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Just passing this along. A nice write-up on Philipsburg Manor, a
living history museum in Westchester County, NY that has focused its
attention on teaching about enslavement in the colonial north.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
New York Times Sunday 19 January 2003
ãPLANTATION ON THE HUDSONä
By SANDEE BRAWARSKY
SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY
MOST visitors reach for their cameras when they first
glimpse the cluster of
historic buildings at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy
Hollow. A narrow bridge
crosses over a pond, leading to a whitewashed fieldstone
manor house. With its
large wheel in the water, a weathered wooden mill sits
at the foot of the bridge,
and a rustic barn is off to the side.
On a wintry day last month, guides were dressed in
layers of sweaters and
capes -- and britches for men, long wide skirts for
women -- that might have
been worn at the midpoint of the 18th century, the time
the calendar is set here.
But most of the people who lived at Philipsburg then
probably did not have a
minute to admire the view. They were slaves.
Back then, Philipsburg was the center of Adolph
Philipse's commercial
business, which involved trade between New York, the
West Indies and
Europe. In 1750, when he died, his probate inventory
listed 30 sheep, 6
spinning wheels, silverware, pewter dishes, 3 feather
beds and 23 men, women
and children. Although slavery was legal then in the
colonies, it was unusual
for one family to have more than two or three slaves.
The Philipse family was among the wealthiest in New
York. Adolph Philipse
was a member of the New York Assembly. They were also
among the largest
slaveholders in the area, perhaps in the Northeast. In
addition to their dealings
in grain and farm goods, they engaged extensively in the
slave trade.
A National Historic Landmark that is now a living
history museum, Philipsburg
Manor is closed for the winter. But when it reopens on
March 3, its tours and
hands-on exhibits will more closely reflect its actual
history: The Philipses
were rarely there. The property was managed by an
overseer, who was a
nearby tenant farmer. Skilled slaves who spoke several
languages ran the
international shipping operations, as well as the mill
and the dairy.
Many New Yorkers associate slavery with the South, and
are shocked to hear
of the institution in their backyard. Chris Moore, a
historian at the New York
Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture in Harlem,
said that when the British Parliament granted the New
York colony a monopoly
on the bolting, or sifting and production of wheat in
1680, the demand for slave
labor in the Hudson Valley increased significantly. Just
before the
Revolutionary War, New York was second only to
Charleston, S.C., as an
urban center of slavery. There was little difference
between a manor and a
plantation, according to several people involved with
Philipsburg Manor.
''My father was a history teacher, and I didn't know
that slavery was a Northern
phenomenon,'' said Waddell Stillman, president of
Historic Hudson Valley.
''I'm not going to accuse anyone else of ignorance.''
Historic Hudson Valley operates Philipsburg Manor and
five other landmark
sites in the area: Sunnyside in Tarrytown, Van Cortlandt Manor in
Croton-on-Hudson, Union Church of Pocantico Hills,
Montgomery Place in
Annandale and Kykuit in Pocantico Hills.
''We want to make people understand this world, to make
them touch it, so a
300-year history is not so remote any more,'' said
Margaret Vetare, manager of
reinterpretation for Philipsburg Manor. ''This is an
American story we're
telling, not someone else's story.''
Although the reinterpretation has been a continuing
effort for about seven years,
the changes will be most evident this season, with more
nuanced explanations
and expanded use of drama to convey themes of slavery,
international
commerce and cultural diversity in early New York.
When Ms. Vetare and the Philipsburg guides speak, they
use the term enslaved
Africans rather than slaves, and in describing events on
the site, refer to them
by name. (The names appeared on Philipse's inventory.)
''We try to imagine how people saw themselves,'' said
Ms. Vetare. ''I don't think
people thought of themselves as slaves. They were men
and women, they were
African people. Enslavement was imposed on them.''
Although the guides, or interpreters, are dressed in
period outfits -- with many
of their garments woven and sewn on the site -- they are
not in character. They
speak to visitors as contemporaries. But third
person-speak shifts to first
person when scripted vignettes are presented during the
course of a tour.
In ''Trying Times,'' a pair of interpreters play Albert,
the overseer, at his desk
in the main house, and Susan, the enslaved woman who was
head of the dairy
operations. Their dramatic conversation, in which Susan
seeks permission to
visit a family member who had been sold, expresses some
of the complexities
of their relationship and the under-the-surface
resistance and negotiation that
goes on between them.
When another vignette, ''North and South,'' a dialogue
between a Northern
slaveholder and the representative of a Southern
slaveholder, was recently
staged in the barn, surrounded by cows and oxen, a cat
strolled in front of the
actors, stage left and right. Michael Lord, senior site
manager of Philipsburg
Manor, who wrote the vignettes and sometimes acts in
them, said that ''it can
be difficult to play the nasty characters,'' and
affirmed the educational
importance of the vignettes to make the issues more concrete.
