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Life of Benjamin Lattimore
Benjamin Lattimore was born a free black man in Weathersfield, Connecticut in 1761. At the start of the Revolution, he was living in Ulster County, New York where he helped his family operate a ferry. The fifteen-year old Lattimore enlisted in the Fifth New York Regiment of the Continental Army in September 1776 and served under Colonel Lewis Dubois. He took part in the battle for Manhattan in 1777 and was captured by the British at Fort Montgomery near West Point. Relegated to the role of a servant by the British Officers, Lattimore was recovered by the Americans in Westchester County and returned to service in the Continental Army. In 1779, he visited Albany for the first time when his regiment, en route to the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys, was forced by ice to remain in the city for two weeks. In 1794, Lattimore settled in Albany and found employment as a licensed cartman. Within five years, he had purchased several lots in the area of South Pearl Street, as well as a two-story brick house at 9 Plain Street, an area now covered by the Times Union Center. Described as a man of "irreproachable character for integrity and uprightness" Lattimore became a pillar of early Albany's middle class black community. On April 20, 1811, Lattimore purchased a parcel of land for $400 from Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, the widow of Alexander Hamilton and daughter of General Philip Schuyler. This lot on Malcolm Street became the site of the first schoolhouse in Albany built with private funds, for the purpose of educating black children. He was a founder and trustee of the first Black school in Albany, the Albany African Methodist Episcopal Church (known today as the First Isreal AME Church), and the Albany African Temperance Society. The First Isreal AME Church, located on Hamilton Street in Albany, is known historically for being a station on the underground railroad. Harriet Tubman is said to have slept inside the Church against one of its walls during her many trips liberating enslaved people from Southern states. Frederick Douglas spoke within his sanctuary. Benjamin Lattimore was an outstanding member of the early nineteenth century Afro Albanian community. Businessman, property owner, and a leader among his people, his life is a textbook example of an emerging African American middle class in the years following the American Revolution.

From papers submitted more than sixty years later, we learn that he was born in Weathersfield, Connecticut in 1761. At this point, we have not identified his parents. In another document, Lattimore stated that he had been "born a free man."

American Revolutionary War
For most of us, the mere mention of the American Revolution sparks the imagination and sends us back to those magical mythical moments when things were more simply heroic and thus early American life mostly is remembered in a more certain black and white. Most recall how liberty-loving colonists were driven by a greedy and insensitive king to become revolutionaries and how those who opposed them were Tories. Clearly, at least three distinct yet interrelated revolutionary impulses emerged and gathered momentum during the two decades after the first Treaty of Paris in 1763. Each was conceived many years earlier in the American wilderness. Each had been nurtured separately in distinct colonial political, social, and economic climates. Spurred on by a new world order created by the peace treaty of 1763 and empowered by a great wave of new people, each of these seeds grew to fruition on the North American mainland during the so-called Revolutionary era. Unfolding across a vast and verdant ecological stage, the results of each of these transforming movements have shaped the progress of what can be identified as an American civilization from that time on.

At the outbreak of the War for Independence, Benjamin was living in the town of New Marbury in Ulster County. In September 1776, he enlisted the Third New York New Regiment of the Continental army. A few days later, his company was sent to New York City where he took part in the losing battle for Manhattan. In 1777, he was on duty at Fort Montgomery and was captured when the British stormed the fort. Taken to New York City, he was made a servant of British officers. While on a trip into Westchester County, he was captured by the Americans and sent home.

In 1779, Lattimore sailed with his regiment upriver to Claverack. Blocked by ice, they marched to Albany where they remained for almost two weeks. At that time, he had a glimpse of the community that later would become his home. Marching overland to Schoharie and out the Mohawk Valley, Lattimore was a part of the American offensive to punish the Iroquois for raiding frontier settlements the year before. That summer, he went down Otsego Lake, the Susquehanna River, and then marched all the way to within "hearing the enemy's guns" at Niagara. Lattimore's outfit then returned - destroying a number of Indian settlements and taking part in the Battle of Newtown along the way.

After The War
After the war, Benjamin Lattimore settled in Poughkeepsie. But, by the late 1790s, he had relocated to Albany. In 1799, he was identified as "a negro man" and was baptized into the Albany Presbyterian Church. In 1804, the Presbyterian Church sanctioned his marriage to Dina, the "servant maid of Dr. Mancius." His son, Benjamin Jr., had been born eleven years earlier. The marriage of Benjamin Sr. and Dina produced a number of children. Perhaps he was one of the adult men included in the first ward household of Thomas Lattimore on the Federal Census of 1800.

In 1798, Benjamin Lattimore purchased a lot on Plain Steet in the first ward. His home at 9 Plain Street was an Albany landmark for the next forty years. In 1803, he extended his holdings through to Hudson Street. In 1811, he purchased another lot above Washington (South Pearl) Street from the estate of General Philip Schuyler.

