Panel 5 of 7
An Unfinished Promise
In brief
The Revolution spoke of liberty, but not everyone was free. Women, Black people, and Native people were left out, and enslaved people worked at Sagtikos Manor. The promise of independence was real, but it was not yet shared by all.
The Revolution spoke in the language of liberty, but that liberty did not reach everyone. When Islip signed the Articles of Association, only a portion of residents could take part. Enslaved and free Black people, Native people, women, children, and Quakers were excluded or unable to sign, and public power in early Islip belonged to a narrow group of men with property.
Occupation made loyalty itself dangerous, and the law followed. New York passed an act against people of “equivocal and suspected” character in 1778, and in 1779 it seized and sold the estates of those who sided with the Crown. Long Island residents were caught in the middle. A 1781 resolution complained that armed boats from Connecticut were plundering Islip's own shore in what became known as the Whaleboat War, treating occupied neighbors as enemy subjects.
Islip's own minute book shows how tangled those years were. The town met every April through the occupation, electing officers and caring for its poor, while dating its records, as legal documents in occupied territory had to be dated, by the reign of King George III. That wording does not mean Islip's people were Loyalists: the same meetings kept re-electing Isaac Thompson, a signer of the patriot Articles of Association, as supervisor. In 1783 the town voted support for Johanna Hutton and her child, boarded family to family in proportion to what each was rated. Only in April 1784 did the heading change, to “the Authority of the good People of the State of new york” and “the Eighth year of the American Independence.”
Sagtikos Manor belongs in this harder part of the story too. Much of the work on the farm and in the home was done by enslaved and indentured people. Records indicate that Isaac Thompson held, on average, about four enslaved people in the decades around 1790, 1800, and 1810, and the fuller story of those individuals is part of the ongoing 250th research.
This does not weaken the Revolutionary story; it makes it more honest. The promise was real, but it was not equally shared. In Islip, as in the nation, independence was a beginning, not an ending.
Sources
- New York State 250th Commemoration Field Guide.
- George J. Munkenbeck, “The Origins of the Town of Islip.”
- Nathaniel Conklin, “Description of the Town of Islip in Suffolk County,” January 11, 1798; transcribed and annotated by the Town of Islip Historian's Office.
- George J. Munkenbeck, “Isaac Thompson — A Man on a Tightrope,” drawing on Christopher Verga's research on slavery in Suffolk County.
- New York State, Laws of the State of New York, vol. 1 (Albany, 1886): the 1778 and 1779 acts.
- New York State Senate and Assembly resolution on plundering, June 28, 1781.
- Carl A. Starace, ed., Book One of the Minutes of Town Meetings and Register of Animal Ear Marks of the Town of Islip, 1720–1861 (Town of Islip, 1982); digitized by the Office of the Town Historian.