Sylvester Manor Educational Farm on Shelter Island gets $100,000 grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund

Two Indigenous brothers who worked as indentured servants at a Georgian-style manor on Shelter Island are credited with leaving behind their mark more than 100 years ago: pictures of ships carved into the attic walls.

William and Isaac Pharaoh, who were of Montaukett descent, are believed to have created more than 40 carvings in the three-room attic of Sylvester Manor after arriving at the more than 230-acre estate in 1829 when they were 8 and 5, staff at the property say. Isaac Pharaoh continued living at the site after his indenture ended, but his brother fled before his time was complete.

The carvings, and the attic where enslaved people at the manor may have lived, are a step closer to being preserved after the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm received a $100,000 grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which is part of the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation. The fund, which seeks to preserve “sites of African American activism, achievement and resilience,” gave $3 million in total this year to 24 sites, including Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, according to the organization’s website. 

“We are a place that has a history of slavery,” said Donnamarie Barnes, director of history and heritage at the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, “but we are also a place that has a history of a people who, through the brutality, the inhumanity and the horrors of enslavement, lived in this place, had families, had descendants.”

Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, said Sylvester Manor is “a unique opportunity to help our nation understand that slavery and plantation sites” went beyond the South.

“Sylvester Manor was an active slave plantation for 169 years, and we were motivated to support this project because it is one of the largest interpreted slave plantation sites in the North, and many Americans understand slavery history being confined to the South,” said Leggs, who is also the senior vice president at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The attic project at Sylvester Manor will include preserving the carvings and installing new roofing and floor insulation. It will also involve the excavation of the floor under the wooden attic planks by an archaeological team from the University of Massachusetts to look for artifacts of enslaved and indentured people.

The preservation work is part of a more than $10 million renovation and restoration project for the entire house, which is structurally sound but needs several upgrades, such as new roofing, fire suppression and electrical wiring, manor staff said. The house is closed to the public. Officials hope to reopen it in three years.

“This is a great opportunity for us to be able to concentrate this effort in this space with the idea that it will add to our interpretation and the narrative that we're able to offer to the public that come to visit and for scholars who come to study,” Barnes said in a phone interview.

Sylvester Manor history

In the 1650s, Nathaniel Sylvester and his business partners purchased Shelter Island from a merchant, the manor’s website said. They also made an agreement with the Manhasset tribe for the land, which was their ancestral property.

Sylvester and his partners owned sugarcane plantations in Barbados that were worked by enslaved Africans, according to the manor’s site. On Shelter Island, they built a commercial enterprise that included harvesting timber, raising livestock and growing crops that could be sent back to the Caribbean island. Descendants of the Sylvester family lived at the manor until 2006.

Experts say the manor did not have a large enslaved population, with the highest number believed to be five, from 1752 to roughly 1800. The last emancipated person from the manor was a man named London, who was of African descent. He was freed in 1820.

People who were enslaved at the property often stayed within the area after they were freed, sometimes utilizing a barter system-type of working relationship with the manor. Some were buried on the property.

Barnes said the attic preservation is part of telling the story of all people who lived, worked and died at the manor — the European settlers and Indigenous people, as well as enslaved and free people of color.

“They are founders, and that's how we consider them, founders of this place and founders of this nation,” she said.