Benjamin Lattimore earned his living as a cartman. Licensed to haul cargoes throughout the city, the cartman was charged with providing courteous and consistent service and was responsible for removing trash and garbage from city streets. Lattimore held the cartman's badge almost until his death. His son, Benjamin Jr., also was a cartman.

Three decades beyond the celebration of the American Revolution Bicentennial, the popular perception of the Revolutionary era still is that of a war - and one replete with classic battles, Indian raids, three-pronged attacks, and rag-tag armies suffering through cold and lonely winters. Throughout the period, American colonists and their allies engaged in sometimes bloody warfare with British forces and their allies. The so-called Revolutionary War began on the defensive and escalated to a fight for independence that was at the same time a civil war sometimes alienating brother and sister and father and son. It also had an imperial component aimed at opening an expansive frontier to new settlement. From the revolutionaries' perspective, the principal elements of the martial impulse involved raising and sustaining an army and navy; supplying a long and protracted war effort; neutralizing potential internal enemies (chiefly Tories, Indians, and slaves); and protecting a dependant civilian population of loved ones (in other words the other 75% of the settler population) throughout a conflict fought on home ground and during which American property might need to be strategically sacrificed. The actual warring, however, chiefly was the province of the young men and older boys of community and countryside. Although, as we will see, most of Albany's menfolk served or opposed the martial part of the crusade for American liberties in ways other than with mortar and musket.

Second, a revolution in public life took place at every level of collective interest. This transformation was inspired by a newly articulated regard for the so-called "rights of man" and a first consideration of the nature of the relationship between colonists and crown. Even before the end of the last of the French and Indian wars, those in America began to question the fairness of their treatment within the British imperial framework. Becoming increasingly frustrated by the inequities and inadequacies of the imperial system after 1763 - particularly in relation to new British taxes and the restriction of their access to land and other resources, Americans turned to extra-legal, then illegal, and finally to overtly hostile and treasonous activities to secure an American lifestyle that mostly had evolved from its pioneering to development stage. Finally, understanding that their interests could not be accommodated within the British system, self-interested Americans opted for a separation. In the process, they began to develop an American framework for winning the war and then for growth and development.

In the operative sphere, converted colonists or ideological revolutionaries at all levels needed to establish concerted mechanisms first to engage the general population, then to mobilize resistance, then to maintain order to preserve and protect property, and finally to establish and operate a new political system. At the local level, each revolutionary committee was asked to commit personal resources to the larger crusade for American liberties by seeking to involve the maximum number of neighbors and kinfolk in the process, maintain some semblance of an orderly life at home, and guide neighbors and kinfolk through the progressive stages of resistance, rebellion, and finally revolution. In Albany's case, the crusade for American liberties entailed actually leading a revolutionary movement in the upper Hudson Valley while maintaining an admittedly self-interested, century-old European-inspired corporate lifestyle which might not prove to be compatible with the needs and aspirations of an emerging population living in the countryside.

At all levels, the political revolution was driven by the common denominator of the removal of a royal or British interest from its preemptive place of central consideration and its replacement with an essentially America-based agenda - one that was fundamentally instead of peripherally responsive to increasingly demanding American needs. Second, in a climate of war, the New Order was charged with politicizing the people - most of whom appeared at-best ambivalent regarding abstract ideals such as liberty and equality. Local committees accomplished this by confronting the people at-large about redressing American grievances, by raising critical issues, and then seeking to polarize the general population into friends and enemies. Each person would be called on to subscribe to or join the crusade for American liberties as soldiers, civilian workers, and as contributors and investors. Those who refused were to be punished - meaning the removal of the most obvious Tories and the stilling or neutralizing of those who hesitated or refused to become revolutionary supporters. In the meantime, the revolutionaries devised mechanisms for utilizing the confiscated resources of a large and important Tory and non supporter population. Third and most arduous, the political revolution struggled to find ways to replace British experience and financial resources with organic American assets.

Inherent in the removal of the overseas overlord which relegated almost all colonists to servile roles, the political revolution gave previously disenfranchised Americans hope for more of the opportunities for a better life that previously had been reserved for the crown and its patronage cliques. The questions of "equality" and issues of "inalienable rights" widely popularized by pro-revolutionary preachers first inspired and then sustained rank-and-file Americans - including the working class (which included everyone except the major merchants and a few intellectuals who were most aware of what was at stake and at risk), and after them, large and culturally diverse immigrant minorities, women, and even slaves.

