The law did not immediately free any enslaved people. Instead, it guaranteed that children born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1799 would be technically free but continue to live under their mother’s enslavers as indentured servants until they reached the age of 28 for males or 25 for females.
The document that endentures Bet a negro wench of Jacob Tice aged 2 years 4 months to Tobias Ten Eyck in Montgomery County, NY
Additional resources for African Research in New Netherland and Early Dutch New York
Studying African presence in Euro American colonial history is about striking a balance between acknowledging the horrors of slavery and finding the traces of humanity and resilience in the archive.
New Netherland and Dutch New York overlapped with the territories of many different Native peoples, all with particular social and political customs who had long pre-colonial histories of diplomacy with one another.
The Mohawk who made this land deal with the Anglo-Dutch settler Johannis Minderse, are one of the six nations of the Haudenosaunee, a group often mistakenly referred to as the Iroquois Confederacy.
Transcription and image of original document, Mohawl Deed of 1730
Resources for Native Americans and New Netherland and Dutch New York
In New Amsterdam, 10 June 1645, English clergyman Francis Doughty (“François Doutey” in the source) filed a complaint against Englishman William Gerritsz accusing him of writing a “scandalous” song about Doughty and his daughter Mary.
The voyage of the ship Beaver from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam in 1660 must have been an awkward one for those on board. Boudewijn van Nieulant, one of the ship’s passengers, was fleeing a woman whom he had impregnated in Amsterdam.
