Guide to African-American History
Archival Material at the Othmer Library
April 2012
This guide is intended as an aid to researchers interested in archival material at Brooklyn Historical Society that relates to African-American history. Materials range from the slavery era (i.e., colonial period through the Civil War) to the post-Civil War period and through the twentieth century. Most materials concern the four Long Island counties (Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk), but other New York areas are also represented, as are other states. For the nineteenth century and earlier, documents commonly found in the guide are bills of sales of slaves; wills and estate inventories that include slaves; account books recording transactions with African-Americans; and journals, correspondence, local historian notes, reminiscences, and the like with referencesto African-Americans. In the twentieth century, collections of records from specific African-Americans or organizations closely associated with African-Americans can be found.
Although this guide is extensive and is expected to satisfy many research needs in this subject, researchers should be aware that this guide is not necessarily comprehensive. The guide includes only those archival materials that were identifiedas relevant and were documented over time by archivists in the course of their work.Further, this guide includes only those materials that hold an explicit reference to African-Americans. Materials that do not have such a reference, even if they are associated with African-American history, are not included on this guide; for example, collections of Civil War papers that do not explicitly refer to African-Americans are not included here. Accordingly, researchers may wish to review finding aids from collections not found on the guide to identify other materials potentially useful to their research.Access to the “finding aid portal” for such searches is available from this page:
The emphasis of this guide is on the text-based archival material within collections that are, generally, held uniquely by BHS. In addition to the archival material detailed in this guide, there are many other resources at BHS useful to research in African-American history. First, you can search BHS’s online catalog, Bobcat, for other relevant material such as books, maps, and other printed matteravailable in the library: principal subject heading to search is African Americans. You can search on this heading alone or narrow your results by using African Americans with sub-headings such as biography, history, churches, economic conditions, social conditions, civil rights, etc.Among other related subject headings areFree African Americans, Slaves, Slavery, and Antislavery.
In Bobcat, you can also search by name of specific locations, either alone or with African American or other subject heading. Examples of locations include:New York, Brooklyn, Weeksville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, CrownHeights, KingsCounty, SuffolkCounty, and Long Island.You can also search by personal or corporate name. For example:Jackie Robinson, Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church(you do not need to search on an entire name to generate a result), and NAACP.
BHS has several resources that are useful for many areas of research, including African-American history. These include city directories*, historical newspapers*, US census records*, Brooklyn city council records, atlases, maps, and almanacs. (Resources with an asterisk are on microfilm or fiche.) These resources include references to African-American individuals, institutions, neighborhoods, businesses, etc. As just one example, an 1855 almanac, the Brooklyn City and Kings County Record, includes information about the city’s Colored Political Association, an organization formed to advocate for equal rights for African-Americans.
BHS also has a collection on microfiche of slavery/anti-slavery-related pamphlets and other material. A guide to the microfiche has been published: Henry Barnard, ed. Slavery, Part I: A Bibliography and Union List of the Microform Collection. (Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America) 1980. The guide is available in the library. This microfiched collection includes many documents held in physical form by BHS. These BHS-held documents are known as the Slavery Pamphlet Collection. The contents are cataloged individually in Bobcat and can be found by keyword searches or searching on the common call number root “PAMP.”
From 1939-1942, 1961-1969, and 1973-1982, BHS (then known as the Long Island Historical Society) published a periodic journal, called the Long Island Historical Society Quarterly in 1939-42 and, in the later years, The Journal of Long Island History. The journals include articles on historical topics concerning Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk counties. Some of these articles relate to African-American history. A list in PDF form of the articles in the journals can be found on Emma; use search term African-American in the document to find the relevant material. The journals themselves are available in the library.Link to more information about the Journals.
Finally, in addition to text-based material, you can search a database in BHS’s library for images (e.g., photographs, postcards, etc.),objects, and other non-textual material. The key search term in this regard isAfrican Americans (and variant forms, such as the singular African Americanand the hyphenated African-Americans). Personal, corporate, and neighborhood names can also be used as search terms.
