A Cook’s World


This research is an excerpt from a larger research paper by Ramin Ganeshram written in August 2024

Due to the nature of their particular work, those enslaved people engaging in culinary work had more opportunity to engage with a wider variety of individuals outside of the Farmhouse.

Rocky outcroppings, lime and marble deposits and quarries in Kingsbridge meant that the Dyckman orchards covered disparate ground from just below the current site of the Farmhouse at W 204th St. into Marble Hill, just over the Broadway Bridge at 225th street.  The largest tract was just over this bridge and the Dyckman workers would make the fifteen minute walk up the Kings Bridge Road (Broadway) in front of the farmhouse, crossing what was then a footbridge over the thin stream of the creek in order to plant, tend, and harvest at the orchards. No doubt they would share the road with other walkers, horsecarts and perhaps even a carriage and single riders on their way down to the city or up to Westchesters. To the south west just below the marshland lay a tract of Dyckman farm grounds where cabbages, kale, beans, potatoes and other common ingredients were likely grown.

When not working in the orchards or fields themselves, enslaved and free Black kitchen workers may have been tasked in preparing meals for those engaged in field labor, particularly during the harvest season. These meals would have comprised bread, butter, cheese, cold meats and of course plenty of available apples. Cookies or donuts, beloved by Dutch-descended New Yorkers might have been added to the lunch or dinner pail. The food would have likely been carried by cart to the work site.

 Workers were probably a mix of enslaved persons, hired White and later Free Black hands, and Dyckman family members. The 1820 census indicates twenty people living in several houses scattered across the Dyckman holding as well as ten people in the house itself. Because of the small number of enslaved in the Dyckman household, even kitchen workers may have functioned as men and women of  “all work” rotating as needed from specific tasks such as cooking to helping on the farm, as well as assisting the process of pressing apples into cider as well as drying them for use throughout the year. 

At the cider mill which stood behind the Farmhouse near a stream, the Dyckman’s enslaved and free servants would have been able to meet their counterparts from other farms and households bringing their own fruit for pressing or for sale to the Dyckmans as part of their own cidering enterprise.

The work of feeding the Dyckman family would have demanded that food ingredients be procured from a variety of places. The landscape featured a number of freshwater streams that also ran across the Dyckman properties. Wells would have been easy to plumb and there would be no need for public water pumps as existed in the congested city to the south. Indeed, none appear on any maps of the area. While this was convenient work-wise the lack of public meant one less place for people to meet and gather.

Milled flour, corn and other grains were procured at the wheat mill at the Kingsbridge at present day 228th Street and Broadway, a roughly fifteen minute walk from the farmhouse. At Tubby Hook Village, a few minutes walk just down the hill and a little east of the farmhouse, fishermen sold the various Hudson River fish. Oysters, most often harvested by African Americans or indigenous people, were also offered for sale.

The docks at Tubby Hook also received ships engaged in the coastwise trade up the Hudson and down to the city. Here the Dyckman cooks would have received goods from Northern farms as well as from Europe and the Caribbean. Along with these products sailors carried news from points North, South, and abroad while newspapers delivered advertisements of the varied items available for commerce in the ever-growing city.  Given that there was no immediately local church or town green it is likely that market days featuring stalls of goods existed in Tubby Hook Village. 

The Dyckman cooks would have also engaged with indigenous fishermen and hunters to provide game for the family table. This close proximity of other people of color led to intermingled societies and family groups like the one from which the cook Hannah allegedly hailed.

The American-Dutch farms in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island found a lucrative market in New York City and so too would have the American-Dutch farmers of Kingsbridge. Sales of fruit, cabbage, and other produce in the city markets to the south would have fallen to the enslaved or free servants of the household sometimes as much as once a week. There African Americans in the Dyckmans’ household would have met other Black New Yorkers, likely working in bondage. In the 1780s, slave-ownership was a point of genteel pride as observed by Alexander Coventry, an English transplant to the city, in his memoir:

In the vicinity of New York, every respectable family had slaves–negroes and negresses who did the drudgery.”In New York, the Dyckmans’ Black servants and enslaved would surely have encountered a new class of African Americans, known for their stylish and brightly colored clothing that drew influence from Caribbean and African colors and fabrics. Although largely enslaved, these individuals expressed their independence and agency by adorning the body. The vibrant headdress attributed to Hannah in the oral history may have fallen into this category.