A Respectable Woman: The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York 9780814785188

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A Respectable Woman

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A Respectable Woman The Public Roles of African American Women in 19th-Century New York

Jane E. Dabel

a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London

new york university press New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2008 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dabel, Jane E. A respectable woman : the public roles of African American women in 19th-century New York / Jane E. Dabel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-2011-0 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8147-2011-0 (cl : alk. paper) 1. African American women—New York (State)—New York—Social conditions—19th century. 2. African American women—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. 3. African American women—New York (State)—New York—Political activity— History—19th century. 4. Sex role—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. 5. Women’s rights—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. 6. Community life—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. 7. Racism—New York (State)—New York—History—19th century. I. Title. F128.9.N4D33 2008 305.48'8960730747109034—dc22 2007049411 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Daniel Anker, teacher, scholar, friend

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Contents

1 2

3 4 5 6

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

“I Resided in Said City Ever Since” Women and the Neighborhoods

9

“We Were Not as Particular in the Old Days about Getting Married as They Are Now” Women, the Family, and Household Composition

41

“I Washed for My Living” Black Women’s Occupations

63

“Idle Pleasures and Frivolous Amusements” African American Women and Leisure Time

93

“They Turned Me Out of My House” African American Women and Racialized Violence

109

“We Should Cultivate Those Powers” Activism of African American Women

129

Conclusion

157

Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

161 207 231 245

vii

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Acknowledgments

Many individuals and institutions provided generous support to help me write this book. I received financial support from the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the UCLA History Department, the UCLA Center for Study of Women, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and California State University, Long Beach. Grants from these institutions funded many research trips to the East Coast and allowed me to hole up and write when I returned to the West Coast. I am very grateful for the help of many archives and libraries in New York City and Washington, DC, that made my research possible. I would like to thank the archivists at the Schomburg Research Center, New York Public Library, All Angels’ Church, St. Philip’s Church, the New-York Historical Society, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Library of Congress for their help in locating sources for this book. Kenneth Cobb helped me to look for materials at the New York Municipal Archives, and I am indebted to him in particular for locating rich documents about the New York City Draft riots. Many people assisted me in the creative process of writing the book and also guided me through many revisions. Leslie Harris offered invaluable comments that helped to improve the manuscript tremendously, and Graham Russell Hodges has been very supportive of the project for many years. I have also received encouragement and advice from my colleagues. In particular, I would like to thank Jennifer Koslow, Gail Ostergren, Laura Talamante, Nat Emerson, Eric Altice, Houri Berberian, Caitlin Murdock, Patricia Cleary, Sharon Sievers, Nancy Quam-Wickham, Brett Mizelle, Sarah Schrank, Donna Binkiewicz, Hollie Schillig, and Carla Bittel for providing numerous suggestions to improve the project. I owe many thanks to Claire Quam-Wickham for her fabulous maps. I am grateful to my advisors Eric Monkkonen, Jan

ix

x | Acknowledgments

Reiff, and Brenda Stevenson for reading and criticizing drafts. I very much regret that Eric Monkkonen was not able to see this book. I owe a tremendous debt to the many friends and family members who helped me to write this book. They have supported the project and me for many years. I am particularly thankful for the help provided by the Wilhelms, the Papke and Stern families, the Humphreys, the Dabels, the Robisons, the Ross family, the Snyders, the Saimres, the Altice family, Gretchen Treuting, Mollie Cavender, Stephanie Friedman, David Cleland, and Katharine Daniels. My wonderful husband, Tariq Ahmad, has been a constant source of support and good humor. Finally, this book is dedicated to my high school history teacher, Daniel Anker. I attended a school where few people went on to college, let alone pursue a graduate degree. Mr. Anker has been a constant source of encouragement throughout this process, and it probably would have never been completed without him.

