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A Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation Fellowship · Stony Brook University

Town of IslipHistory ProjectTown of Islip History Project
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Grade 11 · United States History and Government (Grade 11)

Social and Racial Hierarchies in Colonial and Early Islip

Lesson aim

How did colonial society rank people by status and race, and how do Islip's own records expose the contradiction between the Revolution's language of liberty and the reality of a slaveholding, hierarchical town?

Grade:
Grade 11
Time:
One 42-minute period (about 38 minutes of instruction)

These lesson plans use a format adapted from the Stony Brook University Social Studies Lesson Plan Template.

NYSED Framework standard

11.1 · Colonial Foundations

A variety of factors contributed to the development of regional differences, including social and racial hierarchies, in colonial America. This lesson uses Islip to trace those colonial hierarchies of status and race into the Revolutionary and early-republic years.

Common Core literacy standards

  • R1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis and conclusions.
  • R2: Determine central ideas or information of a source; provide an accurate summary.
  • R9: Integrate and compare information from several sources; note discrepancies.
  • W1: Write arguments to support claims with valid reasoning and relevant, sufficient evidence.

New York Social Studies Practices

  • A. Gathering, Interpreting, and Using Evidence
  • C. Comparison and Contextualization

Main ideas and student learning goals

  1. Explain that colonial American society was organized as a hierarchy in which legal status and racial category, not talent alone, largely fixed a person's place, and that regional differences shaped how those hierarchies looked.
  2. Use Islip evidence to contextualize a national pattern: the same men who resolved 'never to become slaves' in 1775 lived in and helped govern a society that held people in slavery.
  3. Analyze how a single local source, Nathaniel Conklin's 1798 description, both documents the presence of Native, mixed-ancestry, and free Black households and reveals the limits of a record that rarely preserves their names.
  4. Construct an evidence-based argument about the gap between the Revolution's stated ideals and the social order it left in place.

Social studies skills

  • Reading a primary source closely and distinguishing what it states from what it leaves unrecorded
  • Placing a local case inside a larger regional and national pattern (contextualization)
  • Comparing sources that disagree or point in different directions and accounting for the discrepancy
  • Analyzing point of view and the purpose behind a document
  • Using period vocabulary accurately while explaining it as historical, not modern, language
  • Building a written claim supported by cited textual evidence

Rationale

Comes after

  • The Grade 7 lesson 'Who Belonged in Early Islip?', which introduces the town's diverse early population and the period term 'Mustee' at an introductory level.
  • Prior Grade 11 study of the thirteen colonies, the development of regional differences, and the ideological arguments of the Revolution.
  • A study of the Declaration of Independence and the phrase 'all men are created equal.'

This lesson focuses on

This lesson raises the earlier 'who belonged' question to an eleventh-grade analytical level. Rather than simply identifying who was present or excluded, students contextualize Islip within the colonial social and racial hierarchy named in Standard 11.1 and analyze the contradiction between revolutionary liberty and a slaveholding society. The work centers on close reading, source purpose, and argument.

Prepares students for

  • Later units on the Constitution's compromises over slavery and representation.
  • The study of the early republic, gradual emancipation in New York, and the long distance between founding ideals and lived reality.
  • Document-based argument writing on the Regents examination.

Prior knowledge needed

Students should already know

  • That slavery existed in the American colonies, though many students assume it was confined to the South.
  • That the Revolution was fought partly over ideas of liberty and self-government.
  • That the Declaration of Independence claimed 'all men are created equal.'
  • From earlier local study, that Islip was a small farming and bay town on the south shore of Long Island.

Likely misconceptions

  • That slavery was a Southern institution and the North was free, when in fact New York held a large enslaved population and Islip households held enslaved people.
  • That the people who fought for American liberty could not also be enslavers, when many were both.
  • That a group's absence from the written record means they were absent from the community.
  • That period racial terms in a document are simply offensive words rather than categories that carried real legal and social consequences.

Prerequisite skills

  • Citing specific words from a text to support a claim.
  • Summarizing the central idea of a short primary source.
  • Distinguishing a source's stated content from an inference.

How these prerequisites are checked

  • During the Do-Now, review student responses for whether they can separate what a document says from what they assume.
  • In guided instruction, cold-call students to quote the exact phrase that supports a point rather than paraphrasing.
  • Check the two-column organizer partway through to confirm students are placing evidence, not opinion, in the 'what the record states' column.

Modifications for a student with an IEP

Hypothetical student: An eleventh-grade student with a specific learning disability in reading comprehension and written expression. The student understands ideas well in discussion but struggles with the density of eighteenth-century prose and with organizing evidence into a written argument. The student also has documented anxiety around timed independent writing.

