In 1825, John and Elizabeth Whitehead divided their Manhattan, New York, farmland into two hundred lots and began selling it off. I know it’s hard to imagine Manhattan as ever having farmland, but “the city” remained densely clustered on the southern tip of the island well into the nineteenth century. The first three lots of the Whiteheads’ land were bought for $125 by a shoeshiner named Andrew Williams. Williams was a Black man, and the Whiteheads were among the very few white landowners who would sell to Black people back then. Williams was a member of the New York African Society for Mutual
In 1825, John and Elizabeth Whitehead divided their Manhattan, New York, farmland into two hundred lots and began selling it off. I know it’s hard to imagine Manhattan as ever having farmland, but “the city” remained densely clustered on the southern tip of the island well into the nineteenth century. The first three lots of the Whiteheads’ land were bought for $125 by a shoeshiner named Andrew Williams. Williams was a Black man, and the Whiteheads were among the very few white landowners who would sell to Black people back then. Williams was a member of the New York African Society for Mutual Relief. The group sought to help Black people buy real estate and was moderately successful at helping the Black middle class gain a foothold in New York. Other Black families began buying land from the Whiteheads in the area around Williams’s new plot. A Black store clerk named Epiphany Davis bought twelve lots for $578. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church bought six lots, and the village became even more desirable to Black middle-class families. Irish immigrants, another group of “undesirables” the Whiteheads were willing to sell to, bought many of the other lots. The Whiteheads ended up selling half of their plots to Black people. The little enclave they made was known as Seneca Village. According to census data in 1855, Seneca Village had 264 residents, three churches, three cemeteries, and two schools. Seneca Village was a home of political power for Black people, as wel...
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