The Covid pandemic is exacting a horrible toll, yet history shows us perseverance and purpose. The pandemic has been a brutally difficult time, provoking much suffering and death, and it continues to do so. We each know of precious ones lost; a doctor, nurse, or other health care worker enduring deaths and illnesses among their ranks, and stress; and a child struggling in school or exhibiting issues such as anxiety or depression. It feels like it will never end, while some have declared the pandemic is over.

History is a critical avenue where we can turn to educate, sustain, and inspire us. From history, we see levels of suffering and depravity that shock, yet many acting with integrity, bravery, and a sense of justice. The efforts to resist and overcome the evils of slavery present a crucial historical example that resonates today and a legacy we must continue to address. People are digging deeper and sharing more so that we can understand the realities and how human beings overcome such massive suffering and evil.

Events and exhibits during Black History Month, and of course throughout the year, provide ways to face the darkest chapters of our history and be inspired by courage and resilience. Here are three arising from recent revelations and scholarly work about slavery in New York’s Ulster County. A presentation via Zoom on a long-ignored part of the history of slavery and slaves’ lives in Ulster County and the Shawangunk Mountain region will be given today, Feb. 21. (For those who missed the presentation, here is a recording.) The other two involve a new exhibit and a discovery of historic evidence in the New York State Archives long thought to be lost, both concerning the life of Sojourner Truth.

Ulster County Courtroom Exhibit

Within the frames one views on the Ulster County Surrogate Court in Kingston are documents that show a newly freed slave’s legal fight, ultimately successful, to obtain the freedom of her still-enslaved son. A local man had sold the son as property to an enslaver in Alabama, separating mother and son. Thanks to the efforts of Ulster County officials, an exhibit in the Surrogate’s Court makes more plain and powerful the utter horror and dehumanization of Sojourner Truth’s enslavement as a young girl. The exhibit’s other artifacts and documents tell of her battle in the court system to regain custody of her son Peter and end his enslavement. Known then as Isabella Van Wagenen, she become the first Black woman to win a lawsuit against a white man in the United States.

The exhibit contains an array of documents and images relating to Sojourner Truth’s life. Entitled Sojourner Truth: From Slavery to Activism, it is in the Surrogate Court courtroom, on the third floor of the Ulster County Building ar 240 Fair Street, Kingston. It is open for public viewing, by appointment, on Fridays. The sources range from Ulster County’s archival records to the Michigan State archives. Truth was born in Ulster County into a life of enslavement, as slavery was legal in New York State until 1827. She escaped from slavery in 1826, walking away in the pre-dawn hours from the household, after the man who enslaved her reneged on a promise to release Isabella that year.

The documents and images on view depict the raw, horrific reality of slavery and the actions Sojourner Truth took within two years of escaping her own enslavement. The exhibit includes a Surrogate’s Court document from 1808 that lists the young girl as an asset in the estate of her deceased owner, Charles Hardenbergh; a bond document she filed in 1828 in the lawsuit to obtain custody of her son; two newspaper accounts of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech; and her own probate documents, according to the Daily Freeman in its article about the Ulster County exhibit.

The exhibit is a cooperative effort of Ulster County Surrogate Judge Sara McGinty, Ulster County Clerk Nina Postupak, and County Archivist Taylor Bruck. “The archival material in the Clerk’s Office provides a lens into the past and highlights the struggles the Black community has endured for hundreds of years,” said Postupak in the county’s announcement about honoring Black History Month through various ways.

This image shows a bond document that was part of the court case in which Sojourner Truth filed to gain custody of her son Peter, who had been sold illegally to an enslaver in Alabama.

Seeing these historical records has moved those who have been involved in creating and administering the exhibit. Judge McGinty told the Daily Freeman that the document showing the young Isabella listed as a property asset “has haunted me since I first saw it.” She wrote, according to the Daily Freeman, “It set me on a path to create a history in our courtroom of Sojourner Truth’s life as a means to educate our community about the history of slavery in New York State – and specifically, Ulster County.” Nicole Shultis, the judge’s administrative assistant, said that she, too, has been moved by seeing the Ulster County documents that list human beings as property. “It’s really special to be able to do this because a lot of people have no idea that at the time their existence was [considered] only as an asset.”

Members of the public can make reservations to view the exhibit on Fridays by contacting nshultis@nycourts.gov.

