ere provided with rent-free leases and eventually, a new house of worship. However, this labor was not totally sufficient to meet his needs. The full realization of his business plan would rely on free labor.
It is said that the arrival of the first group of slaves to the Upper Mills was not planned. The inaugural foray of Margaret and Frederick Philipse into the slave trade took place in 1685 when 146 enslaved Africans boarded their ship Charles in Soyo to be sold to sugarcane planters in Barbados. 105 would survive the trip, many of them sick from the voyage. 8 who were considered too ill for sale continued the journey to Rye, New York, where they were met by 19 year old Adolph Philipse, who led them on a 15 mile hike to their new home in the Upper Mills.
At the Old Dutch Church we mark the year 1685 as our beginning. It is the year engraved on our bronze bell which was cast in the Netherlands and possibly carried by Margaret herself back to Philipsburg. It’s a profound thought for me that the year our bell arrived marks the same year of the arrival of the enslaved Africans who would ultimately provide the labor to complete the building of Frederick Philipse’s church, for the use of his tenants.
The possible encounter between Harry or Cuffy and Frederick Philipse allows us to imagine a rich and complex cultural interaction between Dutch and Africans in the Hudson Valley.
Dennis Maika, Historian
During the 1897 celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Old Dutch Church, the Rev. David Cole, D.D., related a story from historian Robert Bolton’s 1848 history of Westchester county, regarding a certain African who is sometimes called Cuffy or Harry. The story indicates that Philipse’s construction of the church was plagued with many starts and stops as laborers were needed elsewhere, primarily due to the continual flooding of the Pocantico.
He [Philipse] had laid the foundation of the church, but had withdrawn his workman from it to repair his dam, which had been injured by a freshet. When the repair had been made a second freshet came and carried it away. The dam was now entirely rebuilt and with great strength. But the freshet again returned and destroyed the work. Frederick was now much distressed. Meanwhile, his slave, Harry [Cuffy], had a dream. The dream was repeated and he felt compelled to tell it. It was that God was displeased with his master for stopping work on the church to repair the dam. He must go on with the church, and then build the dam and it would stand. Frederick heeded and followed the warning and the dam stood.
Rev David Cole D.D., 200th Anniversary Speech
Rev. Cole tells this story in an attempt to make sense of the various dates attached to the origins of the church. He believes the work may have started in 1684 and continued on and off until it was finally completed. Cuffy’s story gives a possible explanation. But to the modern ear, and I’ll use my own experience, the story sounds a bit fabricated upon first hearing. How is a slave, who may have recently arrived after a prolonged journey and illness, who is then force marched across Westchester county, capable of communicating to a master whose language he does not share and whose station in life would generally have prevented him close personal contact? When I became a docent at the Old Dutch Church, I stopped telling this story because it felt like a “magical negro trope”, in that it falls on the black slave to tell his white master how to do his job. I had to ask myself, what is the purpose of this story? Does it somehow make us feel better about Cuffy’s status as a slave?
The historian Dennis Maika reminds us that, “When they arrived at Philipes’s Upper Mills, the Kongolese cohort would have survived war and captivity at home, the cruelties of the Middle Passage, and illnesses that sent them from Barbados to New York.” He goes on to say that their Kongolese culture would help them recover and adjust. He shares some cultural insight into the nature of the first cohort of enslaved Africans at the Upper Mills. The Kongolese were an agricultural 