The following archival collections are available by appointment for viewing in the library. To schedule an appointment or for further information about these collections, please contact the library via email: .
Collections are presented in this guide in rough chronological order according to the earliest date of the relevant documents within the collection.The first section of the guide includes collections with material from the colonial period to the Civil War. The second section, which begins on page 16, includes material from the Civil War period to the present. Each entry follows the format:
Collection name, date range of the collection
Callnumber
Extent in linear feet of collection.Link to more information about the collection (if available).
Brief description of content in the collection relevant to African-American history.
Section 1: Colonial Period to Civil War (1600s to 1860)
Henry C. Murphy collection, circa 1700-circa1880
Call number: ARC.189
1.25 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Includes Murphy’s research notes and draft writings, with his translations, extracts, and transcriptions of historical sources concerning the European exploration and colonization of America. Most of these have not been closely examined by the archival staff for African-American references, but two have been observed. These include a brief reference to trading slaves and merchandise between Brazil, New Netherlands, Angola, and Amsterdam (in Murphy’s extracts of Dutch New Netherland and West India Company records, 1644-1664; see page 4-5 of Volume 4 in box 3, folder3) and the inclusion of “Francisco the Negro” on a list of Bushwick residents and, it appears, on a list of soldiers (in Murphy’s translation of Bushwick records, 1660-1664; see box 2, folder 8).
Town of Gravesend record transcriptions (1646-1670), 1942
Call number: 1977.308
3 items. Link to more information about the collection.
Transcriptions of early town records of Gravesend (1646-1670) and a 100 page historical sketch of the town, with reference to a slave sale, prepared by Works Progress Administration researchers in 1942.
Manuscript Collection #1, 1648-1867
Call number: 1974.002
0.25 linear feet.
Division of slaves in estate of John Park Custis of Virginia, 1796 (folder 10); bill of sale, DutchessCounty, 1766 (folder 16); will manumitting a slave, Oyster Bay, 1685 (folder 17).
J.W. Huntting copy of records of the FirstChurch of Christ, Southold, Long Island (1694-1853), 1853
Call number: 1973.182
0.10 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Copy of the records, 1694-1853, of the First Church of Christ in Southold, SuffolkCounty, with references to slaves and freemen (including communions, baptisms, marriages, and deaths; e.g. pages 185, 201, 235, 241, 265, 362).
Henry Lloyd ledgers, 1703-1744
Call number: 1974.117
2.4 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Account books with references to African-Americans (Queens and Long Island).
Henry Onderdonk papers, circa 1729-1895
Call number: ARC.045
10 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Henry Onderdonk was a 19th century historian of QueensCounty, which included what is now NassauCounty. Focused principally on Queens/Nassau, this collection includes Onderdonk’s manuscript writings; transcriptions and notes he took from private journals, church and local government records, and newspapers; correspondence regarding local history and genealogy; and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. These materials refer at various points to African-Americans. Among the manuscripts (series 1) are: transcription of Quaker John Bowne’s account book with entries for slave purchases and sales (e.g., pages 62, 88) and clothing for African-Americans (e.g., page 76); list of marriages and baptisms at Huntington and Hempstead that includes at least three African-American couples (1820, 1821, 1822); “Supplement to Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings County” which includes notices of rewards for runaways and notices of slave sales; a historical sketch of agriculture in Hempstead with references to slaves (pages 14, 29); “Long Island in Olden Times” with index referring to “negroes” and “slaves.” The correspondence (series 2) includes references to slavery in letter from E.B. O’Callaghan (in set 2.1, bound correspondence, item numbers 63, 106), Rachel Hicks (in set 2.2), and William Potts (in set 2.3). The Miscellaneous series (series 3) includes a doctor’s daybook with entries for services rendered to African-Americans (1729-1731). All seven of the scrapbooks have some material related to African-Americans but these are scattered throughout; among the items are runaway notices (Vol. 1), announcements of camp meetings (e.g., Vol. 4), annual beach parties (Vol. 6 and 7), various accounts of crimes, accidents or deaths, and other material.