The third major initiative impacted on everyone and would be the logical consequence and the most desirable outcome of the successful end of the war and the coming of the new political order. This tangible benefit was what most patriots would be fighting for. By the mid-1760s, Americans were eager to take possession of all of the resource-rich land east of the Mississippi. Informed and inspired by a large influx of new European emigres, by the 1770s, Americans were becoming interested in adapting the phenomenal transformation then sweeping western Europe to exploiting America's resources for profit - a phenomenon we now call the Industrial Revolution. Those ambitions would be denied by a British ministry which saw the American colonies as a resource base and a plantation for supplying raw materials for the English Industrial Revolution. In other words, Great Britain sought to limit American expansion and development in order to fulfill its own imperial/industrial destiny. However, with the winning of the war against Great Britain, Americans became owners of half a continent and now would decide how the vast natural resources of their continent would be divided-up and used. This unbridled development impulse was made possible by the removal of Britain from the policy-making tips of the American political, social, and economic pyramids, and brought on an expansion of the parameters of American life. As a result of the war and the political revolution, farmers and traders became developers, manufacturers, and capitalists.

Albany
During the early 1800s, Benjamin Lattimore was a pillar of an emerging African American community. He was a founder and trustee of the first Black school in Albany, the Albany African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Albany African Temperance Society. By the 1820s, Benjamin Jr. had succeeded him in these enterprises as well.

In 1820, his legal status may have been called into question. In April, he appeared before the Albany Court of Common Pleas. He deposed that he was 59 years old and had lived in Albany for 26 years. He was described as a six-foot tall mulatto. Attorney Gerrit Denniston testified that he had known Lattimore for a number of years and that he was "a free man [of] irreproachable character for integrity and uprightness." Judge Estes Howe then declared Benjamin Lattimore to be a free man.

In 1834, Lattimore applied for a pension as a soldier in the Revolutionary army. His carefully documented and detailed application with supporting documents is on file at the National Archives. For meritorious service, he was allowed a pension of $80 a year and awarded an arrears payment of $240.

Benjamin Lattimore made his will in 1837. He stated that he was a resident of the city of Albany, "weak in body, but sound of mind." No wife was named but he devised his estate to his three living children. Benjamin Lattimore died in April 1838 at age 78. Two days later he was buried in the African Methodist Episcopal Church cemetery plot. His newspaper death notice stated that he was "a soldier in the American Revolution."

In 1817 another emancipation law was enacted; it too still required service to owners for some, but set the date of July 4th 1827 for final emancipation, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Planning the Celebration in Albany When the time came to plan how to celebrate the end of slavery the free Black men of Albany gathered in the African Baptist Church on Hamilton St. (between Grand and Fulton) on March 27, 1827. The planners included Benjamin Lattimore, Sr. (who had served as a soldier in the Revolution) and his son Benjamin Jr. and Lewis Topp. (Within the next decade Lattimore Jr. and Topp’s son William would become fast friends, despite a difference in age. By 1840 they were both heavily engaged in the Black anti-slavery movement, attending Colored Conventions and would be members of the Albany Underground Railroad.) businessman, American Revolutionary War soldier, community leader, property owner, and freedman, was born free in Westersfield, Connecticut, to parents who have not yet been identified. Physical descriptions in early documents suggest that Lattimore (sometimes spelled Latimer) was of mixed racial origin. His family worked on a farm in Lower Ulster County, New York, and ran a ferry service. Benjamin Lattimore was one of only a handful of African American heads of households identified by name as a free person of color during the Colonial era.

The contributions of the black community of early Albany are often forgotten in the context of American history. Many, such as Lattimore, made valuable contributions to the military, to community organizations, and to commerce. In 1776 at the age of fifteen Benjamin Lattimore joined New Yorks Third Regiment of the Continental army.

Benjamin Lattimore was born Weathersfield, CT in 1761 and in 1804 he married Dina, the servant maid of Dr. Mancius. Benjamin and Dina has numerous children, but three lived to adulthood, Mary, William and Benjamin, Jr. In September 1776, Benjamin enlisted in the 3rd New York Regiment of the Continental Army. In 1777, he was captured at Fort Montgomery by the British and was made a servant of British officers. During a trip into Westchester County, he was captured by the Americans and went home. In 1779, Lattimore and his regiment participated in the Battle of Newtown. After the war, he’s settled in Poughkeepsie and relocated to Albany in 1790s. In 1799, he was identified as “a negro man” and was baptized Into the Albany presbyterian church. During his lifetime, Benjamin purchased a number of lots In Albany, including a lot on Plain Street in 1798, Hudson Street in 1803 and a lot in 1811. Benjamin and his son Benjamin, Jr. were employed as cartman. Cartman were licensed to haul cargoes throughout the city, the cartman was charged with providing courteous and consistent service and was responsible for removing trash and garbage from city streets. In 1820, his status as a free man was called into question. He appeared before the Albany Court of Common Pleas. He deposed that he was 59 years old and had lived in Albany for 26 years. He was described as a six-foot tall mulatto. Attorney Gerrit Denniston testified that he had known Lattimore for a number of years and that he was “a free man of irreproachable character for integrity and uprightness.” Judge Estes Howe then declared Benjamin Lattimore to be a free man.

