The Manor

by Mac Griswold

  Henry Bacon, Cornelia’s chosen architect and the architect of the Lincoln Memorial, arrived in 1908. From the start, both he and his client revered the hallowed fabric of the manor as more than walls and roof, and intended to make alterations they felt were historically appropriate. Bacon’s most noticeable changes, all of which survive, include the removal of Samuel Gardiner’s circa 1840s pillared front porch to add a small portico; the addition of twin piazzas crowned with Chippendale-style lattice on either side of Brinley’s house; and the doubling of the north, or rear, section of the house to make a splendid long living room. The east piazza, garlanded with climbing roses, faces the garden, and the west piazza looks out across the creek. To a large extent the roofs of those outdoor living spaces now replace the shade of vanished American elms on the lawns, where the Horsfords once rested and read, knitted and talked in their rocking chairs. The living room (which obliterated the old kitchen where Isaac Pharoah once dozed by the fire) had an alcove for musicians. Both the piazzas and the new living room are much larger than any of the older rooms; they are where life goes on today. Bacon also added an amenity that most single ladies of his generation might not have asked for: Cornelia wanted a wine cellar, and she got it!

  Alice Fiske, in her customary mobcap and standing a bit shorter than the black snakeroot at left, leans confidently on the gate to the garden where she spent so many hours. (Courtesy of Lissa Williamson and Roswitha Wisseman)

  Alice loved the portrait of Cornelia as a young girl—she loves all the family portraits in the house—but she felt especially close to Cornelia. “We divided a hundred years between us in this garden,” she said. It’s true: Cornelia started ordering garden seeds in 1890 and died in 1944. Alice came to the manor in 1952 and died in 2006. Fifty-four years apiece.

  * * *

  Every day, beginning the Monday after Thanksgiving, Alice and Andy’s house would fill with the warm smell of baking. Alice and Roswitha Wisseman, the manor housekeeper, began their task of making thousands of dainty Christmas cookies. Miss Rose, as Alice (and all of us) called her, sang Christmas carols in her beautiful church choir soprano. Silver and brass, floors and furniture, were polished. Every bedroom, every painting, was hung with greens. The aromas mingled, becoming the incense of a well-kept house. Glittering angels flew across paneled walls, danced on mantels. Then the tree was brought in. Decorating it took days—but no tinsel. “Very bad taste,” said Alice.

  Finally, the house was ready for “Tea and Tree.” Alice and Andy held this party annually on the day after Christmas, and Alice continued it after his death. All day, platters piled high with tiny sandwiches in fancy shapes were meticulously prepared. “Cucumber, of course,” Miss Rose told me recently, “and watercress, chicken, and Underwood ham paste. Thin bread and thick butter so the filling wouldn’t bleed through.” In the kitchen, as they worked, Alice always announced, “That’s how the queen likes her sandwiches.” Elizabeth II, that is.

  Guests began to arrive as dusk fell, around four o’clock. “They didn’t stay that long,” Miss Rose remembers, “but there were waves of people—in all, about two hundred fifty. If you were special and you stayed later, you got a drink.” Few were accorded the privilege, and they knew who they were. For most, it was tea and a look at familiar faces one hadn’t encountered since perhaps the Christmas before. All the guests were pleased with themselves: they had donned tweed jackets and holiday dresses and escaped their own houses filled with small children (this was a grown-ups’ party), half-assembled toys, and crumpled Christmas wrap. Shelter Islanders of almost every almost description—builders, bus drivers, farmers, members of the yacht club, plumbers, country gentry, and weekenders from New York City, the entire social order—were delighted to be invited to tea by the lord and lady of the manor.

  As an off-island guest myself, writing a book about a place that had been a slave plantation for half of its long existence, I could not help comparing the present with the past. I noted the lack of even a single black face in the tea party crowd. Perhaps this was simply Shelter Island demographics, a reflection of the small size of the African American community on Shelter Island, which had dwindled so drastically at the end of the nineteenth century? Alice would have pooh-poohed me if I’d accused her of racial prejudice. In the few conversations we had about race, she and I generally stuck to the past, to slavery, so we were safely able to condemn it—but also to say that what was done was done. Nathaniel only did what others did, she said, and someone had to farm all that land … For Alice, and for many in her generation, the rights guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had no bearing on the right to choose your own society.

