> or a richard, thank you so much. now can he use the operative word see, and towards the end of my book today i want you to see five other people to walk you. i want them to rise up out of the ground, or row their way across this inlet. so after i finished talking and when you bought your book, i want you to walk around and have those shades to with you. because they are here. that's what i call this talk visible-invisible. it's the only place i can do this talk. can you all hemi? good. so on sylvester manor on shelter island in new york, what's visible? a serene, 18th century house in its landscape whose owners played honorable roles in the revolutionary war and in civil war. they build is fine house -- and you still hemi?

am i doing all right? they built this fine house, only the second one, on the site. it's a rambling, comfortable dwelling now that was extended northward in the late 18th century and then in the 19 century from the original applicant georgian house, newport style, which is the center block with a hip growth and the two big chimneys. -- hit the roof. that the houses were added in 1908 as was this little portico over the front door. so what do we know about what we see? the sylvester's raised their children whose 11th generation inherited the property in 2006. they husbanded their crops in the fields that still belong to this place, 243 acres. they poured kabul candles. they planted gardens, and they planted and cut down trees.

one of them correspond with thomas jefferson about a common weed past. they wound the great english grandfather clock that still stands in the whole. it has chimed and kept time for them through the years. the embroidered bed hangings. they churned butter which is sold as for newport, rhode island, and even down to barbados. imagine eating butter that had made a six week trip. they spun flax and wove cloth and they wrote down their own thrifty achy recipe for shoe polish, all the details of colonial life that we've come to appreciate as an american. and as the centuries passed they invested wisely a new american dangers. the erie canal, in railroads, and minds off the coast of south america. they toasted each other from the sober tankard, now the metropolitan museum of art, which was purchased with the money made from their successful economic adventures.

now, what's invisible is equally a part of our national history. sylvester manor is the cradle of the system of slavery, as richard said, that became a national system throughout new england as throughout the south, as far west as texas. in 1680, nathaniel sylvester, an englishman brought up in amsterdam, and his english wife, counted 24 people as their property, the largest number in the north at the time, 11 men and women, and 13 children. many had african names. others had three oh names such as -- which tells you they've come through other places besides africa. they have been transported to the west indies or to brazil. it could be a name of french origins, jocks, the oh in intel get it probably has some hispanic of the connotation,

conjure with it as you like. the slaves labor produced the first path of love for the sylvester's from the west in the sugar trade. on shelter island, they tended hawks and cattle to butcher for salt meat. a bread and throw courses to power the sugar mills, and cut trees to shape barrels to make tasks which were really the shopping bags of the day. you couldn't do anything with sugar and russia had a barrel to put it in to you couldn't do anything with rama and they shut a barrel to put it in. you couldn't d do anything witha less as lsu had a barrel to put again. the stakes that were cut to worship him which means they were separated into all the many parts, tidy, shipped aboard out of this tiny harbor off to a bigger harbor at deering had 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 products and with the slaves who landed probably at that site at the water landing, right there. go down and take a look. is that buying? oh, good, okay. doesn't matter. sugar, molasses and brown came back to the manner in new england and was also shipped to europe. sylvester manor was an experiment in early global capitalism. and it was a successful one. the first sylvester's who bought the entire island as a business proposition, not as a home, had credit in the markets of amsterdam and london. the governor of connecticut borrowed 400-pound sterling from nathaniel's brother who lived in london in 1661 when winthrop ran short of cash in london beauty was waiting for the wild patent

that would give him his colony of connecticut. what to us comes as a shock, as it did to me when i first realized it in a quiet friends of library in london, society of friends, was the sylvester safe. they were among the very first handful of quakers in the world. they believe in the inner light, the sanctity and word of individual worship. how could they have held, bot and sold human beings as slaves? the answer is very simple. for nearly a century after quaker founder george fox received his first fiery vision from the lord, the friends, like everyone else who could do so, health slaves, dealt in slaves. in 1758, the philadelphia meeting was the first to outlaw slavery among its own members. by then the sylvester were no longer quakers, but they were still slaveholders. they remain so until 1820 when

