African American Archive of Columbia County, NY

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African American Archive of Columbia County, NY Our goal is to forge a deeper understanding of the history of Black people in the Hudson Valley.

The Passover holiday is deeply significant to those of the Jewish faith. It commemorates the outgoing from Egypt and the...
26/04/2024

The Passover holiday is deeply significant to those of the Jewish faith. It commemorates the outgoing from Egypt and the end of enslavement under Pharoah. During the Passover dinner, or seder, the participants take turns reading passages from a book called the Haggadah (which means “telling”), which relates the biblical story of how the Jews were released from slavery. I've been attending or holding seders for nearly 40 years (since I married into a Jewish family), and the holiday resonates so deeply for me. Michael Twitty advocates for an African American adaptation of Passover, and I couldn't agree more. We should all know our history and give honor to where we've been, that it may inform our present and our future.

📷
1. Our seder plate this year
2,3,4: Images from our family Haggadah
5: Seder plate infographic from Libraries ACT
6: A suggestion for an African American seder plate from

We'll be there. Who's with us?
23/04/2024

We'll be there. Who's with us?

Friday, May 3, at 9 AM: Join us for the first of a two-day conference that will convene academic scholars, researchers, public historians, and more. They will weigh the history and legacy of slavery, the slave trade, and colonialism in New Netherland, the Netherlands, and the Americas. Produced by the Lapidus Center at the in collaboration with the New-York Historical Society and the New Netherland Institute.
https://ow.ly/t3hM50RlqSe

It’s taken me a little while to process all of my feelings about last week’s experience at Lindenwald, but I think I’m r...
19/04/2024

It’s taken me a little while to process all of my feelings about last week’s experience at Lindenwald, but I think I’m ready to share. We were at a conference at the home of President Martin Van Buren for two days, discussing the legacy of Black families who had once been enslaved on the property (most of them by the property’s previous Van Ness and Van Alstyne owners). The folks at Lindenwald commissioned a research study of the enslaved and their descendents. As you know, our research at the Archive is genealogy based, so, while they worked from the past forward, we work from the present toward the past. And when the lines of research connected, I, quite unexpectedly, found myself to be a descendent on more than one of the family lines.

Now, I’ve been doing this work, researching Black residents and checking out historic buildings, for a few years. Sometimes I’m looking at my own ancestors, and sometimes I’m tracing completely unrelated people. But, somehow, this experience was different. Walking on those floorboards where my ancestors walked, touching a piece of furniture that they touched, stepping on the cellar cobblestones where they (presumably) slept, I felt a whole range of emotions that I didn’t know what to do with. I wasn’t angry, or sad, but I wanted to cry. I felt rooted, yet untethered. I felt invigorated, yet weighed down. I wanted to sit on the floor and feel the energy of my ancestors wash over me like a tide. I wanted to lay down in the field and touch the stones above their graves (lol, but it was raining and I was trying to be professional!). More than anything, I wanted to let them know that we survived, that we persevered, and that we are doing everything we can to honor their legacy and their memory.

📷: 1. Cobblestones in the cellar of the original section of the house. Research indicates that the enslaved may have slept on pallets on top of these stones.
2. The area of the farm where our ancestors may be buried.
My own pictures.

Standing in a room where our own ancestors worked. The Peter Van Ness bedroom at Lindenwald           #
11/04/2024

Standing in a room where our own ancestors worked.

The Peter Van Ness bedroom at Lindenwald

#

When you wake up in the morning and the view outside your window is a 19th century barn that your own ancestors walked b...
10/04/2024

When you wake up in the morning and the view outside your window is a 19th century barn that your own ancestors walked by every day. Did they also work there? Did they know the family that lived in the adjacent house? Did they ever imagine what their descendants would see in the this village?

Our Columbia County ancestors witnessed a total solar eclipse on June 24, 1778. Almost all of them were enslaved at the ...
08/04/2024

Our Columbia County ancestors witnessed a total solar eclipse on June 24, 1778. Almost all of them were enslaved at the time, and likely working in the fields. Imagine what this must have been like for them to see this miracle of nature...

