by Mac Griswold
“Little Barbados”: Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 54.
trading network: The scale of the four partners’ endeavors was small compared to major Atlantic consortiums such as that of the Lascelles (East as well as West Indies, Africa). Frances, the wife of a Lascelles partner, Samuel Vassall, was the sister of lawyer Isaac Cartwright, Nathaniel’s brother-in-law. The much smaller Sanford kinship network (Newport, Rhode Island) bought goods in London, paid London merchants in sugar shipped from Barbados, and shipped horses and provisions from New England credited against the sugar. S. D. Smith, Slavery, Family, and Gentry Capitalism in the British Atlantic, 1648–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chaps. 1 and 2; St. Andrew’s Undershaft Parish, London, births 1558–1634, 1634–82, microfilm #4107/1–3; same parish, W. H. Challen, transcriber, marriages, Transcript of Parish Records, 1935: v. 37; Hoff, “Sylvester Family,” 15. For other English-based mercantile partnerships, see Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 159–166, 181–95; The Letter Book of Peleg Sanford of Newport Merchant (later Governour of Rhode Island) 1666–68, ed. Howard R. Preston (Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1928), esp. 11, 45, 57, 69;
sugar, molasses: Giles Sylvester II (1632–71/2) notes 50,000 pounds of sugar and 25,000 pounds of ginger aboard a family ship outbound from Barbados in 1651; the shipment was canceled due to English Civil War events, but indicates the scale of family operations. Constant sent gifts of sugar and rum to New England in 1659; a later letter from Giles is datelined Madeira; Nathaniel Sylvester, acting as factor for Thomas Middleton, with his brother, Peter Sylvester, loaded peas and pipe staves aboard the Two Sisters in New England for Barbados, then loaded sugar, but the ship was discharged at Fayall after storms pierced her hull and she was broken up in December 1657. Giles Sylvester, “A Letter from Barbados,” 50; Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 83–84; NAA 1294/68; Constant Sylvester, Barbados, to Governor JWJr, Connecticut, April 6, 1659, MHS Proc., ser. 2, 4 (1887–89): 277; Giles Sylvester to JWJr, May 30, 1666, MHS Proc., ser. 2, 4 (1887–89): 281; Peter Wilson Coldham, English Adventurers and Emigrants, 1609–60 (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1984), 165.
Salt: Nathaniel dealt in salt from Nevis and stored it in a salt house on Shelter Island. As early as 1643, at least nine New England merchants had entered the wine trade, exchanging pipe staves, fish, and whale oil for wine and fruit; by 1644, if not earlier, the Sylvesters carried wines and spirits purchased in La Rochelle, France, to the West Indies; Will of NS; Bailyn, New England Merchants, 82–86, NAA 1294/68 (June 3, 1647).
access: As the family network grew into a permanent contractual partnership, the Sylvesters became as well placed in London as in Amsterdam: Giles (1632–71/2) based himself there after the death of his brother Peter in 1657, and in 1662 he and two other London merchants loaned £500 to Governor JWJr. of Connecticut, also then in London seeking the Connecticut patent. Both Thomas Middleton (a member of the Council for Foreign Plantations) and Constant belonged to the London sugar lobby established by James Drax, the “Gentlemen Planters in London”; Governor William Coddington and merchant and magistrate Frances Brinley of Newport, important both politically and commercially in Rhode Island, were Nathaniel’s brothers-in-law; by 1671 Nathaniel was listed as a merchant of “Shelter Island & Newport” in Rhode Island documents. Giles Sylvester, Barbados, to JWJr, May 29, 1658, MHS Proc., ser. 2, 4 (1887–89): 275–77; Black, The Younger John Winthrop, 230; Journal of the Council for Foreign Plantations CO 1/15, 142–70; Vincent T. Harlow, A History of Barbados, 1625–85 (London and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), 202–3, 203 n2; Watts, West Indies, 190–91; Carl Bridenbaugh, Fat Mutton and Liberty of Conscience (Providence: Brown University Press, 1974), Appendix III, “Rhode Island Merchants 1636–1690,” 138.
Oil: Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518–1865 (New York: Viking Press, 1962), 128–30.
251 Africans: McCusker and Menard, “Sugar Industry,” 303–5, Table 9.6, “Sale of Slaves from the ship Marie Bonaventure of London, Capt. George Richardson, Master, and Richard Parr, Merchant, at Barbados, 27 July–17 August 1644.”