''We need to understand and respect the culture, not shy
away from its ugly
aspects,'' he said. The vignettes grew out of
improvisations and have been
reviewed by the African-American Advisory Board, a group of local
supporters offering guidance to the African-American
history programs at
Philipsburg Manor.
''There's no more difficult subject in our society than
the issue of slavery,'' said
Hopeton White, a member of the advisory board and
commissioner of the
Theodore D. Young Community Center in Greenburgh. ''We
don't talk about it
intergenerationally, interracially, or within families.
It's the elephant in the
room that nobody wants to confront. The great divide is
still there. We have
progressed marginally as a society but not substantially.''
Mr. White said he hoped the efforts at Philipsburg Manor
will ''start the honest
conversation among us.''
WHEN the property reopens, the most visible changes will
be at the 1680's
Manor House, which will be reconfigured to resemble the
center of commerce
it was. Visitors will enter through the basement, where
the dairy and slave
cooking quarters are, rather than through the front
door. Some of the rooms now
furnished with period pieces will instead feature
reproductions that can be
touched; certain spaces depicting the family's life
style will remain. The front
hall will serve as a resource center with copies of
documents, like the 1750
inventory and advertisements for runaway slaves.
Other buildings include the working barn, an authentic
structure moved to the
site from elsewhere in New York; a tenant farmer's
house, a new building that
houses demonstrations and activities; and the mill,
recreated in 1960, on what
was once the powerful Pocantico River, now known as the Mill Pond.
Peter Curtis, the miller at Philipsburg, keeps the mill
going year round. The
mill produces between 500 and 1,000 pounds of flour
annually, which is about
what Caeser -- the miller in Philipse's time -- and his
crew did in an hour. In
1740, they produced about 30,000 pounds in a six-day
workweek. Mr. Curtis
apprenticed for five years with the fifth-generation
English miller who ran the
Philipsburg mill for 20 years before taking over its
operation in 1989. These
days, he guides groups through the mill, explaining its
workings. The corn and
wheat flour is sold at the mill and is used for baking there.
Few visitors to Philipsburg Manor have heard of the
Philipse family, which
may have to do with their choice of sides in the
Revolutionary War: They were
Loyalists. In 1779 the property was confiscated, and in
1883 Frederick
Philipse III (the great-nephew of Adolph) fled with his
family to England. For
some years, the property was owned by the Beekman
family, then later by the
actress Elsie Janis. The property was in receivership in
1940, when John D.
Rockefeller bought what was then called Philipse Castle
and opened it to the
public in 1943.
Mark F. Rockefeller, chairman of Historic Hudson Valley,
which was founded
by his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, in 1951 (then
called Sleepy Hollow
Restorations), spoke with pride about his grandfather's
forward-thinking
preservation efforts and the family's interest in
telling the Philipsburg story in
full.
The reinterpretation has been financed in part by a
grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities. In November, Historic Hudson Valley
presented its John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s Founder's Award
to Richard D. Parsons,
the chief executive of AOL Time Warner at a dinner that
raised $375,000 for
African-American history programs at Philipsburg Manor.
Mr. Parsons has a long connection to the Rockefellers.
He began his career as
an assistant counsel to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mark
Rockefeller's father,
and was a White House aide in the Ford administration
when Rockefeller was
vice president. When he was living temporarily at a
guest house on the
Rockefeller estate, he learned that his late
grandfather, who died when he was
3, had been the head groundskeeper on the estate.
For Mr. Parsons, the Philipsburg site provides ''a
clearer sense of how the
country did come together on the backs of different
cultures, with lots of
diverse influences,'' he said in a telephone interview.
''I think a lot of positive
can come out of that, not just so that the future can
learn from the past but that
people can see in a more accurate and enlightened way
how this amalgam of
American reality is just that, not a product of one
cultural strain.''
Although Philipsburg may be the only living history site
in the North where
reinterpreting 18th-century slavery is a major focus,
said Ms. Vetare, other
museums and historical societies have begun exploring
related issues, some
with exhibitions. She described Colonial Williamsburg as
a kind of model for
living history museums. ''We share a founder and a
founder's vision,'' she said,
referring to John D. Rockefeller. ''They have been doing
a lot of exciting,
innovative, research-based programs.''
Visiting Philipsburg can demonstrate the connections
between landscape,
geography, history and public memory. Ms. Vetare
reported that she feels a
responsibility to honor the lives of the past.
''I start from the position that slavery was the most
evil institution you can
imagine,'' Mr. White commented. ''We never try to sugar
coat. But in spite of
the deprivation, look at what they accomplished with
nothing. Can you image
what these people could have done if they were free? I'm
in awe of them and
recognize that I'm here because of them.''
