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Clermont looks at Livingstons’ history with slavery

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By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY

THE CLERMONT STATE Historic Site is hosting a special exhibit “Redefining The Family: The Livingstons and the Institution of Slavery in Early America,” for the next five months through June 22. The display is housed in the Visitors Center.

The exhibit consists of four large panels that outline the life and legacy of Christiana Taylor Livingston Williams Freeman, the daughter of Philip Henry Livingston (1769-1831) and an enslaved woman, Barbar, also known as Barbara. The Livingstons owned four plantations in Jamaica and slave trading was a source of the family’s great wealth. The Livingstons shipped 5,682 Africans from Jamaica to New York as gifts for friends, their personal use and for commercial sales.

The Livingstons were the second largest slave owning family in Columbia County. At one point the family’s landholding equaled one million acres, extending west to east from the Catskills to the Taconic Hills, and north to south from Rensselaer County to Westchester County. (The historic site, bequeathed to the state by Alice Livingston in 1962, is just 550 acres.)

According to americanaristocracy.com, Livingston, the grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was baptized in Kingston, Jamaica. According to the exhibit, Barbar was shipped from St. Mary, Jamaica to New York in 1812, the year of Christiana’s birth.

Christiana was both Livingston’s descendant and his property. As was custom Christiana was separated from her mother at an early age and put to work by age five. Unlike the enslaved on southern plantations, who lived communally among themselves, New York’s enslaved lived in isolation in the homes of their owners often in basements and attics.

Livingston manumitted his daughter when she turned 15 but New York State did not recognize her as a free person until Christiana was an adult, age 25. Christiana moved to Brooklyn, home to the largest population of free Blacks in New York, and in 1839 wed Amos Noe Freeman. They had five children with three surviving to adulthood.

Christiana was a seamstress, humanitarian and survivor of slavery. Amos Freeman was a minister, educator and Abolitionist. They both helped enslaved persons seek freedom via the Underground Railroad. In 1852 the couple moved to Portland, Maine, where Freeman preached at the now historic Abyssinian Meeting House for 11 years.

The family returned to Brooklyn, where they purchased a house at 33 Fleet Street. Christiana worked at the Colored Orphan Asylum, which housed 200 children. The orphanage was burned down in 1863 by white looters. Amos died in 1893 and Christiana died at the age of 97 in 1909.

Christiana’s life story was passed on among her descendants and confined to oral history up until 1996, when her great-great-great-grandson, Christopher Rabb, who is now a Pennsylvania lawmaker, made it public. His presentation at the annual gathering of Livingston family members included DNA evidence confirming his lineage as a Livingston. At the 2024 gathering of Livingstons, Rabb is included in the family photo (Trans Union 6/22/2024).

Chris Rabb, a descendant of Christiana Taylor Livingston Williams Freeman, in front of the exhibit “Redefining The Family: The Livingstons and the Institution of Slavery in Early America.” Photo contributed

The information about Christiana is the most detailed story about an enslaved person in Columbia County that historians have pieced together. The standard house tour of the Livingston mansion at Clermont includes a second story room dedicated to Margaret Beekman Livingston, who owned 15 enslaved persons according to the 1790 census. The panel includes excerpts from her will:

“And in consideration of the faithful service of my slaves I direct my executors to manumit those among them above the age of 30 who may desire it. And whereas Robin, Scipio, Mariah and Nan are now far advanced in life and unable to support themselves by their labor my will is [sic] it be better option to choose with whom of my children they prefer to live. Further I do give and bequeath my Negro Girl Mary and my Negro Boy Pete to my daughter…”

What to do with aging and infirmed enslaved persons no longer able to do their tasks was an ongoing dilemma for slave-owning families like the Livingstons as well as families not requiring such a large workforce.

The interpreter for the house tour Jacob Park told the story of “Old Cole” who had been the head farmer and manager for the Livingstons. Old Cole became afflicted with arthritis and could no longer shear sheep and perform other tasks. His owner Robert Livingston was asked what to do about Old Cole. Park said that Livingston did not make a verbal response but simply shrugged his shoulders. Perhaps wealth made it not an urgent issue. But, generally, information about the enslaved is limited to a one or two sentence anecdote like the one about the man known only as “Old Cole.”

Information about the Clermont State Historic Site, 1 Clermont Avenue, in Clermont is at www.friendsofclermont.org

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