Two one-week workshops for 72 K-12 educators on the history of slavery in the colonial north.

In recent years, public humanities practitioners have focused on re-evaluating how slavery in America is presented at historic sites, incorporating the point of view of enslaved individuals, and recognizing the longevity of slavery’s existence in America. Still, the narrative of slavery is rooted in the antebellum South, omitting its connection to the legal, economic, and political development of colonial America and the New Nation period. For over 20 years, Historic Hudson Valley has told the story of slavery in colonial America, on site at our historic site Philipsburg Manor and, in 2019, with the interactive documentary People Not Property: Stories of Slavery in the Colonial North. In 2017 and 2019, HHV hosted NEH summer Institutes to explore this topic with K-12 teachers. Now HHV seeks a Landmarks grant for summer 2021. The workshop would be grounded at Philipsburg Manor and extended to nearby historic sites to consider how these locations expand our knowledge of American slavery.

To support endowment for new staff positions, training, and publications, and honoraria for humanities consultants.

A one-week institute for twenty-five schoolteachers on slavery in the colonial North.

"Slavery in the Colonial North: Institutions and Individuals" will offer teachers the opportunity to look deeply into northern colonial enslavement and gain a better understanding of when northern enslavement developed, how it was maintained, where it was contested, what was unique about enslavement in the North, and why it remains relevant. Teachers will examine the legal and economic systems in colonial America and how these systems justified and relied on the existence of slavery. By the end of the seminar, participants will understand that, for economic and social reasons, slavery was as entrenched in the North as in the South. Educators will learn that by including enslavement as part of the story of colonial America, their students will see how the past is connected to their lives in the present day and how they might consider their futures.

Historic Hudson Valley (HHV) seeks a Level II grant to support the continuous demand from K-12 educators for resources about slavery in the northern colonies and to deliver the sensitive training they require to bring this challenging curriculum to their classrooms. HHV would host a virtual Institute for 36 K-12 teachers the week of July 16–22, 2023.

Implementation of a reinterpretation of a historic country estate, using the experiences of residents and workers to illustrate important turning points in American attitudes toward nature and landscape.

Funding is sought to reinterpret a significant property owned by Historic Hudson Valley (HHV). Using as a focusing device the experiences of four women who shaped this country estate during its 200-year history, the new interpretation will illustrate important turning points in American attitudes toward nature and landscape. As it forges a more integrated, effective way for house museums to interpret the built and natural environments, HHV will strive to help visitors understand how American points of view about landscape and nature have changed over time and why those shifts matter. Project formats include an interpretive tour of the nearly 400-acre site; web-based programs and blog; and publications. The story of Montgomery Place reflects many of the ideas and values that have shaped America's land and people. The project addresses how cultural attitudes toward the natural world determine human actions, and how these actions in turn affect people's environments.

No project description available

To develop a series of correspondence courses in the skills of interpretation that would enable historical organization staff members to improve their job skills and therefore their services to the public without the necessity of leaving their jobs for extended periods of academic training.

To support planning for a collaborative traveling exhibition, a catalog, and public programs on slavery and emancipation in the North from 1630 to 1865.

Implementation of new interpretive tours of an 18th-century mill site, emphasizing the experience of enslaved African Americans who worked there.

Development of an interactive digital graphic work of non-fiction examining the 1741 New York Conspiracy through the trial of Cuffee, an enslaved man.

Historic Hudson Valley (HHV) requests discovery funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund the exploratory stages of the creation of a digital graphic novel provisionally titled Cuffee’s Trial. This product will depict the trial, and the historical circumstances surrounding the trial, of Cuffee, an enslaved man accused of conspiracy to commit insurrection in colonial New York. Cuffee, who was among the first of 37 men and women to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for what would come to be known as the New York Conspiracy, had a direct connection to Philipsburg Manor, HHV’s National Historic Landmark in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Cuffee’s Trial represents both HHV’s deep expertise in relaying the history of slavery in the north and our commitment to sharing this knowledge extensively through dynamic digital storytelling. The completed digital graphic novel will become part of our constellation of Slavery in the Colonial North digital products.

