Saturday, March 15, 2025
Justinne Lake-Jedzinak, of the Raynham Hall Museum, shared the history of Samuel Townsend’s family, and local enslaved people, with a gathering at the Uniondale Library on Feb. 6.
“Slavery has been in New York since it was New Amsterdam,” Lake-Jedzinak said. “That land was all cleared by slave labor.”
Townsend and his wife, Sarah, raised 10 children in their home during the 18th century. Later, his grandson almost tripled its size, and renamed it Raynham Hall.
Today it is the museum where Lake-Jedzinak is the director of education. The facility is part of the Northern Slavery Collective, which works to make the realities of Northern slavery known to the public, “focusing on narratives that don’t get told or shared that often,” Lake-Jedzinak said.
Townsend was an avid slave owner, and his son Robert was a staunch abolitionist.
While they were living together in the house during the American Revolution, the abolitionist British officer John G. Simcoe was quartering with his troops under their roof.
An enslaved person named Elizabeth, or Liss, was living there as well.
“Many of them have biblical names, or names of their enslavers,” Lake-Jedzinak said.
Elizabeth grew up with Robert Townsend, and they stayed in touch after she escaped in May of 1779. In order for her to do so, historians believe, Simcoe hid Elizabeth in a secret compartment in his wagon. There is some circumstantial evidence: Simcoe had purchased hinges and a lock at the blacksmith’s shop a couple days earlier. The thinking in the historical community is that a secret compartment was the only logical use for the hardware.
The Townsends didn’t chase Elizabeth, despite her skills and value, which often would have been the case. There is some speculation at Raynham Hall on why they did not.
“Why would they have let her go so easily — unless she were a spy?” Lake-Jedzinak said.
By law, Elizabeth “robbed” her own body from Townsend. “Because they were treated as property,” Lake-Jedzinak added, “their sale and horrific loss of life are much better documented.”
Enslaved people in the North lived a different life than those in the South. Lake-Jedzinak wanted to make it clear that it was no better or worse. In the North, enslaved people and enslavers shared the same house — even the same rooms — and came and went through the same doors.
In the North, enslaved people were encouraged to read and write, and to read the Bible.
Though enslavers often kept families together, they treated them as property. For another son’s wedding, Samuel Townsend gave him a grandfather clock, and an enslaved couple named Gabe and Jane.
Much of this information comes from the Townsend family Bible, which Raynham Hall purchased for $10,000 in 2005. “If we did not have this Bible, we wouldn’t have any of this information,” Lake-Jedzinak said.
In New York in the 18th century, there were more enslaved people than in all the other Northern colonies combined. They also lived in smaller groups than in the South, isolated by the winter weather and their enslavers’ households.
“In the North, you don’t have plantations,” Lake-Jedzinak said. “There wasn’t really a lot of opportunity to create a community with others.”
In the North, enslavers kept their human property in chains. The free Black population in Oyster Bay at the time was almost as large as the enslaved Black population.
While the enslaved people in Townsend’s household lived in the Northern situation, Samuel profited from Southern slavery as well. Most of his business was in bloodwood harvested from the Bay of Honduras. The wood a purple or black die, and is difficult to harvest from swamps. The work exposed enslaved people to dangerous mosquitos, and they risked injury or death from gunpowder explosions used to fell the trees.
Once he gained control of the household, Robert Townsend freed all the enslaved people before that became outlawed. With the influence of the Quakers and other abolitionists, New York outlawed slavery in 1827, but under a gradual emancipation law. That meant that enslaved people would be free once they reached a certain age.
“History doesn’t only happen far, far away with famous people,” Lake-Jedzinak said.