Introduction

At age seventy-eight, Phoebe Sisco recounted her life story to Special Examiner J. McDonald, an army pension official. Born into slavery in New Jersey in 1820, she met her “husband,” Samuel Sisco, “sometime during the war with Mexico.” The couple moved into an apartment in New York City and had four children over the next decade. “No we were never married but lived together as man and wife and were so recognized by all our friends,” she stated. The Sisco family remained in the city for fifty years but often changed residences. “We first lived in Le Roy Street [or Benton Street], New York and then moved to Houston Street, New York. When the war came on we lived in 17th Street between 9[th] and 10[th] Avenues,” Phoebe recalled. Phoebe Sisco worked as a servant for at least two white families, and when her husband enlisted in Company A of the Thirty-first U.S. Colored Troops regiment from New York, the illiterate forty-four-year-old mother of four sought financial relief. “While he was in the army he sent my relief money. I got $60 first and after that Mr. Cooper of 71 Jayne Street collected the money for me and my children. We got a card to come and get the relief money for soldiers’ families.” When Samuel Sisco was discharged in 1865, he returned to New York City. According to Phoebe, “He came to live with me as my husband

1

2 | Introduction

again . . . and moved around doing kalso mining work.” Phoebe and Samuel separated following a violent argument in 1880. “Once he got tight and was going to kill my crippled daughter and he went away for fear we would have him arrested,” Phoebe explained. Shortly after leaving his family, Samuel Sisco fell ill and died at the New York City Colored Home in 1880. Phoebe Sisco experienced financial difficulties following her husband’s death. She recalled, “I can get out days work. I do what I can. I am too old to work much. . . . I have to depend on charity and such assistance as my neighbors and children can give.” The pension official described her as “very honest and even respectable.”1 The story of Phoebe Sisco reveals many themes about the lives of black women in nineteenth-century New York City. Born a slave in the neighboring state of New Jersey, Sisco moved to New York City following her emancipation and continued to work as a domestic servant. She met her husband and became a mother of four. Like most black New Yorkers, she moved around the city. She looked after her family when her husband was away at war and negotiated with government officials to obtain the financial support to which she was entitled. Like many northern black women who gained their freedom in the early nineteenth century, she confronted new concepts of black gender roles and carved out a powerful position. New York City was home to one of the most important black populations in the North and is therefore an ideal city in which to explore the lives of black women. In the nineteenth century, its industrial and commercial base was changing. New York City was one of the main ports of entry for immigrants, and the city had tremendous ethnic diversity. Its geography shifted over the nineteenth century as the city expanded northward. Racial violence and increasing discrimination plagued black New Yorkers, who devised a variety of creative strategies to overcome them. With the passage of the 1827 Gradual Emancipation Act, which put an end to slavery in New York, African Americans flooded into the city and the city’s population increased. Black New Yorkers founded schools, published newspapers, built churches, and raised funds for community institutions. They agitated for political rights in defiance of a state law that made property ownership a prereq-

Introduction | 3

uisite for voting, virtually disenfranchising all black men. Black New Yorkers knew that racism limited their lives and opportunities, but they also believed that this discrimination was temporary. They clung to the hope that the end of southern slavery would elevate their economic, social, and political position. Blacks’ hopes for racial equality, however, were dashed with the eruption of the New York City Draft Riot, one of the bloodiest in American history, on July 13, 1863. As the Civil War dragged on and the number of troops dwindled, the Union hoped to increase its ranks through a universal draft of all male citizens, but it explicitly excluded African American men, who were not considered citizens, and implicitly released men who could afford to pay $300 to obtain a waiver. The first draft drawing occurred peacefully on Saturday, July 11, and the second one was scheduled for Monday, July 13. But shortly after dawn of that day, white working-class men protested by looting the city. They attacked Republican sympathizers and then turned against the city’s blacks, beating them, ransacking their homes, setting buildings on fire, and destroying institutions like the Colored Orphan Asylum. On Friday, July 17, troops returned from Gettysburg and restored order. The rioters had murdered at least eleven African Americans, injured more than thirty, and driven over five thousand from the city. African Americans had believed that emancipation would put an end to racism. The Draft Riot revealed just how wrong they were. The Civil War and the emancipation of southern slaves affected all African Americans — free and slave — and raised questions about the place of blacks in American society. The end of slavery also had a profound impact on blacks’ hopes of racial equality. Incidents like the New York City Draft Riot proved that the race question was not going to be easily answered by emancipation and that the end of the “peculiar institution” was no guarantee of equal treatment. The riot brought the underlying racial tensions between northern blacks and whites to the surface. Following the Civil War, black New Yorkers found that their economic and employment fortunes were in decline, and they responded by moving to different areas of the city. Emancipation solidified racial segregation in the North, forced blacks to doubt the imminence of racial equality, and convinced them to retreat into their own community.

