l project that displays strings of yarn starting in Sleepy Hollow, reaching out across the Atlantic and pinned to points in these ancestral lands.
Descendants of these old families often make their way to the Old Dutch Church where burying ground maps, church registers, and the headstones themselves can be used to help trace their ancestors. But there is another line of immigration for which these resources can not be employed. One must look to old shipping records, bills of sale, and wills to trace the origins of these men, women and children whose labors greatly increased the wealth of the Philipse family starting with Frederick Philipse I and his she-merchant wife Margaret Hardenbroeck and continuing with his son and heir of the Upper Mills, Adolph Philipse. For these, the strings on our grade school map would have to reach to places like Soyo, on the Kongolese coast; Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa; and other West African ports by way of Barbardos. Whether purchased or stolen, all were brought here involuntarily. These are the enslaved Africans of Philipsburg Manor.
In 1680, Frederick Philipse was a man with a plan. He acquired the property surrounding the Pocantico River from the Weckquaesgeek peoples and quickly added another parcel to the north, purchased from the Sinck-Sinck Indians, rounding out a contiguous holding of some 55,000 acres whose borders were defined by Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the south, the Croton River to the north, the Bronx River to the east and the great North River [Hudson] to the west. The Pocantico property already possessed a grist mill. But he would upgrade the facilities, add buildings and living quarters, and fortify the mill pond, thus creating a center of trade that would greatly enhance his wealth and stature, so much so that by 1693 he would receive a royal charter that would make his estate Philipsburg Manor and confer upon him the title of “Lord”. In the meantime, he advertised for tenant farmers to come and clear land and plant wheat. Those who answered his call were 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 