On July 4th 1799 New York State began gradual emancipation for those enslaved in the State. It was a complicated process based on date of birth (after 1799) and gender of those born to enslaved mothers, and required service to the mothers’s owners for years although these children were technically “free”. In 1817 another emancipation law was enacted; it too still required service to owners for some, but set the date of July 4th 1827 for final emancipation, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Planning the Celebration in Albany When the time came to plan how to celebrate the end of slavery the free Black men of Albany gathered in the African Baptist Church on Hamilton St. (between Grand and Fulton) in Spring, 1827. The planners included Benjamin Lattimore, Sr. (who had served as a soldier in the Revolution) and his son Benjamin Jr.* and Lewis Topp. (Within the next decade Lattimore Jr. and Topp’s son William would become fast friends, despite a difference in age. By 1840 they were both heavily engaged in the Black anti-slavery movement, attending Colored Conventions and would be members of the Albany Underground Railroad.) Topp proposed that, although the official date for emancipation was July 4th, the Albany community celebrate Abolition on July 5th. Historians have debated the reasons. Was selection of another date merely practical, to avoid the potential for violence from drunk Whites celebrating the historic 4th, or was it something else? Did they object to celebrating this momentous occasion at the same time as the Declaration of Independence, a document that belied the truth of the lives of most Black Americans. Whatever the reasons July 5th was selected. There was a parade through the streets of Albany, singing and other celebration. A highlight of the day was a sermon delivered by the Rev. Nathaniel Paul on the Abolition of Slavery in the Church. Paul’s sermon reminded his audience that abolition was a “holy cause”. He urged them to enter into it with a “fixed determination”. Put quite simply his message was - don’t be content with your freedom when millions of your sisters and brothers remain enslaved in the North and South. None of us are free until we are all free. His sermon was printed in the “Freedom’s Journal” newspaper published in NYC (the first African American paper in the country), and became a call to action for free Blacks. Within 5 years the first Colored Convention was held in Philadelphia. Although it started out small, the Colored Convention movement would grow, and become a powerful political force for free Blacks for decades. It would focus on abolition (and later Civil Rights after the War), but also education of adults and children, and re-inforce the need for the Black community across nation to remain as one. The attendees at the first Convention included Albany’s Benjamin Lattimore Jr, and Captains Schuyler and March, sloop owners who sailed the Hudson River. And so in Albany Blacks would continue to celebrate Abolition on July 5th for decades. That is not to stay that the 4th of July wasn’t important for some, especially the Lattimores and Nathaniel Paul whose father had been a Revolutionary War veteran from New Hampshire. (Twenty-five years later Frrderick Douglass would give a speech “What to the Slave is Fourth of July? It’s still read today; but it was the Rev. Nathaniel Paul in Albany who issued the first call. ) After Civil War the tradition of celebration of abolition in Albany finally fell away, as the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and to give Black men the right to vote. The Black community in Albany would celebrate July 4th.