Samuel Farmer: Will of Constant Sylvester, entered Barbados, Jan. 24, 1671, Barbados National Archives, RB6/8/316.
“90 slaves”: Gragg, “To Procure Negroes,” 73, and Barbados National Archive, Deeds, R/B3/2, 219–22.
“the strongest, youthfullest”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 97.
“very few”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 103.
Twenty-five: Kenneth F. Kiple, The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 64.
“fixed melancholy”: Dehydration from diarrhea may have been a principal cause. Kiple, Caribbean Slave, 63. For a nonphysiological understanding of “melancholy” (depression), see Jeremy Schmidt’s Melancholy and the Care of the Soul: Religion, Moral Philosophy and Madness in Early Modern England (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), 2.
“When slaves come”: “A Swiss Medical Doctor’s Description of Barbados in 1661: The Account of Felix Christian Spoeri,” trans. and ed. Alexander Gunkel and Jerome S. Handler, JBMHS 33 (1969): 7, http://jeromehandler.org/wp-content/uploads/Spoeri-69.pdf.
Laws enacted: See Jerome S. Handler, “Slave Revolts and Conspiracies in Seventeenth-Century Barbados,” New West Indian Guide 56, nos. 1–2 (Leiden, 1982): 5–42, 17, http://jeromehandler.org/1982/01/slave-revolts-and-conspiracies-in-seventeenth-century-barbados.
drums: Such “loud instruments … to give sign or notice to one another of their wicked designs and purposes” were specifically forbidden in the legislation of 1676. Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 17, quoting from “A Supplemental Act … for the Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes,” Apr. 21, 1676, TNA: PRO, CO 30/2 [ff 114–25].
music: “In May 1683, Barbados’s governor urged the mounted militia to diligently patrol on Saturday evenings and on Sundays ‘to prevent the disorderly meeting of Negroes.’” Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 20.
public existence: Hilary McD. Beckles, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 72–89.
victory or death: Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 12.
as long as slavery lasted: Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 11, 35.
“their bodies black”: Ligon, A True and Exact History, 169.
black plots: One of the largest plots discovered took place in 1676. At least 107 people were implicated of whom forty-two were executed. Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 14–15.
One old black man: Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 20, from “Extract of a Letter from Barbados, December 18, [1683],” TNA: PRO, CO 1/53, [ff 264–66].
The biggest scare: Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 24–29.
“many [of whom] were hang’d”: Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 24, from Anon, “A Brief, but Most True Relation of the Late Barbarous and Bloody Plot of the Negro’s in the Island of Barbados on Friday the 21 of October, 1692” (London, 1693).
Alice Mills: Handler, “Slave Revolts,” 24, from Minutes of the Barbados Council, Jan. 24, 1693, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series 1693–96: 5.
In New York Colony: Moss, “Slavery on Long Island,” especially “Slave Laws, Slave Reactions: Island Slaves Under the Law,” ch. 4, 154–55.
Constant’s widow: The daughter of Grace Seaman and the planter Humphrey Walrond, who had banished Constant from Barbados in 1651, Grace Walrond probably married Constant around 1660 or 1661, when her father was president of the King’s Council in Barbados. Grace Sylvester (d. 1702) was the mother of Constant, Humphrey, Grace, and Mary. Both sons died young. Both daughters married Barbadian planters, Sir Henry Pickering and Richard Worsham. Constant had previously married (possibly in 1655) the unnamed daughter of an English merchant of Delft, Abraham Kick, who sheltered the regicide
s John Okey, Miles Corbett, and John Barkstead. It can only remain a conjecture that for Constant, a Dutch-born planter accused of being an Anabaptist and suspect for his Commonwealth associations, close links with Kick were dangerous enough by 1660 for him to ally himself with the Walrond family in 1660. Like many others at the Restoration, Constant adroitly managed the transition to loyal subject, retaining his land and his position as a representative to the Barbadian Assembly for the parish of St. George. Michael A. LaCombe, “Walrond, Humphrey (b. 1602, d. in or after 1668),” (ODNB, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28605. P. F. Campbell, “Two Generations of Walronds: Power Corrupts,” JBMHS 39 (1991): 1–23; Smith, “Disturbing the Peace,” 9; Delft Archive, inv. nr. 101, f. 1v; Ralph C.H. Catterall, “Sir George Downing and the Regicides,” American Historical Review 17 (1912): 268–89; Johnathan Scott, “Downing, Sir George, first baronet (1623–84)” (ODNB, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7981?docPos=1; Robert Needham, “To the King’s most excellent Majestie. The humble Petition of Robert Needham Esquire,” TNA: PRO, CO 1/33, No. 84 [?1660], Item 357, Vol. 9 (Addendum 1574–1667, p. 139); Calendar of Marriage Licence Allegations, 1660–1700, Books 25, 30, London, Dec. 12, 1685; Minutes of the Barbados Assembly of Representatives, TNA: PRO, CO 1/20 Part I [ff. 4–100].
