Uncovering an unpleasant history

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; Isiah 11:4

What I like about Advent is that we get to revisit some wonderful ancient prophetic texts that still speak to us today. The Old Testament reading from the prophet Isiah is still very relevant in today’s world. “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth”. It is the concept of “equity” that speaks to me the most.

As many of you know, our diocese has made an unusual decision looking at issues of “equity” as it relates to the shared history of the Episcopal Church in the overall nation and in our surrounding lived region. At the convention we learned of a resolution that had been tabled for almost 160 years. This resolution had to do with the complacency of many of the businesses in the city of New York in the locally outlawed slave trade. Slavery was outlawed In New York State in 1799, but not all at once. It was decreed that any child born into slavery in 1799 would become free when the females reached the age of 24 and the males reached the age of 27 making 1827 the year slavery was finally illegal in New York State. And so it was; however, this law did not prevent investment into the transport of slaves, or the refining of sugar grown on plantations that depended on slave labor, or the manufacture of inexpensive clothing to be sold in the South for slaves to wear or issuing life insurance policies for slaves with their owners as the beneficiaries. Think Domino Sugar, Aetna Insurance, and Brooks Brothers as local New York companies who gladly continued to have financial entanglements with industries connected with slavery.

An interesting result of this 1799 law was that slave holders whose female slaves gave birth to children beginning in 1800 could declare those children “paupers” and wards of the state. This would then make the owner eligible for a monthly stipend of $3.50 per child to fed and clothe them while still enjoying whatever service that child could offer the household until the anticipated emancipation date. It was a kind of informal payback to the slave owners for the loss, over time, of the labor of that young child. The governor of NY at the time, DeWitt Clinton of Erie Canal fame, discontinued this practice because it was rapidly draining the New York State Treasury.

Although slavery officially ended in New York in 1827, slave owners from other states who were visiting New York could bring their slaves with them; fugitive slave hunters could capture and return suspected runaway slaves, and ships transporting slaves were allowed to drop anchor and restock in New York as long as they did not engage in the sale of slaves while in New York City.

So, although the good citizens of New York were in compliance with the letter of the law, there was quite a bit of local activity that flaunted the intent of the law. Hence, John Jay II introduced an anti-slavery resolution in 1860 to the NY Diocesan Convention that was quickly tabled. Our last convention in November took this resolution off the metaphorically dusty table and brought it before the convention where it passed without issue. But that was not where the Bishop stopped.  He committed to setting aside 1.1% of the income generated from the Diocesan Endowment Fund to be spent for some kind of reparations such as seminary scholarships for persons of color. He also referenced the action of the congregation at St James/Madison Avenue. They had researched their history and discovered that the construction of their original building was done with enslaved labor. They have recently put a plaque on an outside wall acknowledging this contribution. The bishop asked those congregations with colonial roots to look into their history to see what they might learn from the experiences of the founding members and do the same.

His charge about colonial congregation struck a chord with me. While researching my mother’s family genealogy (Conkling), I discovered that they owned slaves, not in Virginia or Louisiana or the Carolinas, but on Long Island, more specifically in Sothhold on the North Fork in Suffolk County and in Brooklyn. In my own search, I found a bill of sale that read:

“Know all Men by these present that I, Joseph Conkling ... for and in consideration of Twenty five pounds Current money . . . sell and Convey unto Joseph & John Lloyd and to their heirs one Certain Negro Girl Named Phoebe of about Six Years of Age During the Term of her Natural Life -- Sixth Day of December A.D. 1773”. (Interestingly, the bill of sale was signed 246 years ago exactly to the day that I wrote this sermon)

I read and re-read that bill of sale. I was devastated. I wondered what happened to that child who was about the same age as one of my own grandsons. Did she survive into adulthood? Did she remain with the Lloyds on Long Island? Did she live to see the ending of slavery in New York? I have no idea. If she did she would have been 60 years old, a very old age at the time, if not she lived her entire life as the property of someone else. I only know that one of my colonial ancestors sold a child for the sum of 25 pounds sterling. As a point of reference that would be equivalent to 3,760 pounds or $4,936.50 in modern currency, less than 5,000 for the life of a child.

This knowledge made me want to revisit what I knew about the establishment of this congregation in 1802, a bit beyond the colonial era, but our roots go deeper than the early 19^th century.

Years ago when I was a member of St Andrew’s and their informal historian I uncovered the story of the beginnings of this community of faith. Ascension, at its inception, was a chapel of St Andrew’s and was established with financial help from Trinity Wall Street. It was built at the present intersection of  Richmond Terrace and Alaska Street. Many of you remember that building with fondness. It was not the original building. The first building was constructed at that site in 1802.

The tale that is gleaned from the records at St Andrew and from a book written about its history in 1925 has a wildly idyllic tale about David Moore, the fourteen-year-old son of the Rev. Richard Channing Moore, who was the rector of St Andrew’s and one of the founders of Trinity Chapel, the original name of the congregation on the North Shore. The younger Moore, who would later succeed his father as rector, loaded a horse drawn carriage with wooden planks and drove that rig to the site, unloaded it and oversaw the construction of the original foundational floor for the building. What did not make it into the 1925 history was the fact that he was accompanied by several slaves who were the property of his father, and these enslaved men were the labor that laid down that floor.

That story alone made me wonder about what other facts we could uncover about the men who helped to start this congregation way back in the day. So I turned to the John Jay College data bank called “New York Slavery Record Index”. It is a record of enslaved persons and slaveholders in the New York from 1525 through the Civil War. (even though slavery was outlawed in 1827, there were 75 known slaves being held in NY during the war) This data base revealed some facts about life here on Staten Island in the eerily 1800’s when our parish was founded.

I copied the names of those listed as vestrymen when this congregation was founded in 1802 and entered them into the data base using the census of 1800 as the point of information. The data indicated that possessing slaves was quite common among people of means on Staten Island.  Here are the numbers:

Richard Channing Moore, rector:  4 slaves

Peter Mersereau:  3 slaves

James Guyon: 6 slaves

Joshua Wright: 1 slave

Paul Micheau ( NYS senator) :6 slaves

George W. Barnes: 3 slaves

Peter La Forge: 1 slave

John VanDyke: 4 slaves

Nicholas Journeay: 6 slaves (for a total of 34 slaves)

These facts are not presented to make us feel guilty. They are presented to allow us to think about the flawed humans that created this congregation that serves more flawed human today. Here is an interesting fact. Very recently, the NY Slavery Records Index joined with St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery to study slavery associated with the church. They believe that recognizing past injustice is a moral obligation, and also a constructive step in understanding racism and injustice today. That is a positive attitude to have when confronting a past that makes us uncomfortable. Let us take the time to think and pray on this as well.