london, was his name, london, the last person they held in perpetual bondage, was released. slavery 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 injustice remain today. take a look at north carolina voting laws voted in on thursday. in my years of research i have come across many who walked on this ground in my research, and i like to conjure up a few of them for you this afternoon as i've done in the book. looked that way and you will see, 1654, he and 17 other members of the montauk were coming here to witness a deed for a piece of land in oyster bay. they are wearing an amalgamation

of european and native american costumes. one dance was a tall man who carried himself well, and he's coming up to meet nathaniel sylvester who is standing rather nervously right there. that's rather a lot of upstanding and outstanding native americans for him to meet on his own soil. so down there is mary dyer. how may people know who mary dyer is? raise your hands. okay. mary dyer was the englishwoman 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, yes, but they also protected the quaker friend as they were carried from south pole in new haven to salem and on the boston. mayor -- mary dyer is dan and she's thinking about whether she should go back to boston from which she had been banished on pain of death. and eventually, she climbed into a little boat, maybe the same little boat easy on the back cover of my book. and she sailed off to boston and nathaniel knew that she was going to her death. and she did, too. and she was hanged on boston common in may 1660, and she was hanged from a gallows when the wind blew through her skirt -- very rare to have a woman named -- when the wind blew through her skirt and it shivered a little bit in the breeze, somebody said, she hangs like a flag. and someone else said, she hangs like a flag for man to do justice by.

and 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 walking through the garden, you may have seen some big farm buildings, there's an african name, young man standing here, maybe 15 or 16, and he is hearing the news that he, at the division in 1680 of his, 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 these lives are so hard to parse out, the only way that we know that he tried to free himself is from a tiny -- a tiny drying out in an account book. it says one pound sterling paid for the horse that obm rant away with. nothing to do.

was a young black man on a horse galloping wildly? what's he doing? somebody is going to stop them, and they did. they captured him and took him to oyster bay, long island, and there he met a woman called rose. he stayed in slavery for the rest of his life. he died sometime after 1757. a long life, 1680, 1757. so we are moving forward now. and rose and obium's son is the first published african-american poet, jupiter hammond. so th that ties the stretch out from this place, not just back to africa into europe, but also forward into the muscle of her own country, are pretty remarkable. mary silva esther, ma be quiet for a minute, because if you are quiet, besides doing the voice

of the tour guide come you also hear the sound of maryborough's sylvester screening. she's asking where children are, where are my children. underneath the genteel façade of this house and behind the image of this lovely woman in the 17 \40{l1}s{l0}\'40{l1}s{l0} and 50s is the figure of madness. she was so mentally ill but quite unusual for the age when most people would have stayed at home with their families, no matter how crazy they were, mary was taken off to westchester county and institutionalized there. she came back home, treatment was of no use. she died in 1750, and i found this out only in a sermon published about her husband who was a very loving and marvelous

husband. you read the letters that he wrote to his daughters who were then living, not on the island any longer, and you see how much he cared for this poor, madwoman he would write to his daughters, your poor 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 silk dress, and in the house we are lucky to know about all the rooms this house, all the rooms and what was in them. and in one small space about twice the size of this carpet which is called the darkroom in the inventory, you find a cheaper bed but not the cheapest kind of day. it would have been a bad for a valued house slave or, given the treatment programs of the time, it could've been mary silva

esther's bed where she was incarcerated in the dark, there was no window there. so what was suitable for a slave is also suitable for a madwoman. think about that. speeding on here, walking over the north peninsula. he was a free man, and he had a last name. he had been freed after the death of his owner in laurel, maryland, your anti-result 21 acres of land on the north side of shelter island 10 days before the man who sold him the property fell off his horse and died. some things are lucky. he had paid this man, sylvester deering, who grew up in this house, he paid him $750.

