The Manor
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Acknowledgments
“The hardest thing about writing is writing,” as the late Nora Ephron so truthfully said. My friends, colleagues, mentors, allies, and family have been partners throughout years of researching, writing, and rewriting this book, and I am so grateful to them all.
First, thanks go to the University of Massachusetts archaeology team, Stephen A. Mrozowski, Katherine Howlett Hayes, David Landon, Heather Trigg, and Dennis Piechota, who grounded my work in the manor’s soil. For intellectual guidance and friendship, I owe much to Herbert S. Klein, David Harris Sacks, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, John Wood Sweet, Robert Hefner, Jennifer Anderson, and Philip Morgan, who all contributed important pieces of the puzzle or a path to follow. For details of Sylvester Manor’s history, I thank Michael Austin, Therese O’Malley, David Jacques, Elizabeth Terese Newman, Dean F. Failey, Frederick H. Smith, Marley R. Brown III, Martha McCartney, Martha Saxton, Walter Woodward, Antonia Booth, Carrie Rebora Barratt, Gaynell Stone, Margaret Brucia, Jason Green, the late Eben Case, Jennifer Snodgrass, John Thornton, Peter Benes, the Lamont family, Jonathan Foster, Henry B. Hoff, Andrew H. Lee, Kwame Anthony Appiah, John G. Waite, Robert Forbes, David Lichtenstein, Reginald H. Metcalf Jr., Charla E. Bolton, Gordon Brindley and Yvonne Brindley, Richard Westmacott, and Elisabeth Sifton. For help in Barbados I thank Jerome S. Handler, Karl S. Watson, Harold Hart, and the staff of the Shilstone Memorial Library at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. For legal questions I turned to Judges Michael Boudin and Pierre N. Leval, and to Daniel Hulsebosch and Faren Siminoff. In the Netherlands, Victor Enthoven and Jessica Dijkman were my guides.
Organizations of many kinds supported this project, including the Sylvester Manor Project Committee, especially Ashton Hawkins, Jane Gregory Rubin, and Joan Kaplan Davidson. Guidance from Bonnie Burnham and Frank Sanchis at the World Monuments Fund was invaluable. Charles Birnbaum and Nord Wennerstrom of the Cultural Landscape Foundation have freely shared their intellectual capital with me. Generous grants to study the manor house, to organize and preserve the family papers, to speed the slow progress of my writing, and to improve the book were provided by the J. M. Kaplan Fund and the Furthermore Program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Interamericas Program at the Reed Foundation, the Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust, the Moore Charitable Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the Arthur Ross Foundation. I thank Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and the Foundation for Landscape Studies for recognizing my work on Sylvester Manor with a Place Keeper Award. A Guggenheim Fellowship permitted me to travel to Amsterdam and Ghana.
At libraries and institutions of learning, my heartiest thanks go to Carol Mandel, dean of the Division of Libraries at New York University; to Marvin Taylor, director of the Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU; to Colin Wells and Noah Gelfand; and to Lisa Darms and Liza Harrell-Edge. Thanks also go to the Atlantic World Workshop at NYU, where I met Kristin Block, Lauren Benton, Jenny Shaw, Christian Crouch, Martha Hodes, Michael Gomez, and Nina Dayton, among others; and to NYU’s Sylvester Manor Working Group, especially Karen Kupperman and Patricia Crain. I’m grateful to Plimoth Plantation’s John Kemp; to Amy Rupert at the Rennselaer Institute Archives and Special Collections; to Anita Israel at Longfellow House; and to the staffs of the Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London; the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College; and the Barbados National Archives.
For opportunities to present ongoing research, I thank among others the American Historical Association, the American Antiquarian Society, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Decorative Arts Trust, Longfellow House/Washington’s Headquarters, the Brooklyn Historical Society, Wyck Historic House/Garden/Farm, and the Atlantic History Program at Johns Hopkins University.
For research, support, and long-standing friendship I thank Louise Green, Beverlea Walz, Phyllis Wallace, Nanette Breiner-Lawrenson, and Belle Lareau at the Shelter Island Historical Society. At Sag Harbor’s John Jermain Memorial Library I single out Catherine Creedon, Patricia Brandt, Susan Mullen, and Susan Smyth. I thank Hannah and the late Frederick Dinkel for access to their collection of Sylvester family papers. At the East Hampton Library, thanks go to Diana Dayton Deichert, Gina Piastuck, and Steve Boerner; at the Newport Historical Society, to Bert Lippincott III; at the Massachusetts Historical Society, to Anna Cook. Major thanks also go to the New York Botanical Garden, especially Gregory Long, Todd Forrest, and Wayne Cahilly; to the John Carter Brown Library, especially Norman Fiering, director and librarian emeritus; to Paul Gunther at the Institute for Classical Architecture & Classical America; and to Wendy Schnur at the G. W. Blunt Library, Mystic Seaport. Conversations with Lynda Kaplan and Richard Rabinowitz at the American History Workshop and with Dr. Rex M. Ellis, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs for the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution, were critical.