Modifications

  • Provide the primary-source excerpts in advance, with archaic spellings already normalized in brackets and difficult words glossed in the margin.
  • Highlight in one color the two or three sentences the student is responsible for analyzing, so the reading load is bounded.
  • Offer a partially completed two-column organizer with one row modeled by the teacher.
  • Allow the student to record analysis verbally with a partner before writing, or to dictate to a scribe.
  • Supply a sentence-starter frame for the argument paragraph (claim, evidence, explanation, contradiction).
  • Extend time on the homework paragraph and permit submission the following day.
  • Check in privately before independent writing begins to confirm the student knows the first step.
  • Reduce the required evidence in the homework from two sources to one strong, fully explained source without lowering the analytical expectation.

Key terms, concepts, and individuals

  • Social hierarchy
  • Racial hierarchy
  • Chattel slavery
  • Free people of color
  • Mustee (period term for a person of mixed ancestry, commonly Native American and African; explained, never used as a modern label)
  • Contextualization
  • Contradiction between ideals and practice
  • Isaac Thompson

Lesson flow

6 minMotivation

Do-Now + Hook

What the teacher will do

  • Project two lines side by side. From the 1775 Islip Precinct Articles of Association: the town's freeholders resolved 'never to become slaves.' From the 1798 Conklin description and later census work: Isaac Thompson, who helped lead the town, held on average about four enslaved people in the decades around 1790, 1800, and 1810.
  • Give the Do-Now prompt: 'These two facts are about the same small town and some of the same people. Write two or three sentences: what tension do you notice, and what question does it raise?'
  • Take three responses aloud without evaluating them, then name the day's aim as a question the class will investigate with evidence.

What the students will do

  • Read both lines and write a short response identifying the tension between the pledge and the practice.
  • Share a response or listen to peers, then copy the aim into their notes.

How this addresses the aim: The hook puts the central contradiction of the lesson in front of students immediately and frames it as a genuine historical problem, setting up the analytical work of contextualization.

Scaffolding questions

  • What did the men who signed the 1775 pledge say they refused to become?
  • What does the census evidence tell us some of those same townspeople did?

Higher-order questions

  • How can people sincerely demand liberty for themselves while denying it to others? Is that hypocrisy, blindness, or something the whole society was built to make normal?

Common Core literacy standards: R1

Assessment: Quick read of Do-Now responses to gauge whether students can articulate the contradiction before instruction begins.

10 minLearning Activity 1

Direct Instruction + Contextualizing Organizer

To judge whether Islip was unusual, we first need the larger picture the standard describes.

What the teacher will do

  • Briefly explain Standard 11.1: colonial society developed social and racial hierarchies, and these varied by region. Define social hierarchy and racial hierarchy on the board.
  • Make the regional point concrete: New York was not a 'free North.' Slavery was legal and common across colonial and early New York, including rural Long Island, and it did not end there until gradual emancipation laws passed after this period.
  • Distribute a contextualizing organizer with three tiers (enslaved people; free people of color, including Native, mixed-ancestry, and free Black residents; free white landowning and officeholding families) and model placing one Islip fact into each tier.
  • Introduce the two cautions in writing: 'Mustee' is a period term for people of mixed ancestry and is used only because the record uses it; and the records rarely preserve full names, so presence is documented far more often than individual lives.

What the students will do

  • Take structured notes defining the two kinds of hierarchy.
  • Begin the three-tier organizer, placing the modeled Islip fact and preparing to add evidence in the next segment.
  • Copy the two cautions into their notes so they apply them throughout.

How this addresses the aim: This segment supplies the regional and national context (Practice C) that lets students judge Islip as a case rather than an isolated curiosity, and it front-loads the ethical handling the sources require.

Scaffolding questions

  • What is the difference between ranking people by wealth or occupation and ranking them by race?
  • Why is it inaccurate to call the colonial North simply 'free'?

Higher-order questions

  • If a hierarchy is written into law and daily habit, how would it shape what people thought was normal, even people who valued their own liberty?

Common Core literacy standards: R2

Assessment: Circulate to confirm the modeled fact is correctly tiered and that students recorded both cautions.

14 minLearning Activity 2

Cooperative Source Analysis: Reading the Hierarchy in Islip's Records

Now we test the framework against the town's own documents.

What the teacher will do

  • Assign pairs a shared packet of four short sources and a two-column sheet ('what the record states' / 'what the record does not state'): (1) Conklin's 1798 line that of about 120 dwelling houses, twenty-five were homes where 'Indians, Mustees and free Negros' lived; (2) the 1783 St. John's marriage record of 'York, a Black servant to William Nicoll, Esq.' and 'Elizabeth, a free Indian Woman'; (3) the passage on enslaved and indentured labor at Sagtikos Manor, noting Isaac Thompson held on average about four enslaved people around 1790, 1800, and 1810; (4) the 1775 Articles of Association pledge to 'never to become slaves,' signed by enslavers including Isaac Thompson.
  • Direct each pair to place each source in the correct tier of the organizer and to record, for at least two sources, one thing the document states and one thing it withholds.
  • Push pairs to name the purpose of each document: a boundary letter, a church marriage record, a research essay drawing on census data, a political pledge. Ask how purpose shapes who gets named.
  • Circulate to hold students to exact quotation and to reinforce that 'Mustee' stays a historical term.