4 | Introduction

The story of African Americans in New York City during the nineteenth century is the story of hopes betrayed. At the same time it is also the story of black women’s strength and resilience in a time of rising racial discrimination. This racism actually provided black women with an unprecedented agency and autonomy. As black men in New York City were politically disenfranchised, denied occupational opportunities, and targeted for racial violence, black women assumed prominent roles within the black community. Black women of all backgrounds—from the vast majority of working-class women to the small minority of elite women—played a pivotal role in nineteenth-century New York City. Not only were they not dependent on black men, but they were able to negotiate with whites and shape the city in ways that black men could not. As a result, they forged autonomous identities, created family stability, became activists, resisted racial attacks, shaped the geography of the black community, and provided financial security for themselves and their families. Their lives tell us that African American women in New York City wielded tremendous power. Throughout the nineteenth century, a small group of New York City’s black male leaders in New York City argued, in sermons and in New York’s black press, that African American women should adopt white middle-class standards of behavior. New York City was home to many nationally known black newspapers, the first of which was Freedom’s Journal, founded in 1827 by the prominent abolitionists Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm. Freedom’s Journal soon changed its name to Rights for All and ceased publication in 1829. Other black newspapers took its place. Among these were the Colored American in 1837 and the Ram’s Horn and Frederick Douglass’s North Star in 1847.2 The black men who founded and sat on the editorial boards of these newspapers used them to agitate for nationwide abolition and black civil rights. Yet they also implored African Americans to adopt “respectable” behaviors, reasoning that adherence to these behavioral norms, which whites were just then defining for the emerging middle class, would force whites to see them as equals.3 Central to defining these proper behaviors was the assignation of fixed and separate gender roles.4 Black leaders in New York City insisted on a code of conduct in which men took charge of work and pol-

Introduction | 5

itics and women remained at home with their children, focusing on their domestic duties and submitting to the directives of black men. An 1829 editorial in Freedom’s Journal, for example, urged women to “endear home by temper, order, and cleanliness.” It advised the black wife to care for her husband and to let him “feel that his comfort and taste are consulted.”5 Such writers exhorted women to defer to their husbands; to be caretakers, moral educators and exemplars, and nurses for their families and communities; and to leave wage earning, political activism, and positions of authority to their men. This effort to conform black women to an ideal of female respectability often took on a harshly critical if not misogynist aspect. A year after the end of slavery in New York State, a black newspaper observed, “There are many coloured females in this city, who deserve to be highly esteemed for their amiable and modest deportment; but there are many who rank themselves with the respectable, who are grossly defective in good manners. . . . A brazen faced, impudent woman is the most disgusting creature in the world. Let the female, then, that would be respected, study to be modest on all occasions, and to treat every person with due respect.”6 But this black gender ideology and its ideal of female respectability contrasted sharply with the influential role that black women actually played in New York City.7 Despite exhortations to defer to men for the sake of racial equality, African American women led independent and powerful lives. As a result, gender relations in the African American community were quite different from what they were in white society. Although gender equality did not exist in the black community, black women had a more public role than the notion of respectability called for, and they crafted strategies that ensured the survival of their community. In spite of the rigid ideology of gender that some black men preached, gender roles, especially for women, were fluid throughout the nineteenth century.8 Although the prescriptive literature might suggest that black women held a secondary position in the black community, they did not. They were the bedrock of their families and created female-centered family structures to ensure economic stability and emotional support. They were active in their churches and associations. When the Draft Riot

