The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
Mac Griswold's The Manor is the biography of a uniquely American place that has endured through wars great and small, through fortunes won and lost, through histories bright and sinister—and of the family that has lived there since its founding as a Colonial New England slave plantation three and a half centuries ago.
In 1984, the landscape historian Mac Griswold was rowing along a Long Island creek when she came upon a stately yellow house and a garden guarded by looming boxwoods. She instantly knew that boxwoods that large—twelve feet tall, fifteen feet wide—had to be hundreds of years old. So, as it happened, was the house: Sylvester Manor had been held in the same family for eleven generations.
Formerly encompassing all of Shelter Island, New York, a pearl of 8,000 acres caught between the North and South Forks of Long Island, the manor had dwindled to 243 acres. Still, its hidden vault proved to be full of revelations and treasures, including the 1666 charter for the land, and correspondence from Thomas Jefferson. Most notable was the short and steep flight of steps the family had called the "slave staircase," which would provide clues to the extensive but little-known story of Northern slavery. Alongside a team of archaeologists, Griswold began a dig that would uncover a landscape bursting with stories.
Based on years of archival and field research, as well as voyages to Africa, the West Indies, and Europe, The Manor is at once an investigation into forgotten lives and a sweeping drama that captures our history in all its richness and suffering. It is a monumental achievement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Canoeing a creek off Shelter Island, N.Y., one summer's day in 1984, Griswold (The Golden Age of American Gardens) happened upon an old manor house obscured by enormous boxwoods. As a landscape historian, she knew by the size of the shrubs that they must've been hundreds of years old. Her curiosity piqued, Griswold briefly explored the grounds, returning later to meet the owners and gain access to the home's enormous stores of ephemera--including a letter from Thomas Jefferson and a treaty signed by a 17th-century Grand Sachem of Long Island. She begins to conduct her own historical and archaeological research into the site, uncovering the absorbing histories of the house--and those who lived in it or passed through its grounds: Native Americans, generation after generation of Sylvesters (the original owners), and--most surprisingly, considering that the Sylvesters were Quakers--the family's slaves. The parallel stories of the homeowners and their bondservants interweave to form a moving tale of life in the New World, and the author enriches her narrative with meticulous examinations of items unearthed at the manor, from porridge bowls to old cobblestone pathways. Griswold brings American history home in this fascinating volume.