What the students will do

  • Read all four sources with a partner and slot each into the three-tier organizer.
  • Complete the two-column sheet for at least two sources, quoting exact words.
  • Identify the purpose of each document and discuss how that purpose explains why landowning families fill pages while York and Elizabeth appear in a single line.
  • Compare the sources and note where they point in different directions, especially the pledge against slavery set beside the fact of slaveholding.

How this addresses the aim: Pairs gather and interpret evidence (Practice A) and compare multiple sources that disagree (R9), building the raw material for an argument about the gap between ideals and practice.

Scaffolding questions

  • Which tier does each source belong to, and which exact words tell you?
  • What does the marriage record tell us about York and Elizabeth, and what does it leave out?

Higher-order questions

  • Conklin was defending the town's boundaries, not documenting its people. How does a document's purpose decide whose lives get recorded in detail and whose are reduced to a single count?
  • If the record proves these households existed but withholds their names, what does an honest historian owe them now?

Common Core literacy standards: R1, R9

Assessment: Collect or photograph the two-column sheets; check that quotations are exact and that at least one 'does not state' entry per pair reflects the limits of the evidence rather than a guess.

8 minClosing

Whole-Class Synthesis + Exit Prompt

With the sources tiered and compared, we return to the aim.

What the teacher will do

  • Guide a short synthesis: Islip illustrates Standard 11.1 rather than standing outside it. It is an example of the colonial hierarchy the standard describes. About one household in five was Native, mixed-ancestry, or free Black; enslaved people worked at Sagtikos Manor; and the town's leaders pledged against slavery for themselves while holding others in it.
  • State the analytical takeaway plainly: the Revolution's language of liberty and the town's social and racial hierarchy existed at the same time, in the same people, and the records show both.
  • Give the exit prompt: 'In two or three sentences, name one way Islip's records confirm the colonial hierarchy the standard describes, and one thing those records cannot tell us.'

What the students will do

  • Contribute to the synthesis by offering one tiered piece of evidence and its source.
  • Write and submit the exit response as the ticket out.

How this addresses the aim: The closing consolidates contextualization (Practice C) and the evidence limits (Practice A) into a single statement of the aim, and the exit prompt checks both understanding and honesty about the record's gaps.

Scaffolding questions

  • Which piece of Islip evidence best shows the racial hierarchy the standard names?

Higher-order questions

  • Was the contradiction between liberty and slavery a flaw the founders overlooked, or a structure the society depended on? What in today's sources supports your view?

Common Core literacy standards: W1

Assessment: Exit tickets scored for one accurate confirming detail and one accurate statement of what the record withholds.

Homework

Write one analytical paragraph answering the aim: How do Islip's records expose the contradiction between the Revolution's language of liberty and the reality of a slaveholding, hierarchical society? Open with a clear claim, support it with evidence from at least two of today's sources, explain how the evidence proves your claim, and end by naming one thing the records cannot tell us and why that limit matters.

Requirements

  • State a claim that directly answers the aim in the first sentence.
  • Cite at least two sources from today (for example, Conklin's 1798 description, the 1783 York and Elizabeth marriage record, the Sagtikos Manor labor passage, or the 1775 Articles of Association).
  • Quote or specifically reference exact evidence rather than paraphrasing loosely.
  • Explain how the evidence supports the claim, not merely list it.
  • Close by identifying one limit of the evidence, such as the missing names, and explain why that gap matters.
  • Use 'Mustee' only as an explained period term if it appears at all.

Answer key (for teachers)

  • A strong paragraph claims that Islip's records show liberty and slavery coexisting in the same community and often the same people.
  • It cites the 1775 pledge to 'never to become slaves' against the fact that signers including Isaac Thompson held enslaved people, presenting this as the core contradiction rather than smoothing it over.
  • It uses Conklin's 1798 count (about twenty-five of roughly 120 houses, or one in five, home to 'Indians, Mustees and free Negros') to show the town's racial and social hierarchy was real and local, matching Standard 11.1.
  • It may add York and Elizabeth's 1783 marriage record as evidence that free and unfree people of color lived in Islip but appear only briefly in the sources.
  • It correctly explains that the records prove presence but rarely preserve full names or life stories, and argues that this silence is itself a finding that sets the next research question.
  • It handles enslaved and free people of color with accuracy and dignity and treats 'Mustee' as an explained historical term.

Related pages on this site

  • social hierarchy
  • racial hierarchy
  • slavery and liberty
  • contextualization
  • unfinished promise
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