Two-hundred-and-forty-nine years ago, an enslaved man was sold, not far from this newspaper’s office in East Hampton. Gree was his name and he was owned (as much as one can own another person) by David Mulford. The buyer was the Rev. Samuel Buell, the local minister, who lived more or less where the East Hampton Library’s children’s wing is today. Buell paid Mulford “fifty pounds of lawful money of New-York currency,” a hefty sum. The date on Gree’s bill of sale was March 22, 1776.
What is stunning about that March date seemingly so long ago is that slavery had been a going concern in East Hampton for more than a century at that point. Enslaved people were as much a part of the community as anyone. In fact, there is good reason to think that there were more Black people walking up and down Main Street than there are today.
Gree outlived his enslaver. Buell died in 1798 and an inventory of his possessions completed in connection with settling his estate listed Gree. Buell was famous for his 50 years in the East Hampton pulpit; Gree was forgotten until recently when his name was discovered in original records at the East Hampton Library.
The library’s Long Island Collection was the source for much of what we know now about local slavery, documented at plainsightproject.org. The collection is hosting a pop-up exhibit at the library through Sunday displaying some of the documentary evidence itself. These include names and details in account books like Hedges family shoemaker records, church records, and indentures from the era of gradual emancipation. It is in the sometimes minute details that we learn of the lives of these people, forced to be right here in our forebears’ midst against their will.