History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
Into this the Quakers rapidly ])ushed, purchasing the lands from those who had obtained titles therefor. The line of settlement ran through the i)resenttownsofHarrison, North Castle, New Castle, Yorktown, Lewisborough and North Salem, and through Putnam, Dutchess and Columbia Counties. In the town of Harrison, and in some of those just named, the Quakers constituted for a considerable time a majority of the inhabitants, while a great number afterward emigrated to the northern and central portions of the State.
Negroes. -- In the West India Company's charter of "Privileges and Exemi)tions " for the Patroons, for the purpose of encouraging agriculture, the company agreed to furnish the colonists with "as many blacks as they conveniently could." These they brought from the West Indies, and negro slavery existed in Westchester County almost from its first white settlement. The English settlers were not adverse to availing themselves of the supposed advantages of negro labor. The Quakers brought slaves with them
HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
from Long Island. While slavery thus existed throughout the county, the number of slaves was never large. About the year 1698 a cargo of negroes brought from the coast of Guinea was landed at Rye, in the interest of Frederick Philipse, of Philipse manor.
Slavery continued to exist,without any protest against it, until the Quakers took action to free the slaves held by their members. In 1767, Purchase Quarterly Meeting sent the following minute to the Yearly Meeting, then held at Flushing : " If it is not consistent with Christianity to buy and sell our fellowmen for slaves, during their lives and their posterity after them, then whether it is consistent with a Christian spirit to keep those in slavery that we have already in our possession by purchase, gift or any other ways." This was just twenty years before Wilberforce took his first step in England against the slave trade- The subject was continually before their meetings until the last slave held by a Friend was set free, in 1779.