First among friends and companions I thank Frederick Seidel, who rowed me up Gardiners Creek, made electrifying suggestions for each chapter, and found the patience and love to read the manuscript at least three times. Vast gratitude also goes to my readers Douglas Brenner, Carol Williams, Steven Kossak, Christopher Mason, Richard Rabinowitz, Lorin Stein, Anne Isaak, Catherine Cochran, and Wendy Gimbel. For insights, wisdom, criticism, comfort, useful introductions, good food and drink—and encouragement—I am also indebted to the late Richard Poirier, Jamaica Kincaid, Sarah Plimpton and Robert Paxton, Susan Weitz, Joe Lelyveld, Richard Brookhiser, Tim Lovejoy, Christian Brechneff, Susan Rowland and the late Charles P. Sifton, the late Robert Hughes, Alan Kriegel, Victoria Hughes, Johnnie Moore, Isabel Fonseca, Liz Addison, Miguette Chapin, Douglas Reed and Will Makris, Sam Sifton, Eleanor Weller Reade, William Buice, Grace Tankersley and Nicholas Quennell, Barbara Goldsmith, Suzanne McNear, Leslie Close, Jeanie Blake, Barbara Dixon, Esther and Chris Pullman, Susana Leval, Peter Andersen, Barbara Paca, Vivienne Simpson, and Barbara Schwartz. I cherish my New York City book group, especially Susan Galassi, Anna Fels, and Anka Begley, for help and encouragement. In England I happily owe debts to Janet Kennish, Elizabeth and Lawrence Banks, Peter Banks, Jane Brown, and Patrick Driscoll.
At my swift and elegant publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, profound thanks go to Jonathan Galassi, who rescued the book and always believed in it; and to my remarkable editor, Courtney Hodell, who found the book in the book; and to those who helped it become a reality, including Mark Krotov, Taylor Sperry, Susan Goldfarb, Debra Helfand, Emily DeHuff, Charlotte Strick, Jonathan Lippincott, and Sarita Varma, among others. Andrew Bush’s photographs powerfully present the manor’s lights and shadows. For technical support I thank Charles Grubb, Sheryl Heller, and Michael Avery. Frances Tenenbaum at Houghton Mifflin was the first to recognize Sylvester Manor as a stirring subject. For encouragement and standing by me in every crisis, I salute Jeff Posternak and Andrew Wylie at the Wylie Agency.
On Shelter Island, my profound gratitude goes first to the late Alice and Andrew Fiske
, and to their daughters Lissa and Sue, and then to Bennett Konesni for breathing new life into this old place, Edith Gawler for her grace and draftsmanship, Susan Brady for encouraging children’s programs, Leila Ostby for sharing family memories, and most of all to Eben Fiske Ostby, who has preserved his family’s history by generously giving it away. I hail Rose Wisseman and Gunnar Wisseman for their stories and stewardship. I also thank the board of Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, especially David Kamp, Sara Gordon, and Edith Landeck, and the staff, Cara Loriz, Maura Doyle, and Melissa Mundy.
Last, for their love and support, I thank my daughters, Anna Brown Griswold and Belinda Griswold and her husband, Robert Lee; my brothers, Christopher and Dennis Barlow Keith and their spouses and children; and my Shelter Island family, Felicity Seidel and Daniel, Daisy, and Enzo Siegel. I dedicate this book to my granddaughter, Emma Tara Johnston Lee, now two years old, counting on her to be a lover of history someday.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abbey (enslaved on Shelter Island)
abolitionists
accents
Adam, Charlton
Adams, Samuel
Adams, William
Addison, Joseph
African Burial Ground
Agassiz, Louis
Ainsworth, Henry
Albion’s Triumph (Townshend)
alchemy
alewives
Algonquian Indians; civil society standards met by; language of; witchcraft and
“American Golgotha”
American Revolution
Amsterdam; English merchants in; first English church of; flooding in; houses of; immigration to; religious pamphlets of; Sylvester family in; yellow brick in
Amsterdam, Fort
Anabaptists
Ancient Church
Andros, Edmund
anencephaly
Anglicans
Antinomian Controversy
antislavery laws
Antwerp
apprentices
Aquidneck Island
archaeology
Arkansas, University of
Arnold, Nathaniel
Arnold family
Asante fetish shrine museum (Besease)
asylums
Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Curtin)
Atlantic World
Autumn (Hollar)
Bacon, Francis
Bacon, Henry
Bailyn, Bernard
bale seals
Banda
Banks, Peter
baptism
Baptism of the Calves
Baptists
Barbadian National Archive
Barbados; deforestation of; food theft on; George Fox in; land value on; plantation layout on; population of; slave rebellions on; slavery on
Barbados Council and Assembly
Barclay, Robert
Barons, Richard
Barratt, Carrie
barrel staves
bathing
Battle of Long Island
beans
beer
Berkeley, Elizabeth
Berkeley, George
Berkeley family
Berkeley House
Berkin, Carol
Berlin, Ira
Bermuda
Besease
Bible
Biet, Antoine
Binnen Amstel
Black Bondage in the North (McManus)
Blackburn, Joseph
Black John
Bland, John
Block, Adriaen
Block Island
bloodroot
Blunt Point, Va.
