The World of the Enslaved


Dutch colonizers were responsible for bringing the first enslaved people into New Amsterdam/New York transporting eleven African men to the island in 1626 and three women in 1628.

 In Harlem which included Kingsbridge, Dutch farmers used enslaved labor. The first three of the enslaved people sold by the Dutch West India  Company from the ship Sparrow in 1664 went to Johannes Verveleen, Daniel Tourneur, Nicholas De Meyer in Harlem and Kingsbridge. Enslaved labor was used by weaver Jan Nagel who purchased his property along with Jan Dyckman, the original ancestor of the farmhouse family. There were enough enslaved people in this northern outreach that the Nagle-Dyckman Burial Ground contained at least thirty people enslaved and free spanning three generations.

A Lime Kiln, where limestone was burned at high heat into powder, existed on the shore of the Hudson about three-quarters of a mile northwest of the Farmhouse. A dangerous and noxious job usually forced upon enslaved workers, production of lime for use as fertilizer was key for this agricultural community. A marble quarry and mill and several blacksmith shops were also in Kingsbridge. Each would have been manned by enslaved artisans.

By the time of the English take over of the city roughly four decades later, enslaved Africans comprised nearly ten percent of the city population, growing in number exponentially by the decade. One in every five households in the City of New York enslaved human beings by 1790. The city was only second in the nation to Charleston in the number of enslaved people owned by its citizens. 

 So common was the intermingling of Blacks and Whites in New York and its environs by the late 18th century that William Strickland, a British traveler  commented  upon the  “greater number of Blacks particularly of women and children in the streets who may be seen of all hades till the stain is entirely worne out.”

Because of this, the enslaved and early free people of African descent in the Dyckman household would have both seen and had interactions with others of their race and cultural identity. However, whatever comfort they may have found in one another’s company was overshadowed by the harsh edicts of White enslavers who lived  terrified of slave uprisings.

 In 1741, more than one hundred enslaved people and some poor whites were accused of arson around the city. Many of the accused were executed. The incident led to the city council regulating the delivery of water rather than allowing enslaved people to collect water from public “tea water” pumps around the city. Congregating around the pumps in service of their enslavers allowed bonded men and women to plan and plot according to the city aldermen. Certainly the pumps provided an opportunity to socialize and share news.           

The restrictions were just one of a long line of so-called “Black Codes” or laws regulating the bodies and time of enslaved Africans beginning in 1702.

Even in the rural Out Ward 9 where the Dyckmans lived, enslaved people were still bound by the Black Codes–unable to congregate to practice common religion, socialize or travel about after dark. In the pre-English Dutch period laws had been enacted to protect the enslaved from unjust corporal punishment. That ended with the English takeover when slavery was formally legalized. And while the Dyckmans may have remained Dutch culturally, they willingly leveraged the law of the land to attempt to recapture enslaved persons who took their own liberty as Wilsthire did in 1765 from Jacobus Dyckman (likely William Dyckman’s brother, not his son). 

The opportunity to meet or see other enslaved or free people of color most often arose within the context of work. For example: Black men bound to white farmers would have led cattle to graze in the salt marshes all around Kingsbridge leading the animals on the road past the house. They would have returned along and back on that same road twice a year enroute to harvest the hay for storage.

Church attendance with their enslavers would have offered the Dyckman servants a chance to meet with other enslaved and free servants in the community. There was a Dutch Reformed Church about five miles to the south around 127th Street and 5th Avenue, a 45 minute cart ride.

Alternatively, the family could have attended the Fordham Reformed Dutch Church at the time standing at the corner of modern West Fordham Road and Sedgewick Avenue, almost directly due east across the river  from the farmhouse. Certainly, its spire would have been easily seen across the clear cut farmland. Traveling to the church by cart would have taken about a half hour to 45 minutes, requiring the family and servants to first go north to the Dyckman Free Bridge at 225th Street and then then back south to the church.