6 | Introduction

erupted in 1863, African American women defended their families, stood up to rioters, and insisted that authorities protect them. Following the riot, African American women negotiated with local and federal government agencies to obtain relief and spoke out on behalf of the black community. They also rebuilt the black metropolis by organizing the settlement of African Americans in the northern reaches of the city. While black male leaders demanded racial equality, black women concentrated on their families’ and their communities’ day-to-day survival. This book makes three contributions to our knowledge of African American history. First, it examines gender roles within the African American community and investigates ways in which black women ensured the community’s survival and success. It shows the centrality of black women in nineteenth-century New York City and examines the ways that they lived, worked, fought, relaxed, and even wielded political power. In doing so, it emphasizes the experiences of the majority of black women, not the privileged, highly educated minority. Most studies of nineteenth-century blacks have focused on privileged men and women, but an examination of the lives of lower-class black women proves that they were not less influential than their middle-class counterparts.9 Second, this book challenges the traditional time frame of studies of free blacks by extending the periodization from emancipation in 1827 to the end of the Reconstruction era in 1880. This allows for a broader view of the changes and continuities in the lives of black New Yorkers in general and black women in particular, as well as exploration of race relations after the Draft Riot, the shifting urban geography of the black population, the effect of black men’s suffrage rights on gender relations in the black community, and the composition and impact of the first wave of southern black migrants into northern cities. Third, this book explores race relations in one of the most dynamic cities of the nineteenth century. New York City’s black men and women were affected by and responded to racism in different ways. Though freed slaves generally lived and worked peacefully among whites, racial tensions sporadically erupted in violence over competition for jobs, fears of race mixing, and opposition to the Union cause. The Draft Riot was a watershed in New York City’s history because it revealed that ra-

Introduction | 7

cial prejudice was rising, not declining. Following the riot, residential segregation solidified, occupational opportunities for blacks were further limited, and politicians attempted to rescind the political rights that had been extended to black men. Despite the worsening racial climate, however, black women created strategies that enabled them, their families, and their communities to survive. While historians have examined the experiences of free blacks in the nineteenth-century North, they have tended to ignore questions of gender. Further, while several books have studied black women in the postemancipation South, the role of northern black women has been given short shrift.10 Early studies of free black populations examined their unique economic, social, and political experiences. One of the first of these, Leon Litwack’s North of Slavery, pointed out that free blacks in northern states were not spared racial discrimination.11 Historians then turned toward examining the ways blacks formed strong communities in the North despite the constraints of racism.12 More recently, historians of free African American communities have emphasized the diversity of the free black community and have explored how class, education, occupation, ideology, and religion shaped the lives of free blacks in different ways.13 But so far there has been no book-length study of free black women and their essential contributions to their communities.14 One reason why free black women have been inadequately studied by historians is that they did not often leave written records.15 Another reason is that many scholars have depended for their source material on prescriptive literature: the black newspapers, church sermons, and advice books that often urged free black women to stay out of public life. Reliance on these sources has skewed historians’ view of black women’s actual position in their communities. In women’s history scholars have questioned the extent to which prescriptive literature actually reflected and promoted a “cult of domesticity”;16 just as they have explored women’s compliance with and defiance of their prescribed roles, historians of the African American experience should explore the tension between black prescriptive literature and black women’s actual behavior. The life of Phoebe Sisco reveals that black women in nineteenthcentury New York City were strong and resilient. Black women like her constituted a large proportion of the wage-earning population and were

8 | Introduction

responsible for the financial stability of their families. Sisco forged strong relationships with former employers and government officials to obtain financial assistance. Many black women took charge of their families—sometimes temporarily, as when Phoebe Sisco’s husband was away at war, and sometimes permanently, as when Samuel Sisco died at the Colored Home. Black women’s contributions to New York City’s African American community in the nineteenth century were essential to its survival.

1 “I Resided in Said City Ever Since” Women and the Neighborhoods

In 1890, Caroline Cornelius (née Smith) resided at 136 West Seventeenth Street in the Sixteenth Ward of New York City. Cornelius recalled, “I was born at Cold Spring Harbor, Suffolk County, New York in November 1836 and when about two years of age so I am told, my parents both of Cuba[, who] are now dead, brought me to New York City and I resided in said city ever since.” She met her future husband, Nicholas Cornelius, in 1855; they lived in the same neighborhood. The couple was married in 1859 at the African Methodist Church in Sullivan Street and moved first to 42 Ridge Street, then to 218 Wooster Street, and then to 224 Second Street. In 1864, Nicholas Cornelius enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, Company K of the Thirtyfirst Connecticut Regiment. He returned in 1865, and the couple moved to 94 Attorney Street. Caroline Cornelius stated, “After that we lived in the order named at 25 Minetta Lane, then at 224 Sullivan Street, then at 38 Cornelia Street, then at 136 West 17th Street where my said husband died and where we lived several years before his death. I continued to reside at the same place for several years after his death until about 1890.” The couple’s longtime friends Isaac Hodge and Julia Bell, who were neighbors of the Cornelius family, said they were “well and