Bonomi, Patricia
Book of Common Prayer
Book of Psalms
Booth, John
borametz
Bosman, Willem
Boston, Mass.
Boston Massacre
Boston Tea Party
Bowne, John
boxwoods
Boyle, Robert
Bradford, Hannah
Bradford, William
Brampton
Brazil
Brenner, Robert
Brenton, William
Brereton, William
brickmaking
bricks
Brinley, Anne Wase
Brinley, Francis; library of
Brinley, Laurence
Brinley, Thomas, Jr.
Brinley, Thomas, Sr.; as auditor; death of; royal grant given to; as Royalist
Brinley, William
British Navigation Acts
Brocksopp, Joan
Brocksopp, Thomas
Brooklyn Eagle
Brooks, Preston
Brown, Elizabeth Sylvester
Brown, John
Brown, Jonathan
“Brownists”
bubonic plague
Buckingham, Duke of
Budd, Richard
Bull, Ole
Bullock, Lady
Burford
burning charcoal
Burns, Anthony
Burroughs, Thomas
burying ground
Bushman, Richard
Bushnell, Rebecca
Butler, Jon
buttons
callaloo
cane fires
Canne, John
Canonicus
Cape Coast Castle
Carey, Mary Sylvester
Carey, Matthew
Carleton, Guy
Cartwright, Isaac
Cartwright, Mercie (Nathaniel’s sister)
Case, Eben
cassava
cassones
Catholicism
Cato (enslaved on Shelter Island)
cattails
cattle
Cautantowwit
Cavaliers
Center for Archaeological Research
ceramics
changelings
Charles I, King of England; execution of
Charles II, King of England
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Checkanoe
Chesebrough, David
Chesebrough, Margaret “Molly” Sylvester; portraits of
childbirth
childhood
Church of England
cider
Cipolla, Craig
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil War, English
Civil War, U.S.
clay pipes
Clerkenwell
clothing; washing of
clove pinks
cobbled paving
Coddington, Anne Brinley
Coddington, William; house of; slaves of
cogges (ships)
Coke, Edward
Collins, Bernard
Collins, John
colonials
Common Sense (Paine)
compost pits
Comus (enslaved on Shelter Island)
Conanicut Island
Conconchus
Congress, U.S.
Connecticut
Constant Plantation
Constitution, U.S.
“contested spaces”
Continental Congress
Cooper, Gary
Cooper, James Fenimore
copper beads
coral
Corchaug Indians
Cormantine, Fort
Cormantines
corn
cornmeal
cost of labor
cotton
Cotton, Grizzell Sylvester
Cotton, John
Cotton, Seaborn
Council for Foreign Plantations
Countrie House-Wife’s Garden, The (Lawson)
Country of the Pointed Firs, The (Jewett)
Cowpens, battle of
Craddock, Matt
hew
creationism
“creolization”
Croese, Gerard
Cromwell, Oliver; New Model Army of
Curaçao
currency
Curtin, Philip
Curtis, Benjamin Robbins, Jr.
Curtis, Benjamin Robbins, Sr.
Curtis, George Ticknor
Curtis, Mary Gardiner
Cushing, Frank Hamilton
Cuvier, Georges
Dana, Lily
Dana, Richard Henry, III
Dana, Richard Henry, Jr.
Dana, Rosamund
Daniel, Stephen
Darwin, Charles
Datchet
Davenport, James
debt peonage
de Carli, Denis
Declaration of Independence
deer
Deetz, James
deforestation
dehydration
Delaware
de Marees, Pieter
“deputy husbands”
Derby, N. B.
Dering, Charles T.
Dering, Ester Sarah Havens
Dering, Henry Packer
Dering, Mary Sylvester; portraits of
Dering, Nicoll H.
Dering, Sylvester (Mary and Thomas’s son)
Dering, Sylvester (Nicoll’s son)
Dering, Thomas
Dering family
Dering Park
de Vries, David Pieterzen
Dido (enslaved on Shelter Island)
Dircxsz, Sijmon
Dirr, Michael
diseases
divining rod
divorce
dogs
Donne, John
Douglass, Frederick
Downing, Edward
dowry
dowsing
draft animals
Drax, Henry
Drax, James
Dred Scott case
Drury, Mary Catherine Fiske
Duke’s Laws
Durant, Henry Fowle
Durant, Pauline
Dürer, Albrecht
Dutch East India Company
Dutch Reformed Church
Dutch West India Company
Duvall, Ralph G.
Dwight, Timothy
Dyd’s Creek
Dyer, Edward
Dyer, Mary; Boston arrest of; execution of
dysentery
East Hampton
Eaton, Amos B.
Eaton, Theophilus
Edict of Nantes
Edmundson, William
Edwards, Hepzibah
electrical resistance testing