huge amount of money. we still don't know how in his earnings as a slave which happened quite frequent in the north i 1800, which is when he would have started amassing all this money, we still don't know how all -- how all the navy. at the creek, who knows where second bridge is? raise your hands. okay. the lane runs across second bridge up there, and just be on to is the most beautiful piece of land on the island, i think that it has the most beautiful view of the harbor, and where those acres, looking right now at the harbor. that is land that would cost a reputable realtor dealership today $7.5 million. alas, his daughter sold the land. she did not have the learning,

the education or the stature to realize that she should hang onto that property and pass it to a member of her family. so two very handsome white pillar houses on the property right now, and you'll find julia as an image on the spine. by the late 19th century, the manor belonged to a man who had married into the family not once but twice. he fathered four daughters. she died, the wife, and he married the sister, something that happened often in 19th century life. he was a harvard professor, a nutritional chemist. he made several fortunes, one of them the mindset that i mentioned off the coast of -- one oh is bertman neuer -- off

the coast of south america. he invited the whole of cambridge and tell -- candidates over their under the peachtree is sarah, the great short story writer and her lover, any fields. and they're walking hand in hand, and sarah is writing a poem which the horse would love. they were fond of celebrities. they even saved what they called queen victoria's shoe. not so sure whether it was queen victoire's shoe, but anyway, there's sarah and annie murmuring in the shade of the peachtree. and last of all i come to two of the horse guards daughters, cornelia who owned this house in 1903, and it made it into the house that she always imagined it should have been.

henry helped -- not richardson. who's the architect of the lincoln memorial? henry bacon, thank you. henry bacon very carefully recorded what the house was as built, and those papers along with all the other papers are now at nyu where they're part of the sylvester manor archives so that you can go there and see what the house was like when it was built. you can also see what he did to it, which included the piazzas and the front portico. cornelia was one of those 19th century women who should have had a better education. she somehow transform the manor into -- she was a single woman off her life at a time when single women, it was like having one leg. so this house, more or less, he came her other leg.

she became, as she called herself, the lord of the manor. the person that i prefer is her sister, lillian horse for, it was a wonderful writer, who made these incredibly lucid sketches including one of julia's pump over there where the two white horses, white house's stand. and lillian wrote a memoir of her grandfather, samuel smith gardner, of the gardner family of gartner's island, who live here. and she wrote it in 1921. so those two sisters, cornelia died in 1944, and lillian who died in 1927, brought this plays into the 20th century. so i'm going to read to you what lillian had to say about the manor in 1921. both cornelia and her sister

lillian occasionally felt burdened by the weight of history. and by a disquieting suspicion that some things might not have been exactly as they had an agenda. they felt the sorrow of learning about the instability that lies at the heart of all things. such a notion may have goaded up in stray remarks with slight gesture steering the supernatural magnetic strangeness that every visitor to sylvester manor fields. lillian who observed and recalled more objectively than her sister, her lucid pencil sketches contrast with cornelia's impressionistic watercolors, wrote anymore that she read aloud at a shelter island historical society meeting but she told of her fears as an eight or nine year old, as real as childhood can make such fears.

when she threw a couple against a glacial boulder in the field and they spark flashed, and then she sniffed a slight smell of what, she writes. we thought it was brimstone. her memoir went on, we thought the flash was the fire of hell and that 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 yol read about it in the pages of my book. thank you so much. [applause] what am i doing? oh, yes, q. and a. and i'm doing? okay. so anybody, anybody who is questions, please come to the young lady in the striped shirt. i hope you have questions. and speak into the microphone there. and here comes the question.

good. and i'd be happy to try to answer them. hi. can you all hear her? [inaudible] >> okay, me, too. >> my question is -- its own. my question is this. i have the book, and how the as i was going to the book i was kind of puzzled as to why you referred to native americans throughout the book as indians, although in utah can you say native americans? i'm just curious. >> well, i looked at a lot of images, and i used "the new york times" usage, which changed about five years ago. they began to call native

americans indians. and i've 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. >> oh, somebody -- annie, you have to go back to the mic. >> hello. >> hello. >> i also have your book. i haven't finished it yet but i'm working on it. >> okay. >> and i'm curious. i mean, this is an immense history and there's a lot of different stories that go over this i'm sure that you came across. i'm just wondering why you chose to focus so much, or why you chose to write about the slavery part of it? why did you choose that as your