Becoming a Free Man
Activist William Topp proposed that, although the official date for emancipation was July 4th, the Albany community celebrate Abolition on July 5th. Historians have debated the reasons. Was selection of another date merely practical, to avoid the potential for violence from drunk Whites celebrating the historic 4th, or was it something else? Did they object to celebrating this momentous occasion at the same time as the Declaration of Independence, a document that belied the truth of the lives of most Black Americans. Other committee members included Thomas Alcott, Richard Thompson, William Hyres, Robert Harrison, John Jackson (husband of the daughter of Ben Lattimore Sr. ), Asher Root, Anthony Olcott, Daniel Maynard, Peter Hallenbeck (who would later own a business with Lewis Topp), Henry Jackson and Adam Blake. Blake had been enslaved by Stephen Van Rensselaer III ( the “Good Patroon”) who only freed Blake after the end of the War of 1812  (probably about 1815). Whatever the reasons July 5th was selected. There was a parade through the streets of Albany, singing and other celebration. A highlight of the day was a sermon delivered by the Rev. Nathaniel Paul on the Abolition of Slavery in the Church. The Sermon Paul’s sermon reminded his audience that abolition was a “holy cause”. He urged them to enter into it with a “fixed determination”. Put quite simply his message was – don’t be content with your freedom when millions of your sisters and brothers remain enslaved in the North and South. None of us are free until we are all free. His sermon was printed in the “Freedom’s Journal” newspaper published in NYC (the first African American paper in the country), and became a call to action for free Blacks. Within 5 years the first Colored Convention was held in Philadelphia. Although it started out small, the Colored Convention movement would grow, and become a powerful political force for free Blacks for decades. It would focus on abolition (and later Civil Rights after the War), but also education of adults and children, and re-inforce the need for the Black community across nation to remain as one. The attendees at the first Convention included Albany’s Benjamin Lattimore Jr, and Captains Schuyler and March, sloop owners who sailed the Hudson River. And so in Albany Blacks would continue to celebrate Abolition on July 5th for decades. That is not to stay that the 4th of July wasn’t important for some, especially the Lattimores and Nathaniel Paul whose father had been a Revolutionary War veteran from New Hampshire. (Twenty-five years later Frrderick Douglass would give a speech “What to the Slave is Fourth of July? It’s still read today; but it was the Rev. Nathaniel Paul in Albany who issued the first call. ) After Civil War the tradition of celebration of abolition in Albany finally fell away, as the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and to give Black men the right to vote. The Black community in Albany would celebrate July 4th. Benjamin Lattimore, businessman, American Revolutionary War soldier, community leader, property owner, and freedman, was born free in Westersfield, Connecticut, to parents who have not yet been identified. Physical descriptions in early documents suggest that Lattimore (sometimes spelled Latimer) was of mixed racial origin. His family worked on a farm in Lower Ulster County, New York, and ran a ferry service. Benjamin Lattimore was one of only a handful of African American heads of households identified by name as a free person of color during the Colonial era. The contributions of the black community of early Albany are often forgotten in the context of American history. Many, such as Lattimore, made valuable contributions to the military, to community organizations, and to commerce. In 1776 at the age of fifteen Benjamin Lattimore joined New Yorks Third Regiment of the Continental army. slave, Revolutionary War veteran, abolitionist, and jack-of-all-trades, was born, according to the historical record, in “Amabou, Africa.” This location is probably Anomabu in present-day Ghana, which was known as the Gold Coast when Prince Whipple was born. The names of his parents are unknown, but oral tradition published in the mid-nineteenth century implies he was born free and maintains he was sent abroad with a brother (or cousin) Cuff (or Cuffee), but parental plans went awry and the youths were sold into slavery in North America. A collective document Whipple signed with twenty others in 1779 describes their shared experience as being “torn by the cruel hand of violence” from their mothers' “aching bosom,” and “seized, imprisoned and transported” to the United States and deprived of “the nurturing care of [their] bereaved parent”

In the summer of 1815, an Albany businessman named Joseph Fry issued his third annual register and directoryof the residents of the city. Following a conventional format, the 1815 edition began with rosters of the public officials. It then listed physicians, boat captains, city licensees, officers of Albany's banks, education institutions, other incorporated enterprises, social organizations, and the chiefs of a number of Albany based civic and moral improvement groups whom today we might call "lobbyists." The directory included population and election statistics and more miscellaneous information that Fry promised, on the directory's title page, would prove to be "other interesting Matter."

But the principal feature of what was known as "Fry's Albany Directory" was a 64 page alphabetical list of the principal residents of the city of Albany. Considerably larger than its more rudimentary predecessors, the 1815 edition graphically revealed that Albany was in the midst of a period of dramatic growth. Founded in the mid-seventeenth century and chartered as a city in 1686.

Albany's resident population, for a variety of reasons, grew slowly, reaching 3,498 people by the first federal census in 1790. In each of the following decades, however, the city's population almost doubled. The rapid growth was based on the maturation of the city's traditional roles as a regional market and service center, transportation interchange and jumping-off place for the West, and by its new status as capital of the Empire State. The coming of migrants from New England and other states and the arrival of European immigrants more than offset the outmigration of many traditional early Albany families. The only boundary change made before the Civil War added a populated section on the northern edge of the City in 1812. Formerly part of Watervliet, new neighborhoods called Arbor Hill and North Albany contributed substantially to the city's population. By the end of the War of 1812, a one-time frontier outpost had become one of the fastest growing urban centers in North America. The 1815 directory named 2,394 individuals (up from 1,596 in 1813) and listed more precisely the addresses, activities, and characteristics of not only the traditional heads of households but of a growing number of individuals who were living in the city and not under a kinship umbrella. The newest feature of the 1815 edition was explained by a notation on the last line of the preface stating that "Those persons whose names are in Italics are free people of color."

This reference to the city's African-American householders was the earliest printed manifestation of what could be called a "black community." However, Albanians of African ancestry had lived in city households for almost two centuries. During that time, blacks had accounted for between 10 to 20 percent of the city's population, had lived in 30 to 50 percent of the city's households, and, in general, had been overlooked as individuals. They rarely appeared on local government, business, and church rolls that readily identified most community members of European ancestry. But in 1815, the placement of forty italicized names in "Fry's Albany Directory" identified a significant minority group as part of the mainline city.