Daniel M. Tredwell papers, 1876-1917
Call number: ARC.188
1.5 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Local historian’s manuscript concerning Long Island, including Brooklyn, with some references to free and enslaved African-Americans.
Northrup collection on Brooklyn history, 1908-1955
Call number: 1986.008
0.20 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Includes a history of Newtown with a list of local slaveowners, published in a local newspaper.
B. H. Huntington manuscripts, 1856, 1864
Call number: 1973.097
0.02 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Journal of folklore concerning East Hampton, including narrative of an African-American girl buried at the site of a church.
Isaac Cortelyou family notebook, 1698-1824
Call number: 1974.137
1.1 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
In Dutch. Page [22v] includes the draft of a letter deposing of a "servant Neagro" "belonging to Jacques Cortelyou "if he Can gitt" another "Master." Page [53r] lists important events in the year 1708, including the murder of a Willem Hallet along with his wife and five children by their slaves. Also, there is a list of births in 1796-1811 which, in its use of first names only, possibly refers to slaves.
Hulst family papers, 1702-circa 1950
Call number: ARC.135
0.25 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Tax document listing slaves, New Utrecht, 1709; bill of sale for slave, KingsCounty, 1728.
Lefferts family papers, circa 1650s-1970s
Call number: ARC.145
14.25 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Many items related to slavery; see Box 1, Folders 1, 7, 8, 9; Box 2, Folders 2, 4, 5; Box 3, Folder 9; Box 4, Folder 5; and Box 5, Folders 38, 40. Collection includes property lists that include slaves; letters concerning African-Americans in Charleston (1820s); wills both transferring and manumitting slaves (1808 and others); bills of sale for slaves (either 1711 or 1751-1818); slavery-related newspaper articles (late 19th and early 20th centuries); account books and other financial records with slave transactions (as well as payments to possibly free black men for manual labor); and manuscript of Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt’s writings on early Flatbush: “The New York Riots of 1863,” “The Pancake Roof” (includes description of an enslaved woman, Diana), and “Slavery Among the Dutch”; manuscript “It Would be Difficult to Find…,” which describes a “shanty” in the author’s district where a black woman and her aged mother lived, along with a mention of the draft riots.
Richard Lawrence estate inventory, 1717
Call number: 1974.206
0.08 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Inventory with reference to slaves, SuffolkCounty, 1717.
Samuel Jackson will, 1728
Call number: 1977.548
0.01 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Will with reference to a slave, Hempstead, 1728.
John Montgomerie broadside, circa 1730
Call number: 1977.129
0.01 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Proclamation calling for charitable aid in response to a house fire in which three slaves, among others, were killed, East Hampton, 1729-1730.
Stoothoff family papers, 1642-1796
Call number: ARC.150
0.75 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Various papers of Flatlands family: 1782 bill of sale by Elias Hubbard to Peter W. Stoothoff (folder 17); Wilhelmus Stoothoff 1783 estate inventory including values of slaves (folder 25); Gerritt Stoothoff wills, 1728/9 and 1722, that include conveyances of slaves (folders 32, 33); Wilhelmus Stoothoff / B. Lefferts 1763 bill of sale for slave (folder 59); account book entries, 1731-32 (folder 95); account book entries, 1676-1714 (folders 114, 115).
Newtown record extracts, 1734-1759
Call number: 1977.303
0.08 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Newspaper clippings of extracts from Newtown records 1734-1759, some with references to African-Americans.
Harriet Stryker-Rodda typescript of Peter Wyckoff recollections, 1828-1958
Call number: 1973.258
0.02 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Typescript transcription of reminiscences of Peter Wyckoff of Bushwick (1828-1910) with references to slaves.