18,000 whites: McCusker and Menard, The Economy of British America, 153, Table 7, 153.
“Fortifications”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 75.
“Lime Tree”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 125.
“Water they save”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 75.
“whole lands of Canes and Houses”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 95.
still greater wealth: “Madam Grace Silvester” is listed in the 1679–80 Barbadian census as owning a total of 695 acres, 260 African slaves, and eleven white servants, more land, servants, and slaves than any other planter listed except Col. Henry Drax. Colonial Office Group, Class I, Piece 44, 149–379, I/44, cited by Richard S. Dunn, “The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America,” WMQ, 3rd ser., 26 (1969): 3–30; COG 1/44 for Silvester listings, and see transcriptions in John Camden Hotten, The Original Lists of Persons of Quality; Emigrants; Religious Exiles; Political Rebels; Serving Men Sold for a Term of Years; Apprentices; Children Stolen; Maidens Pressed; and Others Who Went from Great Britain to the American Plantations 1600–1700 (London: Public Record Office, 1874), 461, 485, https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=VN_A5wlsjQQC&rdid=book-VN_A5wlsjQQC&rdot=1.
well developed by the 1650s: See Schwartz, Tropical Babylons, esp. McCusker and Menard, “Sugar Industry.”
“Ingenio”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 67, 148–55; Menard, Sweet Negotiations, for a seventeenth-century description of an operating sugar mill by planter Thomas Tryon, 15.
Two hundred acres: Watts, West Indies, 188–89; McCusker and Menard, “Sugar Industry,” 300.
37 percent: Watts, West Indies, 188.
axes: Menard, Sweet Negotiations, 15.
harness traces: Bridenbaugh, No Peace, 93.
draft animals: For New England’s production of heavy horses for West Indian sugar mills, starting with William Coddington of Rhode Island in the 1640s, see Bridenbaugh, Fat Mutton, 42–43, 57–59, 122–24; Lion Gardiner to JWJr, Apr. 14, 1949, SMA, NYU I/A/140/1 and printed in John Lion Gardiner, The Gardiners of Gardiner’s Island (East Hampton, NY: Star Press, 1927), 17–18; Daniel A. Romani Jr., “The Pettaquamscut Purchase of 1657/58 and the Establishment of a Commercial Livestock Industry in Rhode Island,” in New England’s Creatures: 1400–1900, Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (1993), ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University, 1995), 45–60; Sylvester, “A Letter from Barbados,” 52; Spoeri, “A Swiss Medical Doctor’s Description,” 3; Peleg Sanford, Newport, to William Sanford, Barbados, Dec. 28, 1668, in Peleg Sanford, Letter Book, 68–70.
forty horses: NS probate inventory, GSDD 1:1.
slave huts: Because slaves were responsible for their own housing, they were able to replicate some aspects of African architectural techniques and styles, as well as traditional floor plans. Wattle-and-daub structures with low doorways, low-hanging thatched eaves, and multiple tiny rooms resembled what European visitors to the Gold Coast described. Jerome S. Handler and Stephanie Bergman, “Vernacular Houses and Domestic Material Culture on Barbadian Sugar Plantations, 1640–1838,” Journal of Caribbean History 43 (2009): 1–36, 4, 19–23, http://jeromehandler.org/wp-content/uploads/House-09.pdf; Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea (1602), trans. and ed. Albert van Dantzig and Adam Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 75–76; “Michael Hemmersam’s Description of the Gold Coast, 1639–45,” in German Sources for West African History 1599–1669, ed. Adam Jones (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1983), 97–259, 201–2.