  Steve made efforts to attract African Americans to the dig, but few came; maybe the manor was not a romantic place to spend the summer for a black college undergraduate. Alice welcomed all the young diggers in her usual kindly and inventive fashion: she rented kayaks for outings on Gardiners Creek, for instance, and attended the annual field school whiffleball tournament. Ever tactful and polite about the opinions of others, she detested argument and kept her own counsel. It seems futile to question her enormous generosity because her broad-mindedness didn’t extend to race. Her racial attitudes could not have been rooted in dislike; African Americans just didn’t fit into her world of tea sandwiches and Queen Elizabeth.

  * * *

  Alice died in 2006. With her demise, Steve Mrozowski decided that the first active phase of the University of Massachusetts’s six-week-long summer field schools (nine in all) should conclude. The team moved their efforts to Boston, to the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the university, which was endowed by Alice in memory of Andy; there they began the analysis (still ongoing as of 2013) of the thousands of artifacts from the digs. “Lab analysis takes ten times as long as fieldwork,” says Kat, so who knows when it will all be completed. I began to write this book once all, or almost all, of my research and travels were concluded.

  One of Andy’s nephews, Eben Ostby, Eben Horsford’s namesake, inherited the manor. Eben, who has been at Pixar Animation Studios since the company’s start-up days in 1983 and is now the supervising technical director, lives in California and has no desire to recast himself as a Shelter Island squire. Fortunately, his sister’s son, Bennett Konesni, now thirty-one years old, a farmer, musician, and the latest in the long line of Sylvester family members to steward the manor, was eager to take on the job. He moved into the manor house and set up an organic farm where more than a hundred families (at last count) pick up weekly shares of vegetables. Fields fallow since the nineteenth century are now alive with young farm staff members and summer volunteers who learn—and teach—the arduous methods of organic farming. They plant garlic, nurse seedlings, stake tomatoes, make pickles and compost, tend poultry and porkers, and host hundreds of visitors to demonstrate that agriculture doesn’t have to be agribusiness. Near the 1810 windmill and the newly fenced four-acre windmill field, now a corduroy patchwork of crop rows, sits a new farm stand built with volunteer labor. A welcome addition to an island community where in previous years almost the only vegetables to be found were canned or frozen, the stand offers hardy salad greens beginning in April and stays open well into winter, selling the potatoes and turnips and onions that have been cold-weather mainstays over the centuries for rich and poor, black and white.

  Exuberant, kindly, and earnest, Bennett promulgates a modern, youthful vision of the manor, a place where, as he has said on the Sylvester Manor website, sylvestermanor.org, “food continues to play a pivotal role in life [through] the arts of the field, kitchen, and table.” He gives the evils of the past a cautious nod, acknowledging that “joy has not always been a part of our landscape.” He counts on future UMass archaeologists to excavate the more than eighty footprints of early buildings along the manor shore in order to uncover evidence of the nameless people who worked here.

  Once again, some of the labor is unpaid, but now the people farming the land
choose to be there. Tea and Tree lives on, but with much thicker sandwiches and a multiethnic crowd. However, the manor still cannot support itself by farming alone. Maintained with land sales over the centuries, as well as sugar, rum, slaves, baking powder, patented chemicals, and natural gas residuals—and recently with gains from Disney stock—the place has now become Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, a nonprofit foundation incorporated in 2009 that is dedicated to preserving and sharing the manor’s precious assets and its long history.

  In 2009 Eben donated to the Peconic Land Trust (a Long Island land preservation nonprofit) a conservation easement extending over twenty-two acres on the North Peninsula overlooking Gardiners Creek and Dering Harbor. In 2012 he donated eighty-three additional acres to the Educational Farm, which will preserve his extraordinary gift forever as farmland through conservation programs of Shelter Island Town, Suffolk County, and the federal government. In 2013, three hundred and sixty years after Nathaniel and Grizzell moved to the island, the young foundation has grown sturdy enough for Eben to entrust it with the gift of the manor house, its outbuildings, and most of the manor’s remaining acres.

