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Black Kingsbridge 1698 to 1850 – A Community Revealed in Documents – The Kingsbridge Historical Society

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I f you are familiar with the history of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, and Spuyten Duyvil, you probably already know that the area was first settled by Dutch and English settlers, who purchased the land from Native Americans. If you are like me, you may have assumed that the area remained a white neighborhood thereafter until the 1960’s and 70’s when the neighborhood began to diversify. Nothing that I read in local history books said any different. But that assumption turned out to be inaccurate. The truth was out there but it was buried in dusty tomes in the municipal archives and on handwritten parchments in research libraries. But the truest witness to this hidden past is buried in a far more familiar place–under the Putnam Trail in Van Cortlandt Park. Historical documents reveal that the Black population of Kingsbridge was proportionally much higher in the distant past than it is today. Census lists show this demographic reality in stark numbers (see Appendix A). Wills, “runaway” ads, i

Black Kingsbridge 1698 to 1850 – A Community Revealed in Documents – The Kingsbridge Historical Society Skip to content The Kingsbridge Historical Society Close menu Historic Black Kingsbridge 1698-1850 A Community Revealed in Documents Part One - Van Cortlandt Plantation 12/9/18 – Nick Dembowski Piero the miller and his son Pieter working in the gristmill at Van Cortlandt Lake. Piero, his wife Hester, and Pieter were part of a community of enslaved Africans living on and around the plantation in today's park. Pen and ink by Gary Zaboly, 2018. If you are familiar with the his

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