Manners and Customs in Colonial Days 93 



Saxon days, and which, in our own, sets off by themselves a 

 class of gentlemen who are known distinctively as landed 

 gentry. 



It will be remembered that slavery was introduced into the 

 mainland of America by the Dutch, when a vessel of that 

 nationality sold to the planters at Jamestown, Virginia, a num- 

 ber of negro slaves in 16 19. One of the earliest promises held 

 out to prospective settlers in New Amsterdam by the Com- 

 pany was that a sufficient number of negro slaves would be 

 furnished to the settlers. The institution of slavery existed 

 all through Dutch and English days, and even after New York 

 became a State. « Slaves, however, were not held in large 

 numbers as in the southern colonies, nor were they usually 

 provided with separate quarters. They ordinarily slept in 

 the attics or upper stories of the houses of their masters, and 

 ate their meals in the kitchens after their master and his family 

 had finished. They were members of the family, and the 

 farmer who owned one or two worked in the fields alongside 

 of them, the same as the small farmer does to-day with his 

 hired men. Their owners treated them kindly, and did not 

 have unlimited power over them in the way of punishment. 

 Flogging was not alone for blacks, but for whites also. The 

 Dutch, in particular, treated their black dependents with 

 much kindness and humanity. During the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, the value of a negro was about one hundred dollars in 

 our money, of a negress, two hundred dollars. The traffic 

 began to decline in 1718; and in 1755, there were but seventy- 

 three African slaves in the whole county of Westchester. 



1 When it was a pretty certai i fact that slavery was to be abolished in 

 the State, many of those who owned slaves sent them into the Southern 

 States for sale, so that there would be no loss of property or money. The 

 plan of freeing the slaves was one of gradual manumission, and the last 

 slave held in New York State was one belonging to the Morris family (1827). 