Mr. Curtis, the miller, said that he feels a connection
to Caeser in terms of his
skills and sense of responsibility toward the mill.
Sometimes in winter, he goes
upstairs in the mill and looks out toward the Hudson
River. ''You get a sense of
the beauty of the property, and can imagine when there
were no railroad tracks
cutting through,'' he said. ''You can picture this
plantation right next to the
river.''
Telling the Story as Others Lived It
BRENDA HUNDLEY doesn't think of herself as an actress.
In fact, she first
started playing the role of the enslaved woman Susan in
the vignette ''Troubled
Times'' at Philipsburg Manor a bit reluctantly, filling
in for a friend who had
gotten sick.
''I've learned a lot,'' said Ms. Hundley, who lives in
South Nyack. ''I feel very
good about doing it, about the education other people
get from seeing it.''
In the vignette Susan tries to persuade Albert the
overseer to grant her a pass to
leave Philipsburg. Their interaction is complex and
layered, for although Susan
is virtually powerless, she knows that her skills are
critical to the running of
Philipsburg. Subtly, she suggests if she is not
permitted to go, there might be
some problems with the butter.
During the week, Ms. Hundley is a real estate broker,
managing properties in
Manhattan. On Saturdays when Philipsburg is open, she is
in costume at the
site, working as an interpreter and acting in the vignettes.
About taking on the role of a slave, Ms. Hundley said:
''I don't have a problem
with it. That is part of my people's background. If
anyone is going to tell the
story, why not let it be us?''
Playing Susan, she explained, is counter to her own
personality. ''I'm not a
submissive person,'' she said, ''I have to be very
meek.'' She is pleased that the
audience gets to learn about what really went on at a
place like Philipsburg.
A question-and-answer period follows each vignette.
Often, people express
surprise that someone like Susan can read. In the scene,
she reads a receipt on
the overseer's desk and learns of the sale of some of
her fellow slaves.
Each time she does the scene it is a little different,
depending on the audience
and the person acting with her. When she plays the
vignette with Jack
Sutherland, who has a theater background, as the
overseer, she gets most
emotional.
''Sometimes I just want to punch him,'' she said. ''He
comes across as so real.''
Mr. Sutherland, a retired lawyer who teaches law at
Mercy College, has done a
lot of community theater. He plays in ''Trying Times''
and ''North and South,''
and has stepped into both the role of the slave owner
from the North and that of
the representative of the Southern slave owner.
He finds acting in the vignettes rewarding. ''Because
the audience is learning
something, it makes it that much more interesting,'' he
said. ''The vignettes take
people off balance.''
That he is portraying people whose values he doesn't
share doesn't bother him.
''We're portraying history,'' said Mr. Sutherland, who
lives in Eastchester. ''I'm
neither apologetic nor guilty. I'm conveying as much as
any actor would.''
The scenes are short and tight, so there is not much
room for improvisation. Mr.
Sutherland said the language can sometimes be shocking
for viewers, like the
talk of ''breaking in'' slaves who might be troublesome.
In writing the pieces,
Michael Lord drew on period literature to use the
language and syntax of the
time, sometimes using direct quotations from personal
narratives, traveler's
accounts or advertisements about runaway slaves.
Mr. Lord said additional vignettes have been prepared
and will be performed
when Philipsburg reopens this spring; some are based on
visitors' questions.
One new vignette may involve Caeser the miller, played,
perhaps. by Peter
Curtis, the current miller. Mr. Curtis says that in his
everyday duties he is often
asked by visitors if he is a slave. He said his answer
is that the interpreters are
not role-playing but, rather, they are teachers.
SANDEE BRAWARSKY
Images: Photos: From left, Ana Ortega, Peter Curtis,
Michael Lord and Brenda
Hundley.; Margaret Vetare, above, manager of
reinterpretation for Philipsburg
Manor. Peter Curtis, left, a costumed interpreter,
stokes a fire on the property.
Michael Lord as an overseer and Brenda Hundley as a
slave, below, act their
parts in a vignette that reflects life as it was lived
at Philipsburg Manor at the
midpoint of the 18th century. In 1750, when the owner,
Adolph Philipse, died,
an inventory of the property listed 23 slaves. (John W.
Wheeler); (Photographs
by Richard L. Harbus for The New York Times)(pg. 6); Ana
Ortega, left, a
costumed interpreter, performs the part of a slave in a
re-enactment for visitors
at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow. An interpreter,
above, follows a path
from the manor house, above. The manor, which reopens to
the public in
March, will feature guides in period dress acting in
scripted vignettes that
represent the way life was lived on the property in the
mid-18th century.; At
Philipsburg Manor, Michael Lord, costumed as overseer,
acts in a vignette.
(Photographs by Richard L. Harbus for The New York Times)(pg. 1)
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