  In Alice and Andy’s day, the only crop was flowers. (Occasionally a few fields were rented out to a local farmer.) Alice planted the landscape with specimen trees and tended the mighty boxwoods. Now the box are dying. Nematodes feast on their roots; borers nest in their leaves. The stress of climate change (drought, flood, excessive heat) has made them prey to many other diseases as well. The ancient garden next to the house is overgrown and overrun with deer. The house, now 276 years old, and its gardens are in hiatus, as though undergoing a kind of penance and review. Will the place regenerate? In what form? At the long dining table, Bennett and his farmers eat the food they have grown and kick back in Neo-Georgian chairs. Miss Rose fusses at the loosened-up housekeeping and hustles off to yard sales to find extra furnishings for the summer interns. A plaster ceiling crumbles and falls. The house needs a fresh coat of yellow paint. But the place rings with music (the farmers sing work songs; many of them are also musicians). Bennett plays the banjo, the African instrument that came to America with slavery. The long song of the manor is finding another tune.

  (Edith Gawler, 2012)

  The Immigrants

  THE SYLVESTERS OF AMSTERDAM, BARBADOS, AND SHELTER ISLAND

  Giles Sylvester of Charlton Adam, Somerset, and Amsterdam (c.1584–before 1652) and Mary Arnold Sylvester (1594/5–after 1662), who married in Amsterdam in 1613, produced seven children, birth order unknown, all born in Amsterdam

  Constant (c.1615–1671) of Barbados and Brampton, England, married Grace Walrond

  Grace (c.1618) married Robert Kett, moved to Barbados

  Nathaniel (c.1620–1680) of Shelter Island married Grizzell Brinley (1636–c.1687)

  Mercie (c.1628–after 1666) married Isaac Cartwright of Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire

  Joshua (c.1626–1706) moved to Shelter Island, then to Southold, Long Island

  Peter (c.1631–will proved in London 1658) married Mary Brinley, Grizzell Brinley’s sister

  Giles II (c.1632–before April 1671) of London married Anne Burrell

  TAMMERO AND OYOU OF AFRICA AND SHELTER ISLAND

  Tammero and Oyou, whose origins in Africa are unknown, were by 1680 enslaved on Shelter Island and the parents of four children. One son, Obium (d. after 1757), was sold to a Boston owner, escaped, was caught in 1693, then was returned to Lloyd Neck, Long Island, to live there for the remainder of his life. He is the father of Jupiter Hammon (1711–before 1806), the first black writer to be published in America.

  THE BRINLEYS OF LONDON AND DATCHET, ENGLAND, RHODE ISLAND, AND SHELTER ISLAND

  Thomas Brinley (1591–1661) of Exeter, England, Auditor of the Revenue for Charles I and Charles II, and Anne Wase (c.1606–1670) of Petworth, his wife, lived in London and Datchet, Buckinghamshire, where they produced twelve children, of whom four went to America

  Francis (1632–1719), born in London, moved to Rhode Island, married Hannah Carr, died in Roxbury, Massachusetts

  Anne (1632–1708), born in London, married Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island, died in Newport

  Grizzell (1636–1687), born in London, moved to Newport, married Nathaniel Sylvester of Shelter Island in 1653, died on Shelter Island

  William (1647–death date unknown), born in Datchet, moved to Rhode Island

  Sylvester Manor Time Line

  1651 Nathaniel Sylvester (c.1620–1680) and three partners purchase on June 1, 1651, the 8,000-acre island from Stephen Goodyear, former deputy director of New Haven Colony to provision the West Indies with foodstuffs, livestock, and barrel staves for molasses and rum. Labor is provided by enslaved and impressed local Manhansetts and enslaved Africans who in 1680 number 24, the largest African slave population in New England.

  1653 Following a formal protest by the Manhansetts stating that Goodyear’s sale was invalid without their consent as owners, the four partners purchase the island from the tribe.

  1666 Richard Nicolls, governor of New York Colony, awards Nathaniel and his brother Constant royal manor status for the island, which remains undivided at 8,000 acres.

  1680 Grizzell Brinley Sylvester, Nathaniel’s widow (1636–1687), is his executor and the manor’s life tenant.

  1680 Giles Sylvester (1657–1704), eldest son of Nathaniel and Grizzell, inherits the house and 40 acres. The remainder is entailed to him and his four brothers jointly. By 1700 the brothers have broken the entail and are beginning to sell off land.