The addresses listed in the directory reveal that most of Albany's black households inhabited the streets near the river and the more recently developed areas on the northern, southern, and western edge of the city. They also were clustered on Fox Street, at the South Ferry, and near the intersection of South Pearl and Bassett Streets in the South End." African-American householders were most often identified with transportation-related occupations. These included two ferrymen, seven watermen, and two carters; although both Benjamin Lattimore and John Burns were identified as licensed cartmen in another section of the same directory. Six men were called laborers. Others were connected with the community's service industries : three grocers, a sweep, a butcher, a barber, a shoemaker, and four shoeblacks. Two were more exceptional (a skipper and a musician), and three others were widows. The directory listed seven free black men, including Lattimore and Burns, without indicating their occupation.

For the record, the householders identified as free people of color in the 1815 "Fry's Directory" were John Burns, laborer, Water Street; Francis Connor, shoeblack, 97 State; the widow of Fortune Cujay, 208 S. Pearl; John Edwards, barber, 14 Green; David Ervine, 53 Fox; Jacob Everston, 22 Fox; Cesar Foster, butcher, 4 Lutheran; George Golen (Golden), laborer, 51 Fox; Isaac Hawkins, grocer, 231 N. Market; Francis Jacobs, sweep master, 24 N. Pearl; Abraham Jackson, Bassett; John Jackson, laborer, Arbor Hill; John Jackson, laborer, 218 S. Pearl; James Jackson, shoeblack, 41 Division; Jack Jackson, waterman, 24 Fox; Lewis Jackson, waterman, 36 Chapel; Widow Dinnah Jackson, 31 Maiden Lane; Bristol Jackson, waterman, Bassett; John Johnson, waterman, Bassett; Benjamin Lattimer, 9 Plain; Peter Mingo, waterman, 63 Maiden Ln,; Henry Otefield, ferryman, 76 Church; William Pepper, laborer, 54 N. Market; Piars Pruyn, 59 Van Schaick; Francis Robinson, cartman, Water St.; Douw Rocket, ferryman, Lumber St.; Samuel Schuyler, skipper, 204 S. Pearl; Anthony Smith, 18 Van Schaick, James Stoutenbergh, laborer, Sand St,; Swan & Foot grocers, 16 Lydius; Cornelius Talbot, shoemaker, 75 Maiden Ln.; Charity Thompson, 65 Maiden Ln.; Jacob Thompson, cartman, 53 Fox; John Thompson, waterman, Arbor Hill, Thomas Thompson, shoeblack, 596 S. Market; Thomas Thompson, shoeblack, 1 Stuben; Jacob Titus, waterman, 22 Fox; John Top, musician, Ferry; and Francis Van Pelt, 45 Liberty.

Though the directory claimed that it would italicize the names of free people of color, it did not always do so. Those included in the alphabetical listing but not in italics, though clearly identifiable as of African background from other sources (sometimes in subsequent directories,) were Thomas Adams, 63 Maiden Lane; Thomas Allicot, 63 Columbia; Louis Davis, barber, Lodge St.; Josiah Divol (Joseph Dibble), cartman upper State; Samuel Edge, shoemaker, 3 Chapel; John Hogner (Hugener) ferryman, 5 Ferry; Stephen Little, laborer, Sturgeon St.; Francis March, skipper, 217 S. Pearl; Joseph Morris, tobacconist, 11 N. Market; and Charles Smith, laborer, 186 S. Pearl.

The listings provide the bare bones of an individual's existence. They raise compelling questions about the origins of these community residents. Where were they born? How long had they been free? What brought them to Albany? How did they live? And what were their individual and collective roles in the growth and development of the then booming city of Albany?

Since 1982, the Colonial Albany Social History Project has been engaged in a community-based research program that provides answers to some of these questions. In the course of a comprehensive sweep of Albany's historical record, the project has recovered literally thousands of references to individuals, both white and black, who meet the criteria for inclusion in the Colonial Albany Project's study population: born before the end of 1800 and can be documented as a resident of the city of Albany, or were the children of resident parents, or were married to a city resident. The total study population numbers add up to approximately 16,000 historical personages, and these "people of colonial Albany" have been under intensive study for more than a decade. Most of them were of European ancestry, chiefly the descendants of the so-called New Netherland Dutch, an ethnically diverse group of pioneers who came to America before 1664, the British -English, Scots and Irish- who settled in Albany during the English colonial period; German, French, and others from continental Europe; and a large number of American migrants, chiefly from New England and New Jersey.