An Archives Find in Albany

Ulster County’s exhibit draws attention to both the reality of slavery in the Hudson Valley and Sojourner Truth’s path-breaking court case. Just north, an archivist’s remarkable find in the New York State Archives in Albany has yielded the actual court documents in Truth’s successful suit. Within 5,000 boxes of historical court records, archivist James Folts found the original 1828 court records, just eight pages, of then-Isabella Wagenen’s case against Solomon Gedney to obtain custody of her son Peter and win his freedom, a discovery detailed in the Times Union newspaper. Gedney was the man believed to have had Peter in his possession when he was sold in Alabama.

These documents were thought to be lost to history. However, thanks to the sharp eye of Folts, who is Head of Research Services at the State Archives as well as a historian and author, they have been restored to the historical record. Knowing that Truth’s name had once been Isabella Van Wagenen, he found the court case documents when he was revisiting his Duely & Constantly Kept: A History of the New York Supreme Court, 1691-1847 and an inventory of three Supreme Court offices, including Albany’s, according to the Times Union. Under this name, she had filed the suit in the New York State Supreme Court in Albany. She had taken the surname Van Wagenen from the family who helped her after she escaped from the household of the enslaver John Dumont.

When she escaped on foot, Isabella was only able to take her infant daughter Sophia and had to leave three children behind. After her escape, Dumont sold her son Peter, only 5 at the time, to Dr. Eleazar Gedney (also known as Eleazar Gidney). In her narrative, Sojourner Truth writes that the doctor, on his way to England, sent Peter back from New York City to his brother Solomon Gedney in Newburgh. Gedney then sold Peter to a slaveholder in Alabama.

You can see digital images of the 1828 records for the case People vs. Solomon Gedney, which the State Archives provides for research and educational purposes, through its Digital Collections. They encompass the writ of habeas corpus and related documents “issued for an enslaved Black child named Peter and his release,” and include Isabella Van Wagenen’s deposition, Solomon Gedney’s response, and the order of the court.

The recovery of these court documents, nearly 200 years after the case, not only further authenticates Sojourner Truth’s historic court battle for her son. It helps bear witness to her courage as a newly free young woman in challenging the profound injustice of a white-ruled court system.

“Where Slavery Died Hard”

A key lesson of history is that lesser-known or first-neglected records and stories, once uncovered, can be telling, important, and compelling. Such is the case with the historical work and presentations of the fuller story of slavery and slaves’ lives in the North, specifically in New York and particularly in Ulster County. Many people do not realize the extent of slavery that existed in the Hudson Valley and know little about the slaves’ lives.

In recent years, two archaeologists, authors, and historic preservation consultants, Wendy E. Harris and Arnold Pickman, have researched, unearthed, and presented an important part of this long-neglected history. The award-winning video documentary they wrote and directed, Where Slavery Died Hard: The Forgotten History of Ulster County and the Shawangunk Region, delves into and reveals the long-ignored history of slavery and of slaves’ lives in two rural Hudson Valley areas and the visual evidence that remains to the present day. The Cragsmoor Historical Society in the Town of Wawarsing produced the documentary, and it represents a collaboration between the authors and the Cragsmoor community.

Various opportunities exist to learn about this local history that reflects slavery’s existence and persistence in portions of the North. An opportunity to see a presentation about the project, geared toward historians and others interested in finding out more, will occur today, Feb. 21, at 6:30 p.m. EST, through an Ulster County Historians Mini-Conference via Zoom. As one of the video’s authors, Harris plans to discuss the project, its evolution, and the resources and repositories available for researching the history of enslavement within Ulster County. (Update: Here is a recording of the presentation.)

The documentary, which is available for viewing on YouTube and at the Cragsmoor Historical Society site, is eye-opening, multifaceted, insightful, and poignant. One can understand foundational facets – who, what, where, and why – of the history of slavery in a northern county from the 1660s to the 1840s. The documentary also illustrates the painstaking historical and archaeological research methods and sources to document the lives of slaves in the households of two Hudson Valley rural communities. I know I will need to watch it several times to take it all in.

Significantly and very helpfully, the documentary Where Slavery Died Hard sets the context and theme in the early going. The Dutch colony of New Netherland, of which New York was a part, in the early 17th century had a larger enslaved population than any other colony, northern or southern (though the South surpassed it relatively quickly). Slavery was, the documentary notes, deeply rooted in Dutch settlement and culture. After the American Revolution, New York State remained a stronghold of slavery in the early years of the Republic. The documentary’s name comes from sources that had once called Ulster County a place “where slavery died hard.”