Source: mountvernon.org

Rabbit holes…where you learn interesting (and only occasionally useful) facts. In researching our ancestor Anthony Harde...
27/03/2024

Rabbit holes…where you learn interesting (and only occasionally useful) facts. In researching our ancestor Anthony Harder, I saw that the 1850 Census Agricultural Schedule noted his farm produced 50 bushels of “Indian Corn”. My brain spiral: Why is Indian Corn a specific category? Why not just “corn”? And what's the difference anyway…besides that we use Indian corn to decorate and corn corn to eat?

Turns out, there's no difference at all. What we, today, call Indian corn, is a hybridized variety of corn that has different color kernels, a harder endosperm, and less sweetness, making it good for flour and feed. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, all corn was called Indian Corn because a) the Native Americans introduced it to the European settlers, and b) the word “corn” was a generic term that applied to many grains. Adding the word “Indian” clearly distinguished that grain from, say, rye or oats. 

So no, Anthony and his fellow farmers weren't just growing bushels of hard, colorful Indian corn so they could decorate their homes at harvest time. They were just growing good ole corn, so folks could eat corn on the cob, cornbread, succotash, and all those other good foods. 

This ends your useless fact of the day. 🤣


1755. John Livingston sells Ceasar to Aaron Burr for 80 pounds.📷 OAH Magazine of History, April 2003
20/03/2024

1755. John Livingston sells Ceasar to Aaron Burr for 80 pounds.

📷 OAH Magazine of History, April 2003


We found this picture on an ebay auction. The notation on the back says "Bayard & Julie Pruyn with their nurse. Kinderho...
17/03/2024

We found this picture on an ebay auction. The notation on the back says "Bayard & Julie Pruyn with their nurse. Kinderhook NY". As always, we're doing the research to identify and bring recognition to the unnamed nurse. Bayard and Julia were born in 1882 and 1884, respectively. Could their nurse be Dina Manegortt, a Black woman from South Carolina who was living with Bayard and Julia's parents, grandmother and aunt in 1880? By the next census in 1900, Mrs. Pruyn is living alone with her two children, her husband having died shortly after Julia's birth.

Is this a picture of Dina? What happened to her? What was her story?

Friends, you have one more day to nominate the Archive in the  interpretive costume giveaway! Having a costume like this...
14/03/2024

Friends, you have one more day to nominate the Archive in the interpretive costume giveaway! Having a costume like this will go so very far in helping us to interpret the lives of Colonial Era Black residents of the Hudson Valley. We have plans for several in person events this year, and would really love to have historically accurate wardrobe. So please and thank you head over to Samson Historical's Instagram page and give us a nod!

29/02/2024

This looks interesting!

*repost from  "Studying the layout of [Dyckman Farmhouse] informs us how the farmhouse was used both by Dyckman family m...
26/02/2024

*repost from

"Studying the layout of [Dyckman Farmhouse] informs us how the farmhouse was used both by Dyckman family members and enslaved people who labored there. The photo above shows how an enslaved person could move from the summer kitchen (left door) to the winter kitchen (right door) without entering the main rooms of the farmhouse. This created an intentional separation between the enslavers and enslaved who lived and worked in the house. Enslaved people could go about their work in both kitchens without being seen in the main part of the farmhouse. However, this separation also provided a private space for enslaved people where they otherwise had little privacy, living under the same roof as their enslavers. Examining the physical environment of enslaved people is an important part of uncovering the lived experience of enslavement in New York.

Image courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York"

We wonder if there are any examples of this kind of architecture in our area...🤔

26/02/2024

Have you ever noticed the placement of the summer and winter kitchen doors at the Dyckman Farmhouse? Studying the layout of the house informs us how the farmhouse was used both by Dyckman family members and enslaved people who labored there. The photo above shows how an enslaved person could move from the summer kitchen (left door) to the winter kitchen (right door) without entering the main rooms of the farmhouse. This created an intentional separation between the enslavers and enslaved who lived and worked in the house. Enslaved people could go about their work in both kitchens without being seen in the main part of the farmhouse. However, this separation also provided a private space for enslaved people where they otherwise had little privacy, living under the same roof as their enslavers. Examining the physical environment of enslaved people is an important part of uncovering the lived experience of enslavement in New York.

