Manumissions of Slaves in New York state

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: New York, USA

Background

Manumission refers to the act of a slave owner freeing or emancipating a slave.

This page was created to document information resources on the manumission of slaves in the U.S. state of New York.

Most recorded slave manumissions in New York occurred between the end of the 1700s and early 1820s. The last slaves in the state were supposed to be freed by 1827, but the 1830 U.S. census reported 75 slaves still remaining in the state.^[1]

A New York state law enacted in 1799 established that children born to slave mothers were free, but could be required to work for their mothers' owners until they reached adulthood.

The Wikipedia articles History of slavery in New York and New York Manumission Society provide background on the prevalence of slavery in colonial New York and on the manumission movement of the late 1700s.

Slaves often were freed only after meeting specific requirements for time, money or work. For this and other reasons, the date of manumission may not be the same as the date the slave was actually freed, nor when the emancipation was recorded.

Information Sources

A compilation of "New York State Manumissions," compiled by Alice Eichholz and James M. Rose of Queens College was published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record in six installments in 1977 through 1979 (vol. 108, number 4 through volume 110, number 1). [Available to subscribers on https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org and on findmypast.com. Links to some of the articles on FindMyPast: A-B, C-D, E-I.] Their compilation included five sets of records, three of which had earlier been documented in 1941 in a publication by Harry B. Yoshpe in the Journal of Negro History vol. 26. Specific sources were:

• Libers of Conveyance located at the Office of the Registrar for the County of New York (indicated in the publication by the number of the Liber followed by the page; e.g., 83:201)
• Libers of Conveyance originally belonging to the New York Manumission Society and held by the New York Historical Society (indicated in the publication by the letter I or R, sometimes followed by a page number)
• Libers of Conveyance found at the Office of the Clerk for Albany County (denoted in the publication by the letter A)
• Slave birth records of the Castleton Town book of Richmond County (denoted in the publication as NHS-CAS) and for New York County (denoted NHS-NYC), both in the collections of the New York Historical Society
• Records in the Museum of the City of New York (denoted MCNY)

Records in this compilation include the date of the recording of the manumission, which may not be the date when the manumission was declared or when the slave was actually freed.

Records of manumissions may include the identities of the slave owner and the freed slave.

Reference Citations

1. ↑ When Did Slavery End in New York State?, New York Historical Society website, accessed 27 November 2015].