Black-owned Farms

Historian Delves into Black-Owned Farms

An article in the Rivertowns Dispatch by Amy Bochner

While conducting research on colonial homes in Hastings, historian and resident Keith Doherty made a surprising discovery about property north of Tompkins Avenue.

“I accidentally stumbled on a record of a small farm that was owned by a Black man named Prince Griffin. Griffin had had the farm since 1816,” Doherty said. “I don’t think most people understand that Black men and Black families were able to own property at so early a date, because slavery itself was not abolished fully [in New York] until 1827.”

A Hastings native, Doherty is a former art history professor at Boston and Harvard universities who works at the Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site in Yonkers and volunteers with the Hastings Historical Society. For the past two years, he has researched Black-owned farms in Hastings and the Bronx.

Doherty first presented his findings during a program at the Hastings Public Library in April 2024. On Jan. 9, he talked about Black-owned farms in the Bronx at the Van Cortlandt House Museum.

In the process of studying Griffin, Doherty uncovered two other farms in Hastings that were owned by Black men in the 1800s.

“Some were quite large, [and] were owned by men who presumably had been enslaved in their youth, and who had not only achieved their freedom, but became landowners themselves, and prosperous businessmen,” he said. “I thought it was quite courageous and amazing, given how heavily institutionalized racism must have been at the time, even more than it is today.”

Griffin’s 4-acre parcel, also owned by Anthony Riker, existed north of Tompkins Avenue from 1815 to 1861. Doherty also uncovered a 3-acre farm owned by Peter Riker, which existed from 1843 to 1891 at the intersection of Ravensdale Road and Farragut Avenue, as well as a 7-acre spread owned by Warner Fields, which existed from 1827 to 1912 in the Pinecrest neighborhood.

The process of tracing records for these families has been difficult, according to Doherty.

“The records on any poor population are usually scattered, incomplete. I’ve researched a lot of populations, like the Irish immigrant population in Hastings and in the Bronx, and records are sparse,” he said. “You may have a census record or you may have a property deed, but oftentimes you won’t, and you certainly won’t have voting rolls or tax rolls, except in rare instances.”

According to Doherty, most scholarship on the history of Black Americans in New York centers on New York City. However, he explained, the majority of Black families lived in rural parts of the state.

“There’s been a really disproportionate focus on the free Black population of the city and of [the borough of] Manhattan, and it’s way out of proportion with the real numbers. Four fifths of the Black population in the early 1800s did not live in Manhattan, and yet, most of the scholarship is about that,” he said. “Black men couldn’t buy property in Manhattan. It was not an option, so being in a rural situation was much more advantageous, because you could buy property and have some control over your financial future, whereas in the city you had no control. If you had property, you could vote. Black men were not allowed to vote unless they had $250 worth of property. That’s why I think it’s so important to focus on rural areas.”

By shedding light on the history of Black-owned farms, Doherty hopes that people gain “a better understanding of the totality of Black life at the time.”

“I think we focus on manumission or emancipation at this time. It’s mainly about slavery, but there were also opportunities, real opportunities, to establish yourself as a businessman… which is not to say that racism was not a huge, huge factor in their lives. As a matter of fact, most of these farms failed. However, they did exist, and that, I think, opens our eyes to a facet of Black life that has been ignored.”

The next step for Doherty is to find and connect with the descendants of the families he’s researched.

“I’m going to use online genealogical services to try to find people. I think they’re around. I believe one of the most long-lived property ownerships in Hastings [belonged to] the Fields family,” he said. “They owned most of what is now the Pinecrest neighborhood, and I know that they were in the county until at least 1930 or so. I would start with them.”

See full article and photo here:

https://www.rivertownsdispatch.com/historian-delves-into-black-owned-farms-2/