and you are quite right, probably it wasn't samuel gardner planting that corn, it probably was somebodylse. we don't know if it was a person of color or one of the irish indentured servants who were there by that time in 1859 but gardner probably didn't do it. [inaudible question] >> the comment which he is starting off on without going back to the mic, go back up to the mic. one more time. >> in reference to indentured servitude, those who had the privilege relative to african slaves because they didn't have that, they were just enslaved. being the indentured you were almost like a slave but you had the option within a specific time period to be freed. i think one of the reasons african slaves weren't indentured was because if they were freed fabian direct competition with their masters or their own ears. was that the reason why it wasn't done that way on a broad more broadbased scale? >> i don't think it was anything so narrowly calculated as that. i think the practice was established that you could own a person with a black skin or you could alone for instance any captive taken in a

and lillian wrote a memoir of her grandfather, samuel smith gardner, of the gardner family of gartner'sisland, 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 ma

and you are quite right, probably it wasn't samuel gardner planting that corn, it probably was somebodyt know if it was a person of color or one of the irish indentured servants who were there by that time in 1859 but gardner probably didn't do it. [inaudible question] >> the comment which he is starting off on without going back to the mic, go back up to the mic. one more time. >> in reference to indentured servitude, those who had the privilege relative to african slaves because they didn't have that, they were just enslaved. being the indentured you were almost like a slave but you had the option within a specific time period to be freed. i think one of the reasons african slaves weren't indentured was because if they were freed fabian direct competition with their masters or their own ears. was that the reason why it wasn't done that way on a broad more broadbased scale? >> i don't think it was anything so narrowly calculated as that. i think the practice was established that you could own a person with a black skin or you could alone for instance any captive taken in a just war, in