9

10 | “I Resided in Said City Ever Since”

intimately acquainted with the above named claimant Caroline M. Cornelius whose maiden name was Cornelia M. Smith and well knew her late husband Nicholas J. Cornelius alias John Johnson, the soldier above named in said city for 35 years.” After 1890, Caroline resided on West Fourth Street with her daughter Sara Boxwill. She also found work “taking care of the residence of Mrs. Renwiek 29 Park Avenue, New York City, during the summer months or until her return from the country.”1 Caroline Cornelius’s autobiography reveals a number of key themes about black women in nineteenth-century New York City. First, there was tremendous mobility among the city’s black population. Caroline Cornelius resided in no fewer than ten different houses and apartments in thirty-five years. Second, black New Yorkers remained in contact with one another even when they no longer lived in the same neighborhood. Finally, black women made decisions about their own lives. When Caroline Cornelius lost her husband, she found employment as a washerwoman. When she moved in with her daughter, she continued to work as a housekeeper on Park Avenue. While scholars of women’s urban history have examined how women used the city and their neighborhoods as places of both leisure and work, most of their studies have excluded black women.2 Yet black women shaped the black urban space of nineteenth-century New York City in a variety of ways. They tried to improve the crowded and squalid living conditions to which limited financial resources and discrimination consigned them. They decided where they and their families would live. They formed strong networks within and beyond their neighborhoods and provided an urban safety net for longtime residents as well as for newcomers, thereby greatly contributing to the stability of the black population despite the many relocations that it had to undergo. They made their homes the center of their household economies, often working from their homes and taking in boarders. They established churches and other institutions and ran their own businesses. And their efforts determined the settlement of the Upper West Side and parts of Harlem in the late nineteenth century. The geography of New York City changed dramatically during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the century, New York City was

“I Resided in Said City Ever Since” | 11

The Residences of Caroline Cornelius, 1860–1890.

the area below Houston Street. The city began to change, however, in the 1820s.3 The port of Manhattan was booming, and the construction of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought it even more business. Moreover, the burgeoning economy reshaped the geography of the city as commercial spaces opened in the lower parts of the city. Through the 1830s, much of Manhattan Island was still farmland, and it was not uncommon to see “farmers” listed in census and directory sources.4 When railroad

12 | “I Resided in Said City Ever Since”

lines were constructed to the upper reaches of Manhattan, settlement began north of Fortieth Street. Wealthy New Yorkers fled city congestion by moving northward or to Brooklyn.5 When fire ravaged the city in 1835, the most modern water system at the time was created, the Croton Water Works. Upon its completion in 1842, the aqueduct brought in over sixty million gallons of water each day and poured it into the reservoir located at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. Wealthier residents of the city now had access to running water within their homes; their poorer neighbors continued to go without.6 The city continued to expand. In the 1850s, elite New Yorkers pushed for the construction of a park that would make New York City comparable to London and Paris. In 1853, the New York State Legislature asserted the right of eminent domain to take 840 acres of land located in the middle of the city, and in 1857 a competition was held in New York City to design Central Park. The Greensward plan—developed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux—was selected as the winner, and work started the following year. The massive project turned the landscape into a $10 million urban oasis. But the construction of the park also displaced more than 250 black and Irish New Yorkers who had been residing in a section of Manhattan known as “Seneca Village,” located between Eighty-second and Eighty-ninth streets. The village contained two schools, three cemeteries, and two churches, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church and the interracial All Angels’ Church.7 Fifty black families worshiped in the A.M.E. Zion Church, which had been established in 1796.8 By 1857, however, construction of the park forced out the black and white residents of Seneca Village. After the Civil War, the city continued its northward expansion. Beginning in the 1870s, four elevated railroads were constructed up and down the city. These rail lines encouraged people to move into the Upper East and Upper West Sides.9 The park was opened in 1859 and was then extended in 1863 up to 110th Street. By the 1860s, most of New York City’s residents had moved above Fourteenth Street.10 The geographical boundaries of the city now extended to the northern reaches of Manhattan, excluding Harlem, which for most of the nineteenth century was nothing more than isolated farmland. In the

