Sylvester Manor

Sylvester Manor is an 8,000-acre property that dates to the mid-1600s. The estate originally belonged to Nathaniel Sylvester, an Englishman who also owned plantations in Barbados. Sylvester, along with his brother and two partners, purchased the land with the intent of building a provisioning plantation to supply their Caribbean plantations. Though many Americans think of slavery as having been limited to the South, there were a number of enslaved people on Long Island, including at Sylvester Manor, and preservationists have made a concerted effort in recent years to tell the history of the Africans at the manor. The estate, which is now the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sylvester Manor is located on Shelter Island, which is tucked between the two forks of Long Island. Shelter Island, which consists of roughly 8,000 acres, was the estate of Nathaniel Sylvester. In 1651, Sylvester and his family sailed from Barbados, where they already owned two other plantations. Sylvester purchased the property with his brother, Constant, and Thomas Middletown and Thomas Rouse. The four men were part of an elite group who dominated the Barbadian sugar trade.

Because so much of the available land in the Caribbean was sown with sugar cane, many of the region’s plantations depended on “provisioning plantations” off the island to provide them with foodstuffs and other goods. The Sylvesters and their partners intended Shelter Island to be used as a provisioning plantation and were especially attracted by its forests of white oak, which could be harvested and used to build sugar barrels. The Sylvesters brought at least three slaves with them from Barbados.

By the time of Nathaniel Sylvester’s death in 1680, he owned more than 20 slaves, who were then passed down to his children. The distinctive yellow manor house was built in 1737 for Nathaniel’s grandson, Brinley Sylvester. The home was built using the labor of slaves and indentured servants, with the last of the Sylvester slaves being freed in 1820, seven years before New York abolished slavery.

At one point in the 1800s, the home became the property of Sylvester descendant, Mary Cathering L'Hommedieu Gardiner, and her husband. The Gardiners had two daughters, Mary and Phoebe, both of whom married Eben Norton Horsford, a Harvard professor. The Horsfords had many well-known friends and acquaintances, a number of whom visited the manor. This includes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sarah Orne Jewett, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

The estate remained in the Sylvester family for many generations. When Bennett Bonesni, an eleventh generation descendent, inherited the property, he chose to incorporate the property as an educational farm that would be open to the public, while working to preserve the home’s unique history. Since the 1990s, teams of students and scientists from the University of Massachusetts have conducted research and archaeological digs on the site, with a particular focus on its burial ground. In recent years, researchers found a cache of religious talismans hidden under floorboards in the “slave attic,” artifacts that had not been touched in nearly two hundred years. 

Schuessler , Jennifer. Confronting Slavery at Long Island's Oldest Estates , New York Times . August 12th 2015. Accessed June 2nd 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/arts/confronting-slavery-at-long-islands-oldest-estates.html.

Raver, Anne. Life on the Plantation , New York Times . April 10th 2013. Accessed June 2nd 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/garden/sylvester-manor-on-shelter-island-returns-to-its-roots.html.

The House , Sylvester Manor. Accessed June 2nd 2021. https://www.sylvestermanor.org/the-house.