Middagh family papers, 1654-circa 1840
Call number: 1974.179
0.17 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Bill of sale (Brooklyn, 1737) and a (draft?) will (Flatbush, 1727) referencing enslaved African-Americans. Also, an arrest warrant concerning the unlicensed sale of liquor and illegal sale to African-Americans (1751).
Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbiltcollection, 1737-1818
Call number: 1974.168
0.25 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Quit claim which includes deed for slaves, Flatbush, 1737 (folder 1); receipts referencing goods purchased for and by African-Americans on John Van der Bilt’s account, Flatbush, 1805-1818 (folder 4);estate appraisal with values of slaves, Brooklyn, 1792 (folder 5);bills of sale for a slave, New York, 1783 and 1816 (folder 6, 8).
Andrew J. Provost collection of Bushwick, N.Y., family papers, 1709-1859
Call number: 1977.180
1.6 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Certified 1859 copy of a 1739 will (folder 1) and a 1767 will (folder 2), both referring to African-Americans, Bushwick.
American colonies deeds collection, circa 1600-1700s
Call number: 1974.039
0.50 linear feet.
The Virginia folder includes legal documents, 1746-1770, regarding complaints/suits about debts, inheritances, etc., involving land and/or slaves.
Queens County, N.Y. slave bills of sale, 1751-1793
Call number: 1978.010
0.08 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Six bills of sale for slaves: New Lots, Newtown, Jamaica, New York.
Martense family papers, 1675-circa 1944
Call number: ARC.285
0.33 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Eight bills of sale for slaves in folder 18 (1752-1812), principally Flatbush. Two letters relating, in part, an incident concerning an African-American arrested for theft and his multiple escapes from custody, Flatbush (1838).
Helen Zunser Wortis collection, 1600-1976
Call number: 1977.351
0.52 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Historian's notes and copies of documents concerningLong Island slavery. Includes copy of a 1755 census of slaves in various NewYork counties.
Mrs. Milan Hulbert collection of colonial British America and early United States of America papers, 1698-1846
Call number: ARC.278
2.6 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Correspondence concerning delivery of a slave from New York to Philadelphia, 1756.
Manuscript Collection #2, 1659-1861
Call number: 1974.003
0.25 linear feet.
Will (1789) and sale receipt (1758) in folder 12.
Brigantine Sivan bill of lading, 1759
Call number: 1977.447
0.05 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
A bill of lading for one slave to be delivered to the Port of Monto Cristo by Captain John Waddell, Jr. leaving from New York.
Stryker-Rodda Southern history collection, 1710-1865
Call number: 1985.076
0.80 linear feet.
A bill of sale, two deeds, and a will from Georgia & Virginia in folders 2 and 5 (1761-1836).
Pelletreau family papers, 1662-1921
Call number: ARC.142
1.0 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Papers of Southampton, Long Island family. Slave bill of sale, 1767; wills; account book of Southampton silversmith with references to African-Americans, 1766-1775.
Hubbard family papers, 1770-1864
Call number: 1974.044
0.80 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Bills of slave sales (folders 6, 9, 11): Flatlands, 1811; New Utrecht, 1794; Somerset County, NJ, 1770; will granting slaves (folder 12): Flatlands (?), undated; will referring to manumission of slaves (folder 13): Monmouth County, NJ, 1840.
South Carolina auction book, 1774-1776
Call number: 1974.118
0.10 linear feet.
Records of debt auction sales (including sales of slaves) in Charleston, SC, 1774-1776.
Gamaliel King account book, 1775-1786
Call number: 1977.089
0.10 linear feet.
Account book with references to African-Americans, Philadelphia.
Charles A. Ditmas collection, 1687-circa 1935
Call number: ARC.196
0.42 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Local historian’s manuscript "Church and State in Flatlands, 1783-1843" with references to the extension and maintenance of an African burial ground, 1829-36.
Remsen and Schenk family papers, 1698-1837
Call number: 1985.017
0.30 linear feet. Link to more information about the collection.
Three wills referring to slaves, Brooklyn 1785 and 1794 (folder 1) and one unspecified (folder 2).