A SLAVE IN THE CATSKILLS

     Because it is relatively easy to document human habitation in the Catskills beginning around 11,000 BC, I feel whatever we are presently involved in is a reverberation of the totality of this history. You can’t talk about the Jewish diaspora without considering the early mastodon hunters or consider the recent hipster-refugee escaping from the downtown grind, without talking about northern slavery. We all came (or were brought) to these mountains for different reasons. Our experiences vary widely. But what we all have in common is a history by place. We all tread on the same dirt—some free, some not.

    For a white man, a descendant of slave owners, to write about slavery is problematic. Accusations of cultural appropriation, exploitation, and guilt by ancestral association are common. When I first started researching the subject, and my family’s connection (1653-1865) with the American institution of slavery, I purposely sought out black intellectuals to read the work. I hoped they would tell me if I was overstepping. I kept my race to myself with the ones who didn’t already know me. At least one reader—after an initial enthusiasm regarding the writing—went suddenly radio silent. I could imagine her disappointment as she googled “images” of Mike Osterhout.

     After a slow, step by step process begun in the late 1790’s, slavery as a legal institution in the Catskills, was abolished in 1827. That year New York State manumitted (freed) its entire slave population. African Americans were no longer considered personal property in the state of New York. That is not to say life was much easier for blacks. Racism and poverty cannot be legislated away. When the Federal government passed The Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, allowing Southern slave catchers to operate with impunity, across state lines, slavery was again a very real threat to any black individual living in the Catskills. Only now you could be kidnapped and perish under the South’s brutal plantation system with no recourse. The government would not help you.

     One of the most famous Catskill slaves was Isabella Baumfree. She was born the property of Col. Hardenbergh of Hurley, in Ulster County. Much of the Catskills fell into the Hardenbergh Patent; that was at this time being parceled off. Sold repeatedly, Isabella escaped her last master in 1826, after he reneged on a promise to free her a year before state manumission. Known as a “Christian mystic,” even as a young woman, Isabella’s first brush with history came after her son was illegally sold to a southern plantation owner and transported across state lines in 1829. It was not an uncommon occurrence. But what gained Isabella Van Wagener (who had by now taken a Dutch white man’s last name) a place in history was her retention of legal counsel. Judge Charles Ruggles of Kingston issued a writ for her son to be returned. She successfully sued the man who had sold her son, and he was returned to New York. Isabella Van Wagener became the first black woman in New York (and possibly the country) to ever sue a white man and win the case.

   This was only the beginning of Isabella Van Wagener’s notoriety. Moving to New York City (as many Catskill resident’s do) the former slave found work in the home of Elijah Pierson, a slightly unhinged Christian Evangelist who lived on the Bowery. There she met an upstate carpenter by the name of Robert Mathews aka The Prophet Mattias, who elicited her help in forming a small, but well connected cult: The Kingdom of Matthias. This group of rich, white, NYC society, became devout followers of Mathews. Known for his long beard, odd clothes and free wheeling attitudes towards sex and wife swapping, The Prophet Matthias is a story unto himself. Elijah Pierson (the money man) ended up dying unexpectedly and Mathews was charged with murder in his poisoning. Although never charged, Isabella was also widely implicated by the press, and she legitimately feared for her life. Lynching was a real possibility for an ex-slave implicated in a murder in the 1830’s. Somehow both Isabella and Mathews avoided the hangman. The judge at trial was Charles Ruggles. In 1843 Isabella Van Wagener left New York City, changing her name once again— this time to Sojourner Truth.