Image courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

26/02/2024
https://conta.cc/49vEYjQ
09/02/2024

https://conta.cc/49vEYjQ

Serving the Hudson River Valley   February Black History Month Upcoming Events Send us your Hudson Valley African American History news (events, books, films, site news, etc.). [email protected] Cl

One of the best events of the year for us is the annual Northern Slavery Collection Conference, and this year certainly ...
05/02/2024

One of the best events of the year for us is the annual Northern Slavery Collection Conference, and this year certainly didn't disappoint! It's a beautiful thing to be in a roomful of people who all want to engage in the work of telling a holistic view of history. A great day with old friends and new acquaintances.

Also, more pics from the Unnamed Figures exhibit.






We finally got a chance to head into NYC and see the "Unnamed Figures" exhibit at The American Folk Art Museum.  This is...
03/02/2024

We finally got a chance to head into NYC and see the "Unnamed Figures" exhibit at The American Folk Art Museum. This is an impressive collection of artwork exploring the presence and absence of Blacks in early American art. More pictures to come.

22/01/2024
Pastor Kim Singletary and her crew organized a fabulous Martin Luther King service at Shiloh Baptist Church today. So ho...
14/01/2024

Pastor Kim Singletary and her crew organized a fabulous Martin Luther King service at Shiloh Baptist Church today. So honored and humbled to have been a part of it.

I'm honored to be speaking at the MLK Service at Shiloh Baptist Church in Hudson this afternoon. Please join us if you c...
14/01/2024

I'm honored to be speaking at the MLK Service at Shiloh Baptist Church in Hudson this afternoon. Please join us if you can.

 is educating us once again. There are certain people -- we all know who they are -- who need to know this. May 2024 be ...
02/01/2024

is educating us once again. There are certain people -- we all know who they are -- who need to know this. May 2024 be the year we collectively seek the truth, and share it.

Source:
21/12/2023

Source:


Repost via  Here at the Archive, our mission is to discover and preserve the connection to the ancestors whose lives we ...
21/12/2023

Repost via
Here at the Archive, our mission is to discover and preserve the connection to the ancestors whose lives we honor.

Did you miss one of our lectures?  Watch on our Youtube channel.
29/10/2023

Did you miss one of our lectures? Watch on our Youtube channel.

The African American Archive of Columbia County, New York exists to document, preserve, and share the deep history of Black people in the upper Hudson Valley...

25/10/2023
We'll be attending this program.  Will you?
25/10/2023

We'll be attending this program. Will you?

Join the New Amsterdam History Center: Jaap Jacobs - Dennis Maika - Andrea Mosterman
with moderator Lavada Nahon
November 15, 2023 at 6:30 PM
for "New Netherland's Slave Trade Origins, Evolution, Impact, Significance."
THIS PROGRAM WILL BE PRESENTED VIRTUALLY ON ZOOM

Historians of New Netherland have recently shed new light on the colony’s enslaved people: the conditions of their enslavement, the Africans’ relationship with their enslavers, and the inner workings of the trade in slaves. This program will introduce the findings of three leading historians whose research challenges various myths and misunderstandings about New Netherland slavery. Jaap Jacobs revises the date that Blacks first arrived in the colony; Andrea Mosterman reveals conditions aboard the slave ship Gideon; Dennis Maika probes Dutch merchants’ involvement with the slave trade. And much more.

The speakers will discuss the implications of their findings for New York history, and for our contemporary debates over slavery’s legacy, guided by moderator Lavada Nahon, a prominent museum educator.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-netherlands-slave-trade-origins-evolution-impact-significance-tickets-679642658487?aff=oddtdtcreator

25/10/2023

For the first time, African Americans were elected to the House of Representatives in 1870.

Thomas Commeraw (c 1772-1823) was an African American potter, business man, and abolitionist based in New York City. Man...
25/10/2023

Thomas Commeraw (c 1772-1823) was an African American potter, business man, and abolitionist based in New York City. Many people assumed he was white, and so his story was almost lost to history. His work has recently been recognized by many esteemed institutions, including the and . Join us on Sunday for a talk about Commeraw and his work with biographer Brandt Zipp.

This zoom lecture is presented jointly with Studio Potter Journal. Get tickets at the link in our bio.

Photos courtesy

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