  1691 Manor status ceases to have any legal standing under New York Colony law. The Sylvesters still hold unofficial “lord of the manor” status for many generations.

  1704 Giles dies without offspring and leaves the manor property to his executor, William Nicoll of Islip (1657–1722), to pay Giles’s debts. Nicoll retains the residue of the estate (still approximately half the island).

  1719 Brinley Sylvester (1694–1752), grandson of Nathaniel and Grizzell, moves to Shelter Island from Newport.

  1730 The town of Shelter Island is formed. Twenty landowners (including William Nicoll’s son, William) divide the island acreage.

  c.1737 After a long lawsuit with the Nicoll family concludes, Brinley is awarded the old “mansion house late of Nathaniell Sylvester” and 1,000 acres.

  1737–45 Brinley levels his grandfather’s old house and builds the elegant existing dwelling.

  1752 Brinley dies intestate. The daughters of Brinley and Mary Burroughs Sylvester (c.1702–1751), Mary Sylvester (1724–1794) and Margaret Sylvester Chesebrough of Newport, Rhode Island, divide the 1,000-acre property.

  1757 Death of Obium of Shelter Island, father of Jupiter Hammon.

  1762 Thomas Dering (1720–1785) and his wife, Mary Sylvester Dering, move to the manor. Margaret Chesebrough and her husband, David Chesebrough, of Newport rent their half of the property to Thomas.

  1760s–70s The Derings extend the house by adding another kitchen.

  1776–83 The Derings, along with other Long Islanders, flee to Connecticut after Long Island is occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War. Slaves, servants, or tenants care for the house and farm in the Derings’ absence. The manor lies neglected.

  1785 Sylvester Dering (1758–1820), eldest son of Thomas and Mary Dering, inherits the property. A model farmer who uses Enlightenment farming methods (but continues to use enslaved labor), he strives to restore the manor to productivity and wealth but never catches up with his debts.

  1820 The seven children of Sylvester and Esther Sarah Havens Dering (1763–1839) inherit the property. A week before Sylvester Dering’s death, Comus Fanning, a freed African American, purchases 21 acres of manor land from Dering. London, last of the manor slaves, is manumitted by Esther Dering.

  1827 On July 4, slavery finally ends by law in New York State.

  1827 Mary Catherine L’Hommedieu Gardiner (1806–1838) and her husband, Samuel Smith Gardiner (1789–1859), purchase the propert
y, by this time 578 acres, and the house for $10,400 at public auction in Sag Harbor for estate and other debts. Mary is a great-great-granddaughter of Nathaniel and Grizzell through Patience Sylvester L’Hommedieu (1664–1719).

  1840s Samuel Gardiner makes extensive alterations to the house shortly after his second marriage, to Susan Mott of Brooklyn.

  1859 Mary, Phoebe, and Frances Gardiner, Samuel and Mary Catherine’s three children, inherit jointly. Eben Norton Horsford (1818–1893), who first marries Mary (1824–1855) and then Phoebe (1826–1903), takes the lead in managing the estate.

  1859 On Samuel Gardiner’s death, the manor becomes a summer residence; the Horsford family lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where E. N. Horsford teaches at Harvard.

  1865 E. N. Horsford purchases the last of Comus Fanning’s 21 acres from Julia Dyd Havens Johnson (c.1809–1907), the manor housekeeper and the daughter of Fanning’s wife, Dido.

  1872–91 Cambridge’s intellectual community visit every summer. Longfellow, Whittier, Asa Gray, and Sarah Orne Jewett are among the guests.

  1884 The slave graveyard is fenced and marked with a commemorative stone. The family graveyard is fenced and marked with a table monument honoring the Quakers.

  1893 Widow Phoebe Dayton Gardiner Horsford (1826–1903) inherits.

  1903 Cornelia Conway Felton Horsford (1861–1944), Phoebe’s daughter, inherits.

  1907 Julia Johnson is buried in the slave graveyard at her request.

  1908 Cornelia engages Henry Bacon, the architect of the Lincoln Memorial, to renovate and enlarge the house. Bacon makes “actual state” drawings before commencing the work.

  1944 Augustus Henry Fiske (1880–1945) inherits from his great-aunt Cornelia, but he dies only six months after her.