“I Resided in Said City Ever Since” | 13

1820s, for example, Harlem was home to only ninety-one families, one church, one school, and one library. When Harlem’s farmland became depleted by overcultivation in the 1830s and 1840s, many of the residents departed. Squatters moved in and constructed shantytowns, tended animals, and grew vegetables. Horse cars were extended to Harlem in 1853 and provided a rudimentary form of transportation for residents of Harlem wishing to travel downtown. The average travel time to City Hall, however, was one and one-half hours.11 In 1873, Harlem was annexed by New York City and transformed into a white middle-class neighborhood. German-Jewish merchants also moved into Harlem and settled in the Third Avenue commercial area. Moreover, the extension of elevated railroad lines to 129th Street helped to facilitate Harlem’s resurgence. Land speculators made fortunes purchasing cheap land in Harlem and then reselling it for a profit. Developers constructed brownstones as well as exclusive homes for the city’s most affluent residents. Yet poorer residents of the city also moved to Harlem. The first to relocate there were Italian immigrants, who settled in the tenements located between 110th and 125th streets. The population of black residents in Harlem similarly increased. In 1850, 219 black residents had resided in Ward 12, which consisted of the part of Harlem located between 110th and 145th streets. By 1860 that number had inched up to 255, by 1870 it was more than 600, and by 1880 it had topped 1,000, suggesting that black relocation to Harlem really began in the last third of the nineteenth century.12 Not only was New York City’s geography shifting, but the population of the city was changing dramatically. In 1820, New York City had a population of roughly 123,000. It grew to 202,589 in 1830, 312,710 in 1840, over 500,000 in 1850, 813,669 in 1860, 942,292 in 1870, and over 1.2 million in 1880.13 Between 1830 and 1860, Irish and German immigration accounted for most of the population growth. In 1830, only 18,000 of the city’s 200,000 residents were immigrants, but the number of immigrants to the city increased steadily in the antebellum era: by 1860, 383,717 out of the total 805,648 New Yorkers had been born in a foreign country.14 New York City’s African American population had always represented a small proportion of the city’s population, but it grew in fits and

14 | “I Resided in Said City Ever Since”

starts between 1827 (the year of emancipation) and 1840, when it reached its high point of 16,358.15 Because of limited economic opportunities and encroachment on blacks’ political rights, however, the African American population dropped to 13,815 by 1850 and again to 12,574 by 1860. Then, in 1863, as a result of the Draft Riot, many blacks fled the city and the population fell below 10,000.16 Following the Civil War, the black population began to climb again as a result of the arrival of black migrants from the South. Between 1870 and 1880 it rose steadily, increasing by 50 percent to nearly 20,000 (Table 1).17 One of the most significant tools for this project is a database containing profiles of all African Americans — nearly fifty-nine thousand people—residing in New York City between 1850 and 1880. I compiled data for the years 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 from the United States Manuscript Records available from the National Archives and Records Service.18 I looked through nearly one hundred rolls of microfilm and entered the manuscript census data into a database. This database provides an unprecedented amount of information about New York City’s black population over a thirty-year period and specifically offers information, including name, sex, age, occupation, illness, family relationship, nativity, and residential patterns, for all African Americans residing in New York City.19 During the nineteenth century, the demographics of blacks in New York City changed. Between 1850 and 1870, 74 to 79 percent of black New Yorkers either had been born in New York or had migrated there from nearby states (New Jersey or Pennsylvania) (Table 2). Caroline Cornelius, for example, was born in Suffolk County’s Cold Spring Harbor and came to New York with her parents in 1838. Some of the migrants who moved to New York City from nearby states, such as Phoebe Sisco, who moved to the city after being freed in New Jersey, ended up living there for most of their lives.20 By 1880, however, after two decades of hovering between 22 percent and 26 percent of the city’s black population, the percentage of migrants soared to 45 percent. And by that year only 55 percent of black New Yorkers had been born in New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania; fully 36 percent had been born in southern states, especially Virginia. This represented a two- to threefold increase over the previous three

“I Resided in Said City Ever Since” | 15

table 1 New York City’s Black Population, 1830–1880 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880

13,976 16,358 13,815 12,574 13,072 19,509

Sources: Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1972), 36; Database of African Americans, 1850–1880.

table 2 Birthplace of New York City African American Residents, 1850–1880 New England Middle States South Caribbean Other Unknown

1850

1860

1870

1880

4% 77% 15% 2% 2%