Nathaniel Sylvester

Nathaniel Sylvester (1610–1680) was an Anglo-Dutch sugar merchant, slave owner, and the first European settler of Shelter Island.

Early life

Nathaniel Sylvester was born in 1610 in England.Jennifer Schuessler
Confronting Slavery at Long Island’s Oldest Estates
''The New York Times'', August 12, 2015 His family lived in exile in Holland before he emigrated to British America during the English Civil War and Anglo-Dutch War.

Career

In June 1651, with his brother, Constant, and partners Thomas Middleton and Thomas Rouse, he purchased the whole of Shelter Island first from a non-resident Englishman and then again the next year, from the Manhanset Indians, whose sachem, or chief, was called "Yoki." Nathaniel was the only one of the partners who lived on a Shelter Island, and he eventually bought out his partners’ shares. The Shelter Island enterprise involved barrel-making, using the stands of local white oak for shipping the West Indies tobacco, sugar, molasses and rum back to England. The family kept African slaves, along with employing Native Americans and others, to help run the plantation, the largest such operation in the north.

Personal life

Between 6 July (date of marriage jointure) and 8 August 1653 (date of letter mentioning his changed condition because of marriage), he married Grizzell Brinley, daughter of Thomas Brinley, one of the Auditors General of the Revenues for Charles I, and later for Charles II. Grizzell was a younger sister of Anne Brinley, who in England had married Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island in January 1650. When the Coddingtons returned to Rhode Island in mid-1651, Grizzell came along as a ward of Coddington. Grizzell and Anne's brother, Francis, would also join his sisters in the New World, fleeing Cromwell's England, and establishing the American Brinleys in Newport, RI and Boston, Mass. Another Brinley sister, Mary, would marry Nathaniel's brother, Peter Sylvester. The Sylvesters were friends with Quaker founder George Fox, whom he entertained on at least one occasion on Shelter Island. They offered a place of refuge for several of the persecuted early Quakers in New England at a time when it was dangerous to do so.

Death

He died in 1680.

Legacy

His grandson, Brinley Sylvester, replaced the existing home and built Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island in 1737, which remains standing and stayed in the family until 2006.Anne Raver
Life on the Plantation: Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island Returns to Its Roots
''The New York Times'', April 10, 2013 Master Millwright Nathaniel Dominy V (1770–1852) was the architect and builder of the windmill that was a significant part of the plantation history from 1810-1824. In the 19th century, Eben Norton Horsford, a Harvard professor and chemist and who made a fortune with his invention of baking soda, married into the family. His first wife, Mary L'Hommedieu Gardiner, had the windmill moved to its current location north of Manwaring road. She was responsible for creating the gardens at the manor. After her early death, Horsford married her younger sister, Phoebe Dayton Gardiner. Their mother, Mary Catherine L'Hommedieu Gardiner, had repurchased the manor for the family in 1827 at a public auction. One of the largest plantations in the north it was home to many slaves from the Caribbean along with Native Americans and indentured persons. Its burial ground was recipient of a Guggenheim grant in 2004 to study the history of Long Island. An 11th generation descendant, Eben Otsby, and his nephew, Bennet Konesni, turned it into a non-profit educational farm.

A contemporary archaeological dig, from 1999 to 2005, called the Sylvester Manor Project, a project overseen by the University of Massachusetts Boston, seeks to shed light on the Sylvester estate as it existed in the 17th and 18th centuries.Burial Ground Project — Sylvester Manor

References

External links

* The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island arrar, Straus and Giroux

History of Shelter Island



{{DEFAULTSORT:Sylvester, Nathaniel
1610 births
1680 deaths
People of the Province of New York
People from Suffolk County, New York
2004 awards