After Death
Benjamin Lattimore died in 1838 at age 78. He was buried from the newer of the city's two Methodist Episcopal churches and was eulogized in the local papers as a soldier of the American Revolution. Lattimore's life began in Wethersfield Connecticut in 1761. By 1776, his family had moved across the Hudson River to Ulster County where they farmed and ran a ferry. At age fifteen, young Benjamin joined the Revolutionary army. He served in the New York Line for three years, fighting in the battle for New York City, suffering as a prisoner of the British, and in 1779 marching across the state in the Clinton-Sullivan punitive expedition against the Iroquois. During the war, his regiment spent several weeks in Albany. He also made the acquaintance of a number of soldiers who would later become his Albany neighbors. At the end of the war, Benjamin returned to Ulster County but soon decided to leave the family farm. Migration was an important element of the New England experience during the second half of the eighteenth century. Like so many other Yankees who saw opportunity in the west, the Lattimores had moved to New York. But, unlike other sons of New England whose forebears had come to America as part of the Puritan migration of the 1630's. Benjamin Lattimore's ancestors were African.

Reaching Albany by the 1790s with only the recommendation of meritorious wartime service, this thirty-year old began to support himself as a teamster by purchasing a city license to cart cargoes up and down Albany's hilly and narrow streets and through the city's busy yet muddy boulevards. His ambition found many sponsors in the booming commercial center among those needing goods hauled to and from the docks. Before long, he was ready to set down more permanent roots. Benjamin first lodged with his kinsman, Thomas Lattimore, a tailor then raising his own family in a house on the hill behind one of the city's main streets. In 1798, Benjamin Lattimore purchased a lot west of South Pearl Street in a newly opened area at the foot of "Gallows Hill. There he built his home; ultimately a substantial, two-story brick rowhouse. In the years that followed, he was able to invest extra income in city lots so that his property eventually fronted on South Pearl Street, one of Albany's main thoroughfares. In addition, he brought another lot located farther out on South Pearl Street from the estate of General Philip Schuyler.

Soon after arriving in Albany, Lattimore began to raise a family and to participate in community activities. First, he found a mate from among the many women of African-ancestry working in Albany households. Their son, Benjamin Jr. was born in 1793 and other children followed. In 1799, this "Negro man" was baptized in the First Presbyterian Church and was admitted to the congregation. Five years later, the Presbyterian Church sanctioned his common-law marriage to Dina, the "servant maid" of Wilhelmus Mancius, a prominent city physician. Lattimore was only one of the few "colored" male members, while his wife was among a number of African-American women who belonged to the Albany Presbyterian congregation.

By 1815, Lattimore's family and modest trucking business were established at his 9 Plain Street address. A few years later, two Lattimore families shared the home as Benjamin Jr. had married and Was starting out as a day-laborer and sometime teamster. By that time, Benjamin Sr. was a well-known community figure. In an affidavit made in 1820, he was described in a judicial proceeding as a six- foot-tall mulatto man " of irreproachable character and uprightness." He was licensed by the city government as a cartman and was a member of the Presbyterian and then of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the 1830s he was president of the Albany African Temperance Society. Patriarch, proprietor, and property owner, this "new man of the Revolution" had built a life that made him a prominent member of post-war Albany's black middle class. After his death two adult sons and a daughter shared his Revolutionary War pension and his other holdings. Benjamin Lattimore left half of his estate to Benjamin Jr., and a fourth to his other surviving son, William. The remaining quarter-share was entrusted to Benjamin Jr. for the "personal use" of his sister, the widow Mary Jackson, thus protecting the bequest from any future husband's possible mismanagement. Mainstream history books tell us that in the years following the American Revolution, Albany's character was transformed by the energy and ingenuity of newcomers from New England. With a dramatic rise in the number of free black residents appearing on community rolls during that time, we expect to be able to identify some of them from New England town, church, or other records, and from service records for Revolutionary army. We know that Benjamin Lattimore's experience was not unique in Albany and probably was duplicated many times in other New York communities as well. When Benjamin Lattimore moved to Albany, the southern part of the city was a developing area still defined by the elegant Georgian mansion of General Philip Schuyler, Albany's foremost Revolutionary father, great regional landholder, wealthiest man in the community, and, as the master of thirteen slaves on the census of 1790, the city's largest slave holder. Schuyler's mansion and outbuildings sat on the crest of a hill that sloped down to the Hudson River and overlooked what once was the city's common pasture lands. At the time of the general's death in 1804, Schuyler mansion commanded a view of dozen of new homes, shops, and utility buildings that constituted a major new development area for the booming new state's capital. After the War for Independence, the Albany city government began selling off South End lots to preferred clients who in turn subdivided and sold or rented these properties to new people who were taking responsibility for a home for the first time.