Production of a website exploring slavery in the colonial North with a focus on the individual stories of enslaved people at Philipsburg Manor, an eighteenth-century historic plantation site.

Historic Hudson Valley (HHV) requests NEH support for the production of a website titled People as Property: Stories of Northern Colonial Enslavement. The site will shed light on the often overlooked history of slavery in the colonial North with a special focus on individual stories as a means to personalize the past. This project is an outgrowth of the NEH-funded reinterpretation of Philipsburg Manor, HHV’s National Historic Landmark in Sleepy Hollow, NY. Probate inventories, runaway slave ads, legal and court documents, slave narratives, and other primary sources related to northern slaveholdings serve as entry points for exploring the human dimensions of slavery. Philipsburg Manor stands as the primary case study augmented by content from several noteworthy historic sites, libraries, academic institutions, and historical societies in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Planning to develop a reinterpretation of Montgomery Place, a National Historic Landmark in the Hudson Valley, exploring the changing relationships among people, landscape, and nature.

Historic Hudson Valley proposes a reinterpretation of Montgomery Place, a National Historic Landmark in Annandale, NY, that focuses on the changing relationship between people, landscape, and nature over time. Consulting scholars will help develop themes such as the function of the arts in conveying cultural attitudes toward the land, the role of wilderness in the American consciousness, and the influence of women in shaping the landscape. Scholars will advise on integrating the estate’s extensive landscape into the visitor experience. By interpreting the actions of a variety of individuals who populated the estate between 1800 and 1950, we will bring a historical perspective to the conversation on humanity and nature in America.

Prototyping of an interactive digital history on the New York Conspiracy trials (1741), in which both enslaved people and poor white New Yorkers stood accused of plotting to burn the city and murder its white inhabitants.

Historic Hudson Valley (HHV) requests funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to develop a prototype of a digital graphic history provisionally titled Cuffee’s Trial. This product will depict the trial of Cuffee, an enslaved man accused of conspiracy to commit arson and insurrection in colonial New York. Cuffee, who was among the first of 37 men and women to be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for what became known as the New York Conspiracy, was the property of Adolph Philipse, the proprietor of Philipsburg Manor, a provisioning plantation that HHV now maintains as a National Historic Landmark in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Cuffee’s Trial represents both HHV’s deep expertise in relaying the history of northern colonial slavery, and our commitment to sharing this knowledge extensively through dynamic digital storytelling. The digital graphic history will become part of our constellation of “Slavery in the Colonial North” digital products.

To support publication of "The Van Cortlandt Family Papers, Volume IV: Correspondence of the Van Cortlandt Family of Cortlandt Manor, 1814-1848," part of a series of family correspondence and business papers from 1748-1848 of particular interest to New York State historians.

The creation of a digital programs for children about the experiences of enslaved and free women in colonial and post-Revolutionary America, focused on the properties of Historic Hudson Valley; retention of six jobs, creation of one new position, and restoration of 20 part-time positions.

HHV requests a grant to hire and train staff and interpreters who will create and sustain a live, digital school program about the experiences of enslaved and free women in colonial and post-Revolutionary America. These virtual field trips, designed with meaningful input from educator and student evaluators, build on the success of our award-winning NEH-funded documentary People Not Property: Stories of Slavery in the Colonial North. Invisible Women seeks to flip the traditional narrative, one based on documents that marginalize the presence of mothers, wives, and daughters, not to mention skilled female laborers and entrepreneurs. It would provide opportunities to amplify voices that are rarely heard and showcase contrasting experiences that offer a profound and complicated portrait of a nation in progress. The grant would allow HHV to address the pandemic-driven demand for online engagement in the humanities and sustain HHV as a critical educational resource.