Twomey Series: Uncovering the Past: Archaeology at Sylvester Manor

At historic Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, a non-profit in Shelter Island, New York, archaeology has been used to highlight and preserve the rich history of Black and Indigenous people in the state over roughly 400 years. Sylvester Manor preserves the history of a place of enslavement and a provisioning plantation, and Dr. Nedra Lee and her team of archaelogy students worked on the grounds this past summer to learn more about the enslaved people who lived and worked at Sylvester Manor.

This work has done more than make history visible on the landscape; it shows how Africans, Europeans, and Native people have transformed the world around them and created a complex and interconnected history that still shapes our lives today.

Sylvester Manor's history has strong parallels to East Hampton's Gardiner's Island, and many of the people who were enslaved or labored at Sylvester Manor were also enslaved or labored on Gardiner's Island.

Our speaker, Dr. Nedra Lee, runs the New England African American Archaelogy Lab at the University of Massachussetts - Boston. Nedra Lee's scholarship examines the intersection of race, class, sex, and gender in the lives of African Americans in the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. She has previously studied freed Black landowners in Texas but has recently partnered with the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research to oversee archaeological excavations of the historic Boston-Higginbotham House on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts and Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, New York. Dr. Lee has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Texas Historical Commission and previously worked for the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the City Museum of Washington, DC.

This year's Tom Twomey Series is presented as a partnership between the East Hampton Library and the East Hampton Historical Society.

For more information, please contact [email protected] or 631-324-0222 ext. 4.

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