five acres: Jerome S. Handler, “Plantation Slave Settlements in Barbados, 1650s to 1834,” in In the Shadow of the Plantation: Caribbean History and Legacy, ed. A. Thompson (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publisher, 2002), 121–58, 128, http://jeromehandler.org/2002/07/plantation-slave-settlements-in-barbados-1650s-to-1834.commonwealth: “As in African communities, Barbadian slaves may have viewed their settlements ‘as groups of people rather than as groups of buildings,’ and in arranging their houses in the ‘Negro yards’ slaves placed emphasis on their social relationships.” Jerome S. Handler, “Plantation Slave Settlements,” 130, quoting from B. W. Higman, Jamaica Surveyed: Plantation Maps and Plans of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica Publications, 1988), 244.
two stones: The 1640s Southold water mill was in ruins in 1651; it is not clear how quickly it was rebuilt before 1659, when John Payne owned a new mill there. NS had contracted for the mill privileges by 1667 to produce grain for himself, for commerce, and for Southold town. Malcolm Freiberg, ed., Winthrop Papers (WP), 6 (1650–54) (MHS, 1992), 131, 190.
food for slaves: Handler and Lange, Plantation Slavery in Barbados, 297 n2; Handler, “Plantation Slave Settlements,” 133–34.
“Negro garden”: May 7, 1856, “Planted Six rows of corn in the Negro garden,” “Samuel Smith Gardiner Account and Day Book, 1844–58,” n.p. but chronologically arranged, SMA, NYU III/A/3/45/2.
a third area: That little cultivated land on Barbados was devoted to food crops, hence the need for outside suppliers, appears to be based largely on a few striking quotes, such as “men are so intent upon planting sugar that they had rather buy foode a very deare rates than produce it by labour, soe infinite is the profitt of sugar workes after once accomplished.” Demand did exceed local supply, but the “very deare rates” they could charge for all kinds of goods (including food) are what spurred New England provisioning merchants to enter the trade in the late 1640s, and the Sylvesters in the 1650s. However, Ligon states that in 1647, “In this Plantation [Col. Thomas Modyford’s, which Ligon managed] of 500 acres of land, there was imployed for sugar somewhat more than 200 acres; above 80 acres for pasture, 120 for wood, 30 for Tobacco, 5 for Ginger, as many for Cotton wool and 70 acres for provisions [my italics]; viz. Corn, Potatoes, Plantines, Cassavie, and Bonavist [beans].” Ligon, True and Exact History, 67; Richard Vines to JWJr, July 19, 1647, Allyn B. Forbes, ed., WP 5 (1645–49) (MHS, 1947), 171–72, http://archive.org/stream/winthroppapers05wint#page/n3/mode/2up; Giles Sylvester, “A Letter from Barbados.”
portraits: Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Introduction,” in Ligon, True and Exact History, 23.
“Very good servants”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 93–94.
gravely malnourished: Jerome S. Handler and Robert S. Corruccini, “Plantation Slave Life in Barbados: A Physical Anthropological Analysis,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14, no. 1 (Summer 1983): 65–90, 79–81, http://jeromehandler.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/PlantSlaveLife-83.pdf.
two hundred and sixty: Hotten, Original Lists, 461, 485.
salt fish: Badly cured fish were frequent
ly “a mass of foetid matter” when the barrel was opened; if it had been stored too long in the tropical heat, the contents were likely to contain “as little nutrition as the brine in which they lie.” Kenneth F. Kiple, The Caribbean Slave: A Biological History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 80, quoting from James Stephen, The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated, etc. (London: J. Butterworth & Son, 1824–30), 2:282.
“If any cattle dyed”: Ligon, True and Exact History, 86.
imported and homegrown supplies: For population statistics that reveal the shocking results of long-term malnutrition see Kiple, Caribbean Slave, 105–6, citing figures from Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade, 71 and Table 18, 92; and H. S. Klein and S. I. Engerman, “The Demographic Study of the American Slave Population; with Particular Attention Given the Comparison Between the United States and the West Indies,” unpublished paper presented at the International Colloquium in Historical Demography, 1975.
“if att any time”: Peter Thompson, “Henry Drax’s Instructions on the Management of a Seventeenth-Century Barbadian Sugar Plantation,” WMQ, 3rd ser., 66, no. 3 (July 2009): 588. Constant had died when Henry Drax drew up his instructions, but Constant’s longstanding trust in Drax is evidenced in Constant’s will, signed in England on April 7, 1671. Drax and two others were charged with overseeing delivery to Constant’s sons, Constant (Constantine) and Humphrey, of funds during their minority (both sons under fourteen at their father’s death), and their inheritance at their majority.
