Slavery-- A Household Word

Last February we published an article about how scarce information is about the history of minorities in Warwick. Since then some new things have come to light:

As old newspapers are scanned and made available, it becomes possible to recover some of this lost information. This image is from the Orange County Patriot, March 11, 1817. This Garret Post appears to be the same man who owned what is now the Shingle House Museum on Forester Ave.

The most significant find in the last few months is that in the collection of Florence Tate, we found a transcription she did of the old slave births and manumissions register kept by the town. It lists over 100 names of slaves and their owners, and is now posted on the Warwick Heritage Database (go to www.albertwisnerlibrary.org, click on "Local History", and then on the database button, search for "slavery"). These records were kept as a result of the act to gradually eliminate slavery passed by New York State in 1799. It specified that after a certain number of years of service, the slave had to be freed.