Slavery at the Patriots’ Manor

The family names associated with Hudson Valley manors also appear in records of enslavement. Wills and deeds preserve some individuals' names while describing them as property. Reading those documents closely means distinguishing the households involved and resisting the temptation to invent the lives the papers leave out.

Matty and Sarah

A will attributed to Catharine Philipse, born a Van Cortlandt, directs that Matty and Sarah be freed. Bolton transcribed the document in his county history. It connects the Philipse and Van Cortlandt family networks, but it does not place every person named in the will at the Croton manor house. ^[1]

The will's language identifies people whom its maker claimed the power to manumit. Its significance does not depend on calling it the first or most explicit record of Indigenous slavery in the Hudson Valley. Such rankings would require a wider search than this article establishes.

Nor can an instruction in a will, standing alone, tell us everything about its implementation. Following Matty and Sarah beyond that clause would require further estate, court or community records. Their names should remain at the center of the account even where the documentary trail is incomplete.

Hannah, Robin and their children

Bolton also reproduced a 1705 deed of gift from Elizabeth Legget to her daughter Mary. It describes two children born to Hannah, an enslaved woman, and Robin, whom the document identifies as an enslaved Indigenous man. The children were transferred as property. ^[2]

This is a Westchester document, not a deed assigning these people to Van Cortlandt Manor. Keeping that boundary clear prevents a regional example from becoming a false household biography. What it demonstrates is disturbing enough: a family relationship recorded because an owner wished to convey the children to another owner.

The record preserves Hannah's and Robin's names but not the children's voices. It does not establish their Indigenous community affiliations, where they were born or how they became enslaved. Those gaps cannot be filled by attaching the nearest familiar tribal or place name.

Reading a transcription critically

These passages reach us through a nineteenth-century historian's transcription of earlier documents. A transcription can preserve important evidence while still requiring comparison with the surviving original for exact wording, dates and difficult terms. Bolton's role here is as a transmitter of a document, not as an eyewitness to the people it names.

His surrounding commentary also makes historical claims that need their own scrutiny. The earliest record a writer happened to find is not necessarily the beginning of a practice. A single deed cannot establish how common a transaction was across an entire county.

Beyond the famous household

The manor families' political allegiances do not dissolve the history of their control over other people. At the same time, a responsible article should not claim that a present-day museum omits this subject without examining what it actually interprets.

The task here is narrower and more concrete: identify the people the documents name, explain what each document does, and distinguish the household record from the regional example. The source archive also contains later recollections about slavery and freedom. They can extend the inquiry, but recollection and legal record should remain visibly different kinds of evidence. Explore those records.

Updated October 16, 2026. Rewritten to distinguish the Philipse, Van Cortlandt and Legget households and the limits of transcribed wills and deeds. Removed unsupported claims about named people’s community affiliations, the prevalence of particular practices and present-day museum interpretation.