subject? because you are so put that on the cover of the book, given the immense history of it. >> that's a wonderful question, and thank you so much for asking it. when i first came to this house, i met andrew this, and i walked into the paneled parlor, and i said, where does that door ago lex and andy fisk said to the slight staircase. this was in 1984, long before richard shows. and i certainly didn't know that the path of wealth established in new england and established throughout this nation was the work of many black kenyans. so i thought that was a story worth telling about this place, particularly as i looked at the accounts and inventories where you would see people in that terrible shadowland of being both chattel and person, where they would be evaluated in one

document as negro, 35 pounds, and another, and another document he or she might be called checkweigher a or hannah over obium. so that was, my point was to look to the history and beginning of the many strands, and particularly the african strands that are made this place what it is today, where we set. thank you. >> i know you get a lot of excavations here and there can probably fill 10. where were the main excavation? >> the thing that was so extraordinary is that in the circle -- are you okay? in the circle which is the first place that steve, who was the head of the team, who don't care for nine years, he put a state in the ground, or just a shovel.

i don't know what it's called. it wasn't a trial. it was a square different, and out came this unbelievable richness. and what it turned out to be was a layer stretching underneath most of the front lawn. so amsterdam was where nathaniel sylvester was raised, and it seems though the very highly nucleated kind of life that he lived in amsterdam on a canal, i went to the gallery lead, his house is still there, you could see these incredible vertical houses and to realize that life he was probably pretty vertical. i don't want to make it to grant but it was probably one of the 30 houses in this country at the time in the 1660s that had what was called a porch tower up the front. so all of the redness --

richness that you find in the documents went into the middle. steve one time said nothing is ever thrown away. and i think that's what the archaeology really showed. does that answer your question? somewhat. >> i. could you address somewhat the relationship of this family to barbados? what is it that they did and what was the relationship that brought them here speak with great question, thank you. in 1642, and that's going back now, 1642, nathaniel sylvester's brother purchased his first plantation acres on barbados. in 1646, nathaniel sylvester made a trip in august of that year just when the current was turning to take boats strayed across the west africa, and came

back with slaves. at that time in the 1640s, barbados and the planters there were going through the sugar revolution when sugar began to turn barbados into the most profitable of all the, of all the colonies, of all the british colonies. so year after year, year after year the people on barbados, africans died on verbatim was, and they were replaced. they were never able, until after 1838, ma they were never able to achieve a reproductive rate, which meant that the people would reproduce on the island. so constant sylvester and nathaniel sylvester, and her two partners, want a very well placed englishman called thomas middleton, who is on the committee for foreign plantations, a very useful please have your partner if you overhear on shelter island,

bought his place in 1651, for two reasons. one, they bought it as a hold for political instability. in 1651, the cavaliers and the roundheads were hard at work fighting each other off barbados, even though king charles i had his head chopped off in 1649. the barbadians were still at it. so it looked like maybe constant and thomas middleton were going to be out of luck. they thought, well, let's buy this item and. it doesn't cost much. it's only a quarter of a teaspoon full of sugar per acre, as opposed to land on barbados at the same time which was i think a cup and a half. if i'm right in my book. so the first africans to arrive your were jacqueo, hannah and hope. they came as the property as

part of her portion or dowry. so they were turned her property. is this helpful? okay. so that was a connection which only lasted -- our route the puritan. it only lasted, until the next generation. so from 1646 to 1651 when it bought it until 1680 when nathaniel died. there were a few other purchases of sugar, rum, and africans after that, but it wasn't a continuous trait. he drank a lot of rom, and i drank it with her. [laughter] >> if there are no more questions -- okay. oh, sorry. >> during the research did you

find emphasis of the master crossbreeding with slaves? >> i did not. i looked for it everywhere. i can't say that i'm sure it occurred, but given the likelihood, i would say it may well have done. i did not find any. that's all i can say. anybody else? all right. [applause] >> i'd like to say a special thanks tomorrow to his field of this whole adventure we have had this afternoon. you've done a marvelous job, so give her a hand, to. [applause] >> thank you for that. that was phenome