Early Albany Society
Running in front of Schuyler Mansion was South Pearl Street. Along that major city thoroughfare at 204 South Pearl was the home of Captain Samuel Schuyler, who was listed in Fry's Albany Directory as a "skipper." However, the individual who was often called "Captian" was not the Samuel who was born to Sheriff Harmanus Schuyler and Christina Ten Broeck in 1757 and who lived with family members for more than seventy years. Although Captain Samuel Schuyler became prominent in his own right, the lineage of this particular bearer of the name of Albany's leading family was not among those traceable in the family histories and genealogies that otherwise commemorate the Schuyler family's preeminent position in early Albany society. The reason for the omission was that Captain Samuel Schuyler was black.Captain Samuel Schuyler was born in 1781 (probably as a free man and possibly in New York City or New Jersey, where Samuel was a more common Schuyler family name). No surviving records have been found to link this particular Samuel Schuyler to the New Netherland Schuyler's. In the mid twentieth century autobiography entitled Black and Conservative, the African-American writer George Samuel Schuyler wrote that his grandfather had fought in the American Revolution under General Philip Schuyler and was one of the first workers at the federal arsenal at Watervliet which opened in 1813. Could that individual have been Captain Samuel Schuyler's father or uncle? By the early 1800's Samuel was living in Albany where he leased dock space on riverside Quay Street. The assessment roll for 1809 described him as a "Blackman." He was also identified as the head of a city household on the third Federal census in 1810. However, his family was represented in terms of free white membership-with a white boy and a girl under ten years old and a white man and a woman between the ages of twenty-six and forty-five. No free blacks or slaves were identified in the Samuel Schuyler household. That peculiar enumeration may be explained by the fact that no city households were listed with African-ancestry heads in 1810. In 1820, and on most other documents, however, Captain Samuel and his family were consistently identified as free people of color.

In 1810, Captain Schuyler purchased an adjoining lot on South Pearl Street from his neighbor Francis March, also a free black skipper. The captain's first son was named Richard March Schuyler. Over the next three decades, he was able to acquire most of the property on South Pearl Street between Bassett and Schuyler Streets. This Schuyler block was composed of at least fifteen city lots and was used as a coal yard and warehouse by the captain and his son, who operated the "Schuyler Tow Boat Line" for several decades. When Captain Samuel Schuyler died at age sixty-one in May of 1842, his will provided for the maintenance of his wife, the former Mary or Margaret Martin or Mortin. After her death the South Pearl Street house and other real estate passed to his children. As successful businessmen, his four sons continued their father's enterprise into the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The story of Captain Samuel Schuyler illustrates another issue related to the recovery and reinstatement of the African presence in early Albany society. A number of individuals bearing the surnames of Albany's original settlers, such as the Kips, Lansings, Van Heusens, and Van Loons, are not to be found on the traditional family trees. A few of these individuals are mentioned in family histories and genealogies, but most of them are not. Because of this exclusion, the historian lacks an important set of resources- the records, accounts, material relics, and traditions passed through generations by family members. To further complicate matters, Captain Samuel Schuyler was identified clearly as "black" or "colored" in a number of records and other documents, but was not listed as a "free person of color" in the 1810 census. What accounts for the inconsistency? Samuel Schuyler's case constitutes a prime, but by no means unique, example of how the status of free blacks was evolving in Albany's urbanizing society. Why did he use the surname "Schuyler"? Did he have a Schuyler parent or ancestor? Was he an emancipated Schuyler family slave? What is most puzzling in his case was that he was not always described as "black" in the record. One implication of this the possibility that some of those individuals in Albany records assumed to be "white," were not. It is also probable that Albany's emerging black community was larger than the so-called official records would have us believe.

The lives of Benjamin Lattimore and of Samuel Schuyler stand out among the members of Albany's fledgling free African-American community. Revolutionary War soldier and skipper/proprietor, their success stories are engaging and even uplifting. But how representative were their specific experiences? Were the life histories of these newcomers-recoverable through available church, survey, business, probate, and literary sources-at all typical of those who made up the remainder of the city's large but unarticulated free black population? Because Schuyler and Lattimore were of the first generation of their families in Albany, their histories are comparatively uncomplicated. Their transitions from slavery to freedom was accomplished in preceding generations or at least prior to their first appearance as householders in Albany. Although disadvantaged, they quickly established themselves as fixtures in Albany's social register and they prospered. Charting their lives has been a task only slightly more difficult than researching the lives of their European-ancestry counterparts. However, most free people of color who appear to have lived and died in Albany until the 1800s, remain unaccounted for.

One approach to this problem is to shift the focus of research to an earlier period when these individuals were slaves. Unfortunately, we have not been very successful in matching the African- ancestry householders listed on the censuses, assessment rolls, directories, or other community records created during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the large but much more amorphous collection of references to blacks organized by their first or slave names. But again there are exceptions. A profile of a third Albany family illustrates this problem and may provide more representative example of the emerging African-American middle class.