The numbers convey this reality. In 1790, New York State had 21,193 slaves, out of a total population of 340,120 people. The highest percentage of slaves was in the counties of Ulster, Kings, Richmond, and Queens. Ulster County had 2,906 slaves, about 10 percent of its population of 29,370 people. In New York State, elements of these so-called “Dutch counties” were resistant to efforts in the late 18th century to end slavery and vocalized their opposition to antislavery measures in the New York State Legislature.

This is the middle panel from a 1733 painting known as the “Van Bergen Overmantel.” The documentary Where Slavery Died Hard included an image of this painting, which Martin Van Bergen commissioned to hang above a mantel in his Hudson Valley farmhouse. Among the others in the painting, it shows two Black male slaves and two Black female slaves working on the New York colonist’s farm.
Source: Wikipedia

Historians and others have focused their work on slavery on Ulster County’s more populated communities, such as Kingston and New Paltz. But the “rural hinterlands” haven’t received enough attention, as the documentary states, and its story concentrates on two Ulster County rural towns: present-day Wawarsing and Shawangunk, where farming predominated. Framing the research and presentations is the insight of A.J. Williams-Myers, the renowned late author and professor of Black Studies, who urged those documenting enslavement to take a more personal look and present a “tangible, substantive image of these people and their owners.”

Where Slavery Died Hard and an article by Harris and Pickman on the forgotten history, indeed, produce a much fuller picture of enslavement and slaves’ lives in these rural areas of Ulster County. It comes through meticulous examination of many sources, such as wills, maps, census data, court records, written narratives of the time, architectural research of houses and other buildings in the communities, the National Register of Historic Places, and other resources.

The Dutch and Huguenot families who moved from the population centers to the rural areas used slave labor, which filled out the farms’ requirements in producing and processing crops (primarily wheat) and accomplishing related farm and household needs, in addition to the work of indentured servants, hired hands, and family members. In Shawangunk, the Jansen family – two brothers and a cousin – were large slaveholders. The brothers Johannes and Col. Thomas Jansen each enslaved 9 men, women, and children, while their cousin, Thomas, owned 15 slaves.

The wills are a source to understand the brutal dehumanization of slavery. In Johannes Jansen’s will, the documentary relates, he bequeaths to his wife his two best horses, cows, a wagon and harnesses, treasured silver tablespoons, and a Black slave named Piet whom he refers to as his possession. Slaveowners repeatedly referred to the enslaved Black men, woman, and children with the possessive “my.” The contents of such wills “still have the power to shock in their relegation of human beings to the level of property somewhere between farm animals and furniture,” the documentary observes.

Where Slavery Died Hard captures details of the slaves’ lives and some agency that they ultimately possessed, for instance, the story of one enslaved family in the Town of Wawarsing: Caesar DeWitt and his wife Jane DeWitt, both born in the late 18th century. In a house now known as the DeWitt-Benedict House and landmarked by the Town of Wawarsing, lived a farm family of substantial means, Stephen and Wyntie DeWitt; their five children; and eight enslaved people, according to the 1790 census. The next generation of this DeWitt family, John S. and his wife, Sarah, took up residence in this house. The slave, Jane, took care of the younger DeWitts’ son, Stephen Egbert, who apparently had a disability and died at age 19.

The enslaved DeWitts, Caesar, Jane and their daughter Elizabeth, ultimately gained their freedom through the New York State’s 1827 emancipation law. They purchased land from John S. DeWitt, and the Black family, which now included a son William Henry, and resided in a house built on the land, Harris and Pickman write. When John S. DeWitt died in 1845, in his will he bequeathed cash gifts to William Henry and Elizabeth. Moreover, he left the equivalent of $9,000 in today’s money to the now-free Jane, describing it as “a small compensation for her faithful services to me and to more especially for her unremitting care of and attendance on my lamented son from his cradle to his grave.” When John S. died, he had no heir and the land passed out of the DeWitt family who had enslaved people there over generations. The land that the former slaves, Caesar and Jane, had acquired remained in the possession of their descendants for 135 hours, the authors write.

The documentary and the article both highlight the history of slavery and slaves’ lives in these rural areas that has been disregarded far too long. In the details, names, and many actions and circumstances they relate, they bring that “tangible image” that Dr. Williams-Myers cites. In their article conclusion, Harris and Pickman write, “It is important to acknowledge this dark chapter in our local history. It is also important, however, that we not blame those of us whose ancestors may have benefited from this practice. Instead, the memory of those who suffered this injustice can inspire all of us to work together towards obliterating all forms of racism that exist in our country today.”