Archaeological - Blog Posts

Today I visited the Ossuary in Hythe, Kent, UK with my parents. It was absolutely fascinating and well worth the visit if you are interested in local history (£3 adult entry).

You find yourself wondering about the lives they all lead and who they might have been. Hopefully they are all in a better place regardless.

It is no doubt due to angle and lighting but they all look like they have distinctive personalities and expressions if that makes sense.

Seneca Village

NO. 1

The history of Seneca Village is fraught with history, opportunity, and endurance against racism and white supremacy. In 1825, a ‘‘25-year-old African American shoe shiner named Andrew Williams bought land in the middle of Manhattan, two years before slavery was abolished in New York. More free Black Americans followed, fleeing the disease and discrimination of downtown, and together they created the bustling settlement. The village was home to the most significant number of African American property owners in NY before the Civil War. Because those black men possessed property, they were allowed to vote. Irish and German immigrants could also live there, and white and black churchgoers often side-by-side.

NO. 2

As you can see, Seneca Village was a thriving community, living far from the dense population of downtown, despite NY's abolition law in 1827, discrimination severely limited the lives of the African-American populace. Seneca Village provided access to more space from the unhealthy and crowded conditions of the city. ''By 1855, there were 52 houses in Seneca Village. On maps of the area, most of the houses were identified as one-, two-, or three-story houses made out of wood. Archeological excavations uncovered stone foundations and roofing materials, indicating that they were well-built. Some of the houses were identified as shanties, meaning that they were less well-constructed. Land ownership among Black residents was much higher than that in the city as a whole: more than half owned property in 1850, five times the property ownership rate of all New York City residents at the time. Many of Seneca Village's Black residents were landowners and relatively economically secure compared to their downtown counterparts in the Little Africa neighborhood by Greenwich Village.''

NO. 3

Unfortunately, Seneca's village’s demise had to do with the construction plans of what the settlement is today, Central Park. William Cullen Bryant, ‘‘the editor for the New York Evening Post at the time, and Andrew Jackson Downing, an English landscape architect, started the park project together. The Special Committee on Parks was formed. They surveyed possible sites before selecting Seneca Village, even getting NYS officials to legislate the Central Park Act in July 1853, authorizing a board of five commissioners to start purchasing land and creating a fund to raise money and donations for the plan. Before the acquisition of Central Park, Seneca Village was referred to with derogatory and racial slurs. Advocates for Cental Park used the media to describe Seneca Village and other communities like them as ‘‘poor squatters living in shanties’’.

NO. 4

The residents fought against the city’s planning as they were legally entitled to do so as landowners. But the Central Park Act set aside the 775 acres of land in Manhattan from 59th to 106th streets between 5th and 8th avenues to create the country’s first major landscape public park. ‘‘There were roughly 1,600 inhabitants displaced throughout the area. Although landowners were compensated, many argued that their land was undervalued. Ultimately, all residents had to leave by the end of 1857.’’ The settlement was discovered in 2011 when archaeologists from Columbia University uncovered artifacts such as an iron tea kettle, a roasting pan, a stoneware beer bottle, fragments of Chinese export porcelain, and a small shoe with a leather sole and fabric upper. This article is dedicated to the people of Seneca Village and other ‘Little Africa’s’ settlements all over this country that historians and archaeologists are finding in recent times who have continuously fought against the struggles of race, class, and economic opportunities that this country’s governmental systems continuously try to sweep aside.

Artifacts and Archives: The Rediscovery… | Central Park Conservancy (centralparknyc.org)