society who planted root vegetables, maize, fruit trees and understood how to care for the soil. Their proximity to the Congo River made them river traders and navigators and brought them in contact with a variety of other cultures. All of these skills would prove valuable to the work of the Upper Mills. But what about the church? What significance would that have to Cuffy? Why would this construction mean anything to him, or be different from any other building project at the Mills? Maika points out that Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries had been present in the Kingdom of the Kongo as early as the 1491 conversion and baptism of King Nzinga to Christianity. The nobility followed suit and Christianity would become the principle religion of the kingdom. A catechism translated from Portuguese to Kikongo was available in 1624. We can surmise that the former passengers of the ship Charles were Christians, who would have been familiar with the sign of the cross, standard Catholic prayers and liturgy. In Maika’s words, “For African Christians, basic principles of a proper Christian life, including divine intervention in daily affairs and the importance of a place of worship, were understood.” Further,
Dreams were acceptable conduits for such revelations and, in Kongolese culture, special individuals known as ngangas served as interpreters of dreams. Given his cultural heritage, we should not be surprised that an enslaved Kongolese at Philipsburg shared a dream suggesting divine intervention in building the Church.
This story about Cuffy and Frederick Philipse, repeated for generations, sounds more true to me when viewed from the perspective of Kongolese culture. A shared faith may be the key to understanding why Cuffy would feel compelled to approach Philipse the way he did.
Once the church was completed, both tenant farmers and enslaved Africans attended services, but the latter, who could be baptized, would not be admitted to full membership in the church. This practice was already in place in the churches of New Amsterdam. And true to age old practice, baptism did not change one’s temporal status. That would have to wait for one’s heavenly reward. Maika says, “Although Sabbath rituals would have been different, the enslaved Kongolese would have recognized Christian symbols like the cross and the Lord’s Supper and found them meaningful as they attended services in the Old Dutch Church.”
In his will of 1700, Frederick Philipse, who owned 40 slaves across all of his New York properties, only names the 21 slaves associated with the Upper Mills and he singles out one slave in particular “Old Susan”, who may have been part of the original Kongolese group: “I will and order that the Negroe woman Old Susan shall dwell and continue on the plantation at the Upper Mills so long as she lives.” We can only conjecture why Susan was mentioned in this manner, but it might indicate that Philipse had a close relationship with the enslaved at the Upper Mills. Unlike the second generation of slave holders, Philipse did not change the original names of his enslaved workers.
By the time of Philpse’s death in 1702, the enslaved community at the Upper Mills was a heterogeneous mix of races and ethnicities. Philipse knew them personally, and though he exhibited his own brand of kindness to Old Susan and perhaps others, he rarely saw beyond their functional contributions to his property and showed no interest in setting them free. The next generation of Philipse slave holders would respond differently to the people they enslaved both at the Upper Mills and in New York City.
For the past six years I have been welcoming visitors to the Old Dutch Church, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the descendants of the old families, talking with amateur historians like myself about the American Revolution, and discussing my own interpretation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But something has always tugged at my heart. There is a part of our history that we don’t engage with. It’s uncomfortable and descendants of Cuffy and Old Susan do not cross our threshold